Celebrating Pollinators

Strike up the band.

Toss the confetti.

It's National Pollinator Week! 

Let's hear it for the beautiful butterflies!

Three cheers for the hardworking honeybees!

Hip, hip, hooray for bees of all kinds!

Let's sing the praises of the little hummingbirds!

And plant flowers for them all!

After all, we're the ones who reap the benefits of all they do.

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Click here to read more about pollinators and National Pollinator Week.

Also, thanks to Tina at My Gardener Says... for her very informative post on Pollinator Week.

Tomato Love

I HEART homegrown tomatoes...literally.

Just look at this heart-shaped tomato from our garden! It has only one stem, but it looks like two tomatoes were fused together somehow.

How did this happen???

According to what I discovered, this somewhat unusual phenomenon is known as fasciation. Fasciation can occur in a vascular plant's stem, root, fruit, or flower head. What happens is tissue development around the growing tip forms abnormally in a perpendicular elongated direction instead of cylindrically around the tip as it should. This results in shape deformities.

In our case, we ended up with a beautiful heart-shaped tomato, which I love.

P.S. If you think our heart tomato is cool, then you're sure to love these rubber duckie tomatoes.

Garden Giant

There's a GIANT in our garden, y'all!

It's a GIANT sunflower, a Mammoth Russian to be exact. There are two, actually, but one never grew as tall and is already bent over from the weight of its seed head.

Here's the seed head of the droopy sunflower. You can almost tell how heavy it is just by looking.

But the GIANT... the GIANT is really tall...taller than the edge of the roof...higher than the mounted satellite dish. I estimate it to be 12 feet tall!

When we were in Oklahoma, a storm with very strong winds hit here. We expected to find our GIANT on the ground when we got home, but it held strong—it's sturdy trunk stalk must have saved it.

The flower is so high up, I had to use my biggest zoom lens to get a decent picture.

Its face is turned in a northeasterly direction toward the roof, which isn't ideal for our viewing pleasure. If we plant sunflowers next year, I think we should find a new location.

Our GIANT is a beauty.

From it's golden flame petals...

to its swirly green center...

it's a GIANT standout in our garden.

Gardener's Windowsill

If you have ever grown your own tomatoes, then my kitchen windowsill will probably look familiar to you.

Right now, it's loaded down with tomatoes—cherries and slicers. They're coming in quicker than we can eat them, which is such a good problem to have.

Today I plan to take a little time and turn these red, ripe beauties into salsa or maybe marinara sauce, I haven't decided yet. All I know is I don't want to waste a single one.

Lucky Ladybug

Ladybug on Cilantro Flowers

I didn't keep a close eye on the cilantro and it bolted. Its tiny white flowers are so pretty though, that I think I'll let it go to seed and maybe a new cilantro plant will sprout when this one is finished. The bees are loving the flowers and a ladybug dropped in for a visit, too.

According to folklore, seeing a ladybug that has less than seven spots means there will be a good harvest for the season, but seeing a ladybug with more than seven spots means famine.*

I'm glad this little ladybug is a lucky one.

*Source: Ladybug Facts and Legends

Home Away From Home

The weather was perfect this weekend. We arrived at the trailer on Thursday evening and spent all day Friday playing outside. My cold was finally improved enough that I could go out in the boat. We fished our favorite spot on the diversion channel of the Colorado River and by lunchtime we each had two beautiful speckled trout to brag about.

After lunch I worked in Happy Camper Butterfly Garden while John fished from the riverbank. There were a few weeds to pull, but the main thing was to trim back the lantana and the Mexican sage which can quickly outgrow this small space. Sometimes I think I should have named this garden The Beast.

The yarrow is in full bloom and so pretty that it deserves a closer look.

In this shot of the garden you can see that the milkweed is mostly stripped bare. Monarch activity has been very good this year. We found many empty chrysalis shells around the area and even a few small caterpillars munching away on the remaining milkweed leaves.

A female Monarch butterfly showed up while I was watering the plants. She went to work immediately laying her eggs.

And all the while John was reeling in fish from the river—two big redfish and a large trout. Well, that was all I could take. I had to join him.

This photo (taken one morning a couple of weeks ago) shows where I stood when I caught the best trout of the day—only steps away from our trailer.

And when I returned to the garden...

madame butterfly was still on focused on her mission.

What a blessing to call Matagorda our weekend home!

Myles and the Garden Boxes

This weekend we built garden boxes...and memories...with Matt, Carly, and Myles at their home in Oklahoma.

Myles was eager to help, but the shovel proved to be too cumbersome for him, so he took on the role of supervisor.

"See this bubble, Mama? When it's in the middle, then it's level."

"Not bad, Geep, but if you turn your hand this way it will be easier to mix the compost into the soil."

"Hmm, I hope Birdie is getting all this on her camera."

"We need more in here, Mama."

"Make sure you break up that big clod, Dada."

"Well done, everyone. We make a great team, don't you think?"

Keeping My Eye on This One

She looks innocent enough, right?

Duchess running to me for a mealworm treat.

Well, there's something you don't know about Duchess.

I only learned about it recently.

It seems she loves kale.

Remember that kale we planted? That's all it now—a memory.

I mean she REALLY LOVES kale.

She ate every kale plant in the garden right down to the stems.

I caught her as she was finishing up the last leaf.

I can't blame her, really.

She was only doing what chickens do.

It was our fault for not putting up a barrier to keep her out of the garden.

I forgive her.

No ma'am, not the bluebonnets!

But I'm drawing the line at my bluebonnet flowers.

I'm keeping my eye my on this one.

Vegetable and Herb Garden Boxes

Princess: Hey, Queenie, quit eating weeds and come over here and see what Duchess and I found.

Do you think they planted all this for us?

Me: Well, I don't know how to break it to you, girls, but the answer is NO.

So far we haven't had any trouble with the chickens getting in the garden, but it's only been planted a few days.

Normally we don't put our garden in until mid-March, but since we haven't had a freeze all winter and we've been having springlike weather, we decided to go ahead and risk it. I think this is our earliest garden yet.

In the herb box is oregano, fennel, rosemary, and tarragon (and more). These four herbs are established or have reseeded themselves, though we did have to dig up and transplant the oregano in order to build up the soil that had washed out on that end of the box.

New herb plantings include...

sage,

flat leaf Italian parsley (because they say it's the best to cook with),

and curly leaf parsley (because I think I like it better).

Thyme, which is my favorite herb, is planted in a pot on the porch, as are a couple of varieties of mint. You can see dill in center of the vegetable box below.

Planted in the front and sides of the dill are various peppers—some spicy, some not.

Curly kale is planted behind. It won't last long in our climate and will be replaced with hot weather vegetables like okra and purple hull peas. I think John told me he planted carrot seeds in here, too. And he either sowed seeds for squash and zucchini or he's going to buy plants later, I'm not sure.

And then we come to the star of every vegetable garden, in my opinion, the tomato. There's just no way a store bought tomato can ever measure up to a homegrown one. This variety pictured is Celebrity. We also have planted some cherry and grape tomatoes.

Cucumbers will grow on the wooden frame in the front of this box.

By the time the cucumbers and tomatoes grow large enough to fill up the space, the romaine lettuce that is growing between the two will have been picked and eaten.

With God's blessing, we are looking forward to a bountiful harvest.

Making the Garden Beautiful Again

We did it! We finally reclaimed our overgrown and weedy flower beds. It took all day Thursday, all day Friday, all day Saturday, and part of the day on Sunday to knock out our to-do list.

Work in progress on Friday.

Weeds were pulled, roses were pruned, dead plants were replaced, bags of soil and mulch were spread, everything was fertilized, a compost bin was built, the lawn was mowed, the vegetable and herb boxes were planted, and there was even some power washing done. And I can't leave out all those trips back and forth to the garden center.

Pretty Knock Out Roses to replace the ones that died.

I took a few before and after photos to share with you. But let me warn you, the before shots are graphic in nature and may make tidy gardeners gasp in horror.

The Rose Garden Before

The Rose Garden After

Such an improvement! Let's look at one more.

The Butterfly Garden Before

The Butterfly Garden After

We showed those weeds who's boss!

It's amazing how quickly things can fall apart in a garden when you aren't able to keep on top of things. 2015 was not our year for gardening, that's for sure. We hope to do better this year.

Now that the tough garden chores are out of the way, the fun of trying out new flowers and plants begins.

Butterfly Blue Pincushion Flower

On one of our many trips to the garden center my eye was drawn to a pretty lavender blue flower called a pincushion flower. Can you see the pins sticking out? I bought three and planted them in the butterfly garden.

Coleus

I also picked up some coleus to add a pop of color in the shady bed out front. It's tough to grow anything out there, so I hope I have good luck with this plant.

Our garden is starting to look beautiful again and that makes me very happy. However, when next weekend rolls around, I think I'm going to suggest we go fishing