Garden Bonanza

Taking a bit of a break from blogging our Africa vacation to do a garden update. It had grown so much when we'd returned. The asparagus are still whisking in the breeze, only 2.85 more years to go! The middle strawberry plant has started to grow some tendrils out. I see strawberries grow, but I think birds or bugs must eat them before they grow very big.

Notice the rouge watermelon growing from last season?



Our tomato box is finally cranking up. I've only got 1 or 2 cherry tomato plants & 3 of the guys in the center row. The left row is doing great though & we even have some factual tomatoes growing...



As H loves tomatoes, he's very excited about these guys.



The squash and cucumber box is out of control! We've got 2 rows of squash and at least 5 good, producing plants. I've got 1 row of cucumbers and numerous vines that have tons of buds on them.



Check out this giant that grew! My step-dad picked a few while we were gone, but I think these grow really fast.



We had quite a bountiful first harvest- I think it makes this year's garden already better than last! I've still got tons of stuff growing & now I need some good cucumber & squash recipes.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: These guys are 1 week old today!

Garden Update

We've had our garden in the ground a while now & nothing much is happening. :( We've had crazy weather around here this spring- pretty cool and feet of rain. All of a sudden the asparagus have really taken off and grown tall- is that normal? We had some strawberries when I first planted them, but nothing lately! I wonder if the bugs or a certain Vizsla is getting to them?



We do actually have a few beans on this plant- not sure what I'm going to do with them though :)



I'm most disappointed with the tomatoes. Most of them have not grown an inch since I put them in the ground. I've got a few that have finally taken off growing in the last 2 weeks, but most of them are not doing a stinking thing!



And my biggest surprise is the squash! We didn't have any squash seeds make it last year, so I planted 2 rows & wasn't expecting anything this soon!



The cucumbers (the row on the right), are starting to come in pretty good as well.



We've finally got lots of lemons coming in our lemon tree- no telling how long it will take them to reach full size though.



Such pretty flowers on the cucumbers. I'll put our wire cages in for the cucumbers and squash after we have all the mom's over this weekend to celebrate Mother's Day.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: It's Cinco de Mayo, our friend's birthday & we're going to a surprise party for her at the Melting Pot tonight.

Yard Roundup

Last week, I returned home from my travels and discovered the powerful springs storms had generated enough wind to knock my tree over again! After the hurricane, we had 3 stakes keeping it upright, but recently one of the ties had come loose. I frantically called tree services at 4:55 on Friday to see if anybody would come to my rescue.

Luckily, I was able to find a very nice tree guy that came out on Tuesday to bring in the heavy-duty reinforcements. He stood it back up, trimmed a few lower branches, applied some root activator and staked it out for a tornado.

Now, we've got 3 wooden stakes with plastic tie-downs and 3 metal stakes with nylon rope tie-downs. I'm really glad that we were able to save it, but I think we'll have to keep all these stakes in our yard for at least a year for the roots to re-grow and establish themselves.

The tree-man also trimmed up our front trees. The look much better now & hopefully will keep on growing.

Our other tree has a split-trunk with two larger trunks growing up from the ground. He said the tree was still young enough that we should cut one of those down so they tree can grow normally. I don't think I have the heart to cut half of our tree down though. :(

Our handy-man also came by to do some yard work. He planted quite a few grass plots around the yard where we still had big mud area from putting in the sprinkler system. The yard is looking SO much better now & I'm glad we did that instead of just waiting for it to come back normally.

He also hooked up the garden with a soaker hose to go in the boxes and set them up on the timer for the sprinkler system. I'm still out there most afternoons giving my plants some extra water, but I find it very therapeutic.

And my flowers are blooming in the front yard- pretty, eh?

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Happy Easter- spending lots of time with the family today!

Weekend Update

Friday, we went to a fabulous steak & lobster dinner at Flemmings & then went to my (rescheduled) 10 year high school reunion. I was able to visit with 2 of my really good friends from high school that I'd lost touch with in the last 10 years. Hopefully I'll also get to hang out with some of the other gals & I've been inspired to do some more high school flashbacks with all my scanned APS photos.



Saturday, I go to sleep in & then went for an invigorating 9 mile jog and it was 40 degrees out! I thought winter was over, but I think the garden will be fine. Then I ran out to the outlet mall before the crowds to get some sunglasses to replace the ones I lost in Cozumel. We also needed a new vacuum cleaner & some more pillows.



When I returned home from shopping, H was eager to get outside and enjoy the awesome weather. I'd been wanting to go walking down on the Buffalo Bayou Trail & take some photos. I'll have lots of pictures coming up of our adventure along the bayou.



We actually wandered down to the skate park & couldn't help but enjoy all the kids playing and skateboarding. I've got some hysterical photos from there too.

Saturday night, we grilled up some pineapple salmon and had some broccoli with feta for a perfect meal.



Sunday, I was able to get some chores done after church & swim a few laps in the pool before we headed over to H's mom's house for an early dinner. They had cooked up enough food for an army!! After that delicious meal, we had to head down to the duplex and finish paving the porch area that we'd started almost 2 years ago! It looked like this before...



...and 2 dozen more pavers later, it looked like this!



I also saw some adorable strawberry plants at Home Depot that I just had to have for the garden. It will give me something to tend to until the rest of the plants really start growing.



They already had a few little baby berries on there! (Excuse the flash- it was dark when I was done planting them). Now the planter box is full- I've lost a few little plants that didn't survive the transition, but we should get plenty of sun this week to get the rest of them growing.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Going to be a great week- lots of good stuff going on!

Epcot Rides

After the fireworks show, we snuck back over to Futureland to ride Soarin' (which is like an IMAX ride on steroids with full effects) and then did a few rides in The Land Pavilion. My favorite thing was the boat ride on Living with the Land and then a special tour of their future gardening.

Sorry about the blurry and dark photos- we were moving fast & it was night time! They have some of the coolest methods to grow plants & all sorts of futuristic gardening ideas.



Hanging pumpkins? Think H will build me something like this in the backyard?



They had lots of hydroponically growing plants & all sorts of contraptions that I'd LOVE to learn more about.


We were also able to hop right on the The Sea with Nemo & Friends ride without any wait.



I was conditioned to think that this is what underwater looks like, so I will have to carry a nice black light with me on my next SCUBA dive ;)


Last ride of the day was on the Spaceship Earth ride on our way out. It was a neat, quick journey back through time explaining how our communications have changed & evolved over the years. I could have used a few more hours at Epcot to check out the Test Track & watch a few movies at the World Showcase, but we managed to squeeze in a ton of stuff on our short visit.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: My own garden is doing great- I've got an asparagus sprig, new leaves on the squash & cucumbers and some limes very slowly getting bigger.

Gardening, Year 2

Last weekend, I set out to get our seeds going for our second year of gardening. Although I'd planted some fruit trees in January, I wanted to get our seeds started indoors. Hopefully this picture will help me remember where I planted everything. This year, we've got 3 types of tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers and cucumbers. No watermelon or cantaloupe this year, but we're going to try beans, okra and squash instead.

I also bought a package of asparagus roots. Who knew that's how you grow them!?!?! I stuck them in the ground outside next to my berry plants. H read on the Internet it will take 3 seasons for these to grow, so we shall see....

The herb garden is coming along, albeit it's a bit of a mess. We haven't been home enough to cook lately or use much of anything. I'm contemplating moving these to a planter box and setting them outside.

The berry bushes I planted haven't died yet. This one is showing some signs of budding.


This one is doing well and has some leaves. However, the lemon and lime trees are about the same. The limes really aren't growing much & still nothing on the lemon tree.

I like looking at all the different seeds I plant. The real small ones are mostly the tomatoes, the big white ones are the beans. So many different sizes, colors, textures and shapes.

UPDATE: The seeds have already sprouted! I noticed them this morning and a few of them are already 2"-4" tall!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Trying to get one more thing on our 101 List, we're headed out to the Rodeo Parade this morning.

Fruit Sticks

These are a few weeks old, but still worth sharing. I was in Sams in January and saw this adorable box of sticks fruit trees. If it could surive in a box at Sams for a few months, I thought I might have a chance To grow it not kill it. Raspberries and strawberries and blueberries and grapes sound much more fun than cucumber and jalepenos.

We had a few good days of very cold (for Texas) weather and I think the freeze killed the last remaining jalepeno plants. It was a good time to pull them out and I saw no reason (besides the rest of January and February) that I couldn't go ahead and plant my berry trees.

These guys went into the ground on January 25th and I (guess) they are still alive. It was difficult to really tell, and I was confused about taking the outer wrapping paper off of the roots. I reasoned that it would disentigrate soon enough, and I hoped some new mulch/soil would help these guys out. If I kill them, I'm only out $20.

We also put our lemon and lime trees in the ground in mid-January. You can see them through the windows in H's office & the guest bedroom, so I'm excited that they are beautifying the yard just a bit.

The lime tree came with quite a few buds that were already starting to grow. They are growing slowly right now, in the dead of winter, but I hope we get some limes to make mojitos this summer!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We've had an awesome vacay & the waters around Cozumel are amaizng.

Gardening Again

Up until last weekend, we still had a few scraggly tomato plants yeilding some pretty pitiful tomatoes and some pepper plants growing. Since we were cleaning up the yard and hopefully getting ready for the spring, I decided it was time for them to go.

Although those are plants on the right side of the box, the left side was producing some lovely weeds! I wanted to get those all out of there & start fertilizing the soil for spring.

I cleaned out everything but two jalepeno plants that were still producing some small peppers. H & I discussed plans for next year & will be doubling our garden size to include 2 more boxes that are half the size of our first box. We're thinking we might get around to this in late February & hopefully get seeds in the ground in early March.

One of H's Christmas presents was a this Aerogarden to grow some herbs and spices sicnce we didn't have much luck with them last growing season. Although you can grow flowers, tomatos and salad greens, I thought we'd be more likely to use the basil, oregano, parsely, mint & chives.
We filled up the base with water, threw in some food tablets and let these seeds sunbake for 16 hours a day since Saturday the 3rd.

By Tuesday, we could already see one of the seed pods starting to pop out and by Wednesday there were already 4 of the 6 showing teeny, tiny leaves.

Now I just need some good recipes to use all the fresh herbs. They have been growing great for 2 weeks now & 5 of the 6 have their plastic domes removed (that's why the photos are so fuzzy).

I've got mojito plans for our mint plant with our new glassware set.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: If we're not too wiped out, we'll wander around DC today and see some of the sites.