See How Our Gardens Grow!
When you were sitting in Miss Davie's class (or Miss Hammond's, or Mrs. Vines' or Coach Wright's) did you ever think that one of your greatest joys in life would be digging in the dirt, getting the dark brown stuff beneath your fingernails. I'll bet that, if we took a poll, most of us enjoy gardening. The rewards of starting with practically nothing (Some even start plants from seed!) and seeing these flowers and vegetables grow are immense. Despite the disappointment I receive year after year watching my tomato plants produce big juicy tomatoes that are enjoyed by the birds, the raccoon or the squirrels the day before I wanted to pick the ripening fruit, I still plant one or two and nurture it through the process of growing to maturity.
I've been blessed with some photos from Linda Methvin Smith demonstrating the success of her efforts in her backyard gardens this year, and that got me to thinking that you might like to share some of your garden photos, too. Here's the place to post them. Send your photos as .jpg file attachments to an e-mail to lebuettner@comcast.net.
April 2007: The hibiscus are going in.
Those
tiny little plants that you put out in April teach you a lot about faith,
hope and trust.
Now, it's June, and the peppers are getting big and putting on fruit:
I have planted, dug up, re-planted, considering a cactus farm ( it worked for Luther Burbank....Hoots !)
Linda
Ol' Jim Kimbrell Had A Farm. EEEiiiii, EEEiiiiii, Ohhhhhhhhhh!
And on his farm he had just about everything!
If my eyes do not deceive me, Jim's got enough tomato plants to supply the entire class all summer!
These luscious tomatoes just might yield enough slices to satisfy my taste for "mayonnaise 'n mater" sandwiches for a summer lunch.
Didn't see the cucumber vines but here's the evidence they existed.
A good cook's prerogative is to check out the merchandise.
And on his farm, he also grew flowers. Note the blatant nautical ornamentation that the gruff but kindly old swabbie decorated his Charleston front yard flower garden. Linda tells me that Jim constructed that lighthouse and that the beacon light revolves just like a real lighthouse.
Louis' Backyard: Think pot garden, propagation and high maintenance!
We didn't have a professional landscaper do the backyard when we moved into our "retirement home," so I would have something to do in my retirement--you know, all that idle time. So I've been digging and planting for 5-6 years now--almost as much hardscaping as landscaping. I started out with one bird feeding station (a Christmas gift) and the squirrels taught me that I had to use a squirrel guard and put it in the middle of the yard, well away from trees. Then the ground-feeding birds taught me that I needed to build them a patio because their constant pecking for seed turned the middle of the backyard into a mud flat.
Looks better in the spring, doesn't it? More feeders, flower planter pots and a green backdrop. Those dang squirrels have killed most of the flowers in that right rear pot, using it as a foraging and jump-off station to that nearby pole.
I got into pot gardening because the deer were eating all my tender vittles planted in beds in the yard below the deck. I thought surely they wouldn't climb up those steps to the back porch/deck. The sunflowers were volunteers that sprang up from spilled birdseed.
I'm an inveterate propagator! Or, at least I try to get by without paying for plants. The 3 corkscrew willows started off life with me as sticks from my sister-in-law's Easter centerpiece. The Aspidistra base plantings were two failing-to-thrive plants dug up from elsewhere in the yard, divided into five and relocated here.
I keep getting encouragement from my brother-in-law who is our major source of home-grown stuff to plant tomatoes. I had a pretty good yield last year from the deck planters. No deer thievery, but this year we have coon and bird thievery.
This is my experiment in doing tomatoes the way my brother-in-law told me to do it. This Better Boy is down on the ground level in a place that gets noon to sundown sunllight, sitting in a deep hole with a PVC feeding tube down to the roots for watering and fertilizing. Y'all pray that the deer don't find it.
My herb garden is my pride and joy. It has yielded more produce for the kitchen than all the tomatoes combined.
This is my "Plant Hospital," the birthing and resuscitation center of my operations. I can't prune a bush or throw away a broken flower stem without trying to root the cuttings and use the new plant somewhere in my gardens. Those red doors are antique English garden doors on my potting shed.
We enjoy our backyard view from the breakfast nook.