T Stands for Tuesday Long and Heavy with Garden Photos

Hi Everyone,  (I am posting a little early this week)
  Another T Stands for Tuesday is upon us. I really enjoy this event and seeing what everyone is creating or doing.
   You are most welcome to join us, just show a photo of your drink-water, coffee, tea, soda or what ever. The link to our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth is in my right hand column.

   Wow we had such a very cold April as I know many of you did also, and then we had a week of nice weather and then the humidity and pollen levels got high and now we are in the 90's f  Too hot for me especially since my garden wasn't even in yet.-just no time or too cold before.

   The last few days though I have been up early-taking care of the birds (the orioles have now left, but lots of hummingbirds now), ducks and geese and then working in my gardens. I am not a hot sun kinda gal and I will never get used to how much closer we are to the sun here then when I was living in the northern mid western states. So when the sun is out with no clouds and we are headed to the 90's then I can't be out in the sun after 11 am or so. I do totally cover up, wear a hat, and use sun screen on my face.
     My husband just discovered some fishing pants and clothes by Columbia that is 50 pdf and wicks away the moisture to keep us cool. So I bought us both shirts (and him pants). I think this will work out good for us (me in the garden and him fishing on the water).

    I have been working on clearing and setting up a flower garden for pollinators-bees, hummingbirds, butterflies. A few years ago I discovered that the butterflies love zinnias-and they are so easy to plant-just grab a variety of colors and shapes of the zinnias in seed packs and then just scatter them. After the first season I then collect the dried flower heads into a big box and then scatter those for seeds. Just buying a couple more different packets each year.
   I have an area I have been working on to rid the weeds and build up the soil-we have very very very little top soil here-nothing at all like what I am used to. In fact I call this soil Missouri concrete yes it is that bad.

  I also planted some echinacea bulbs that are finally starting to grow, and I started from seed a few varieties of milkweed for the monarchs. Also the butterflies love petunias.

I am keeping the photos small since there is so many-just click to fully enlarge.

This whole area will be full of zinnias. The arch has wisteria which will bloom this year. To the right by the rod iron headboard I planted the echinacea and some other flowering perenneals Also to the left a little bit form this arch and in the back is another arch for trumpet vines-the hummingbirds love these.

This spot is just behind the arch to the right. I had found a perenneal sunflower that grows 10 to 12 feet last year-but the deer Love Love sunflowers so it never got a chance to grow. So I built a little fence around it-using cut offs from the stair project for the apartment above the shop. That tall old wooden ladder used to go to a tree stand (for hunting) it was falling apart so I salvaged it to use here.

Another view-that road goes to the shop and the apartment and behind is one of the ponds.

 This view is the back that then runs along the back of my little veggie garden. You can see more of those wooden pieces that I hammered in. I am going to wind some old rope around hopefully to deter the deer and other critters. (the deer could easily jump over but am hoping they won't)  This soil is sooo hard that I had a hard time with my hammer getting these in-but I persevered. 

     Those very green plants is tansy I grew them from seed about 4 years ago not knowing how much they spread. I gather the flower heads; dry and then use to keep moths away in my wool They are also a yellow dye.

This is that same area in back closer view, I laid out straw in front to keep the wild weeds down.

I added an old hand plow-which I actually used for awhile- to the side of where those sunflowers are

  Peeking through the veggie garden. That wicker plant stand is very old. I have had it forever and a couple years ago I just put it outdoors and planted flowers. The butterflies love these petunias-I see one every day.

I planted these clematis up near the house at both ends of the fence when we first moved here-spring 2004. They are so pretty-but these only bloom one time in the spring.

  The plants were sooo expensive this year that I only bought a couple geraniums for this pot along with petunias. I bought a couple herbs but no veggies this year. so hoping my tomatoes from seed will grow ok in this heat already

This is back to the side of the veggie garden-spearmint that has escaped into the garden.

When our Wisconsin friends were here, I asked the guys to lift off this very heavy grate, and stack up another layer of those concrete blocks. This was all too heavy for me to do now. This will work much better now for grilling and cooking-can't wait to try it out

                         


My lemon balm is taking over this area-I love it though. a great healing plant, and makes wonderful tea

 Up near the house where the plastic bottle greenhouses are and the two raised beds-I let the wild violets grow and also this plantain since they are both healing herbs

Today I did get planted my cucumbers, green beans and yellow wax beans, a hill of zucchini, and I planted several veggies that I grew from seed-hoping this hot day won't wilt them too much.

On another note: my husband says have you read your Mary Jane Farm magazine yet? I said no not yet. Well check this out you are in print.  and I was:

So this was fun  This is really a great book about cast iron baking and cooking and I would recommend it. I love all my Mary Jane Books.

Soooo I am getting further behind with my fabric journal since I am trying to get the gardens set up before it's too late. I am taking notes though in the calendar to help me remember things that I want to include.

   I also want to thank everyone for your very kind words about my latest handmade papers-I am so very happy with them that I will want to do that again.  I also want to thank those of you that let me know you enjoy reading my cast iron fridays recipes and tips.

   For my drink today I actually took a couple different photos this past week. I found a new wine I really love, but I am sharing my hard root beer.  I had found a 6 pack of hard root beer made the traditional way that I thought our Wisconsin friends might like. Instead Hubs and his friend Mr L tried it and said it was so delicious and had the best root beer flavor ever. This is loaded with sugar, and was not gluten free either since it was ale based.  I checked online and could not find a gluten free version so decided to make my own.

    A can of Mugs diet free caffeine free, gluten free (it does not say gluten free but did not see anything in the ingredients list) root beer. a small shot of my Tito's gluten free vodka, and lots of ice.-Very good. I think I will look for a root beer flavoring to enhance the root beer taste, but I liked it

   

Happy T Stands for Tuesday everyone.

Thank you for dropping by.  

and if you didn't see it, since I posted this one pretty early this week-I posted a video of our hummingbirds here  I think these are still our favorite little birds-they arrive mid April and leave mid September. A few years back before there was a big hurricane on their migrating path-we had over triple the birds you will see in the video. it was truely amazing

    Also, since so many of you in this group are no reply bloggers and I have seen a few of you that do comment back under your comments-I am going to start doing that now or answer questions back on your blog.  

    I just feel bad I can not reply back to most of you-I am not used to this as in the past we all shared our email so we could converse up and back better. But I understand many of you do not want to be set up this way. 

    I personally would only get spam on my page if I did not approve comments-so I keep that feature in place to avoid spammers-which I had been getting too many of for awhile.

   So anyways, this is what I am going to do now.  I know also that most of you may not have the time to come back and see my reply-but just know it will be there.