I Have No Excuse

I've just been lazy. :-) So much has happened that it is completely shameful I haven't been blogging religiously.

Firstly, the garden is just growing like crazy. I truly can't believe how much FOOD we have right outside our house. :-)
The hanging tomato plants actually have little tomatoes forming. So far, there are three little Romas hanging. The non-hanging tomato plants are getting very, very bushy and have TONS of little yellow flowers on them. It's only a matter of time!!! :-D









All of the cucumber seeds took, so we've currently got 6 little cucumber seedlings going. Ironically, I'm not a big fan of cucumbers...but I LOVE me some pickles, so I only planted pickling varieties. Hope you like pickles - if you know me enough to read this, you know me enough to get some homemade pickles in a few months! Six plant is going to make a LOT of cucumbers!
All in all, I planted 9 yellow wax bean bushes and 18 green bean bushes. All of the wax beans came up and almost all the green beans have sprouted as well. I am a massive fan of grean beans, so this is totally fine by me! Not to mention that they can also be canned and eaten a later date. YAY!
I cannot begin to tell you how beautiful I think my cabbages are. I took this photo with a macro lens to try to capture the texture of their leaves...
Also growing like weeks are my strawberries. I have them in the ground, in a strawberry pot and in the hanging strawberry bag. So far, everyone's doing quite well. The strawberry pot might be outgrowing the others, but as it's an early-season variety, that might not be because the vessel is superior.












And last (photo-wise anyway), but certainly not least, the three little corn plants are finally showing. We planted a variety that has both yellow and white kernels on the cobs. Where Hubby grew up in Pennsylvania, there are corn fields EVERYWHERE! I think he's a little excited about growing some corn down here in Texas.
In other garden news, we have our first bloom on the jalapeno plant. :-) We've had several salads from the flowerbed lettuces (just grabbing a few outer leaves from each plant so that hopefully we can continue the harvest). I also noticed the other day that deep in the broccoli leaves, the flower is forming. :-) I really wish I'd planted more broccoli, but I guess I can drop another on in the ground when this one matures.

Hubby and I spent this past weekend cleaning up all the flowerbeds around our house. All weeds were pulled, new top soil laid down and, in the "curb appeal" beds up front anyway, new seedlings planted. After killing myself creating that big bed up front last year, I'm a little surprised that it isn't more dear to me this year. I put some new annuals in and I think it looks really nice, but my heart's not up front this year. I'm way too excited about the vegetable garden in the back to care about the flowers up front.

You might remember that a while back, Hubby created a compost bin for me using chicken wire. Alas, that didn't work too well. All the dogs and the rat that lives somewhere back there found that thing to be a veritable buffet. Every time I went outside, I had to pick it up off the ground where they'd knocked it and shovel everything back in. We even tried staking it in place. Unfortunately, 80 pounds of Golden Retriever can still knock over a staked chicken-wire compost bin. Fortunately, our curb-side trash can has just been on the verge of death for at least a year. The lid blew off two years ago, so we can't cover our trash, and since the can had no wheels, it got drug to the curb a lot and had developed several large holes in the bottom. So, Hubby and I went to Home Depot and bought a fancy shmancy new trash can with wheels for our trash. Hubby took a drill to the old can, adding aeration holes and we moved it behind the plantain trees to act as my new compost bin. So far, so good. Maybe Abbey's been trained well enough that trash cans are off limits and she'll leave it alone.

I have at least two other blog entries that I really need to get in gear and post, but this one is pretty lengthy, and it's getting kind of late. Stay tuned for news on our other adventures in a few days. I PROMISE not to get all slackery on you again. :-D