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gardenmama's Blog
The day after the big rains....
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:34 pm Well what can I say about Sunday...I woke up and it was raining and it rained and rained and rained. How hard did it rain? Well lets see...hard, harder and then OMG! It was a wet day. We got over 3 inches total rain in just over 12 hours or so. 
We didn't make it out to check the garden and berries at all on Sunday because of all the rain so after work today we walked to the garden and berry patch. In the garden we picked about 10 peas, 3 cherry tomatoes and a nice striped zucchini. I picked a few blueberries and then we moved to the raspberries. We picked nearly 2 QUARTS! 
the garden is doing well. I didn't find any more bottom rot on the larger tomatoes. I have started to put egg shells in the tires with the plants. I guess we will have to start eating a lot more eggs! I am not a big egg eater but I think a 12 egg batch of egg salad is due! Here are a few pics of what a day of rain can do for a garden. Pumpkin vines moving into the tomato area: 
Tomato plants: 
This cuke is 2X as large as it was the other day" 
Lots and Lots of sunflowers! I love sunflowers! 
Here is a picture of our lovely little harvest today. All the raspberries are getting frozen. We eat so many as we pick that we need to freeze these to save for the future. They are so good on yogurt and granola. 
I hope everyone had a great weekend and that this week brings them many surprises in their gardens. This blog entry has been viewed 364 times
A new trolley
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:23 pm My husband spent the rainiest day that we can remember hidden away in his workshop with Logan. He made this for his little boy. a new trolley. i think it is fabulous! 
This blog entry has been viewed 344 times
Flatbed and truck to load the bulldozer
Category: My husbands wooden creations. | Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 1:57 pm My honey has been busy in the woodshop the past few days. On Friday he started to make a flatbed trailer and truck to tow around the bulldozer that he had last weekend. 
This blog entry has been viewed 505 times
Between the rain drops...
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 1:55 pm We had such a beautiful week here in Vermont. Monday through Thursday were gorgeous days. the sun shown bright and it was in the low 80's. I have started doing a little bit of summer bus driving. My daily trip is to pick up about 20 people at a nearby Elementary summer program and bring them to a local lake for swim lessons. So Logan and i get to eat our lunch at the beach and get about an hour of swim. It is nice. Logan gets to exercise and make new friends. He is really enjoying it. On Friday the weather started to turn for the unpredictable. After lunch my honey michael, Logan and I went out to get some chores done. Michael headed to his woodshop shed and I headed for the garden. As soon as I started to pull the weeds in the melons you could hear the low rumble of thunder far off. I HATE thunder but knew I had to get the weeds out and the tomato plants needed a hair cut and more ties. So i stuck it out and moved through all the plants. I can't believe how much the plants grew since last weekend. I took a massive pile of leaves off that plants. I did however find several toms that I had to pull off and throw aside. They have bottom rot. I guess all the wet, hot weather has it benefits and its downfalls. But over all most of the toms are growing just fine. Here are a few pictures of what was happening in the garden on Friday. I was able to weed out the melons and lay there vines in better directions. This picture was taken before I got to move the vines a bit. 
Cherry tomatoes growing and turning: 
While working through all the tomato plants the thunder got closer and closer. The sky turned a bit dark and the storms got closer. I got all the tom plants done and managed to weed out the peppers as well. I have 11 SWEET BELLS growing! I also found 6 tiny cukes out there hiding under the leaves. I planted some of the cuke plants amongst the tomato tires. There are cukes in there! I can't wait to have some fresh cukes and peppers! YIPPEE! My husband was wondering about and found 1 lonely poppy in the perennial garden. He doesn't really remember where he spread all the poppy seeds. But one made it here. 
While in the perennials I took this picture of a clematis. 
This is the 3rd ripening tomato. I have since picked it and brought it inside. I haven't eaten it ...YET! 
At about 5pm the rain started and it came down HARD. I got a phone call from my mom shortly after that. They got hit hard by a severe storm. She lives about 50 minutes south from us. She said it rained so hard you couldn't see out of the windows. She had left the back bedroom window open, and it sits above a bed and by the time she got in to close it everything was soaked. She got hail the size of marbles! When the rain stopped she went out and took pictures of the hail. She lost power for 5 hours. tree branches were down and a tree across the road from her was totally uprooted. 
I got some pictures of the rain coming down. We didn't get the heavy winds here and there wasn't any damage. WE just got hard rain off and on all night. 
The rain pours out the gutter... 
and lands on the granite water way my hubby built in the rock garden. The water then goes down the driveway. 
After the heavy rain let up a bit I went out to look for rainbows. Here is a picture of a faint one i saw over the house down the street. You can see it just over the silver roof. 
The weather the rest of the weekend has been very hot and humid. On Saturday I spent most of the day indoors getting inside stuff done. The humidity really wipes me out and I chose to stay in. It rained on and off. Logan spent the day in the workshop with Michael making another wooden toy. I will be posting that in the other blog with his wooden creation. We woke up today to light rain so it is laundry day. I also have a lot of cleaning up to do. We are having Logan's 5th bday party next weekend and my aunt from Ct is coming up as well as my mom and my brother's family of 5. It is a sleep over party. We are heading to the local lake for a lunch time cookout and swimming. Afterwards we are all coming back here for pizza and pasta, cakes etc. We will be pitching tents in the yard and sleeping out. And of course there will be S'mores after dusk. I hope everyone is having a good weekend , where ever you are in the world. This blog entry has been viewed 370 times
Its been a blooming and booming summer...
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:52 pm I have to say that this is the best garden that I have ever done. It is growing so nice and everything is so healthy. Walking through it tonight I am amazed at the progress of all the plants. Last year I didn't get a single sweet bell pepper on 12 plants and tonight I found 4 baby bells on 1! I am shocked. Until today I thought the only tomato plants that had toms on them were the few plants that I bought, but I have ROMA's on a plant that I started from seed. Every single one of the 35 plants that I started have flowers on them and are so healthy. I can't put it in words on how happy this makes me. After watering the garden, and feeding my new tire compost pit we picked nearly a QUART of raspberries! I am freezing these for enjoyment in the winter months. We will probably get another quart tomorrow. 
By the weekend I will be picking another tomato..one at a time off that one plant right now...soon be canning and freezing all the time! Hopefully by next weekend I will be picking a bunch of cherry toms that are starting to turn. Just in time for my son's 5th bday party. 
Lots of blooms in the yard today..the second sunflower has the large top bloom on it, I can't wait until it has blooms all up and down the pain stalk. This will be gorgeous! 
This is some fabulous bee balm that grows wild near my raspberries. this is more red then the darker pink that i planted. 
This blog entry has been viewed 384 times
A nice little harvest...
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:53 pm After I brought Logan to his summer school program this morning I took a walk through the garden. I think the Epsom salt treatment on the garden is already showing improvement. Everything is getting greener and looking much healthier. I picked a few peas and took off some of the leaves on overly bushy tomato plants. The watermelon and cantaloupe plants seem to be a lot larger then they were on Saturday. I found a few baby cucumbers as well. There are 3 and that is all the cucumbers that I got all of last summer! there a a lot more flowers on the vine and still at least 2 months of growing to do! YEAH! These plants I started inside, even the ones that I didn't start early are doing well. They must really thrive in the hot and humid weather. 
My sunflowers are blooming...well one of the accidental ones in the asparagus patch is blooming... 1st day 
2nd Day 
the zucchini is doing well and has flowers on the plant in the tire and the plant in the ground has a baby. 
Here are a few new flower blooms in my perennial beds. 
Here is a picture of todays little harvest. There was about a pint of raspberries, a few peas and a tomato! 
This blog entry has been viewed 393 times
The new wooden toy of the day....
Category: My husbands wooden creations. | Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:52 pm My hubby has been working on this bulldozer for a few days. This is one of the more complicated toys he has built. 
I think this wooden toy is fantastic! This blog entry has been viewed 388 times
I had to eat the second one....
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:27 pm One the way home from morning errands I stopped at the Rustic Hut. Our local plant pantry and farm stand. They had so many nice fresh veggies. I picked up some nice cukes. When I pulled into the yard i saw the tomato on the vine and it was calling to me...Eat me... Eat me... so I did...a nice cuke, tom and pea salad. Quite refreshing. 
This blog entry has been viewed 354 times
Wooden toys
Category: My husbands wooden creations. | Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:49 pm My husband is very modest and doesn't think that his wooden toys are anything special. After he moved here from England, we got married and our son was born; Michael began working at a Copeland Furniture Co. in Bradford, VT. Before he began working for the furniture company he had never worked with wood before. Since he started working for Copeland he has made many things for me and the house. Spice racks, plate racks, bookcases, little tables for kids, a headboard...the list goes on and on. Recently he has really gotten into making wooden toys. I love classic wooden toys. Here are pictures of his latest wooden toys. 
I asked my honey to make me a can crusher to make crushing my recyclables easier.... 
This blog entry has been viewed 1701 times
Lots of heat and hard work today....
Category: Michele's Garden | Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 8:52 pm We were all up early and out in the yard before 8am. It has been 2 weeks since the weather has been decent enough to mow and weed hack. Last weekend we were away, so 2 weeks of growth awaited us in the garden and yard. The grass was deep but we managed to get it all mowed down and my husband used the weed waker and got around all the perennial beds, the veggie patch , fence line and everything in between. We worked for over 4 hours on getting this major project done. During this time I was also able to get down on my hands and knees and get really filthy. The flower beds all needed major weeding and the asparagus in the garden patch had become inundated with weeds. I pulled all the weeds in the asparagus and around the melons and peppers and spread poultry manure all over the place. THAT STUFF STINKS! but i am told is works really great. It appears that out of the 8 crowns of asparagus that I planted last summer only 4 have come back and made stalks. I will see how things progress next year and then decide to replant to try again. Here is a picture of the sunflowers that are growing in the asparagus patch. before this pic was taken there was nothing but weeds under the sunflowers and they were about 3 feet tall! 
Here are the flower beds on the driveway side of the house. 
I think this is coneflower. 
The potatoes are growing wonderfully, 2 weeks ago we put tire layer #2 on and today we put tire layer #3. 
Last weekend I got another tomato plant at our family reunion. This one my gram cork started. It is a cherry. It got a new home in a double stack of tires. It replaced a plant that got broken in some bad rain we had the other day. 
I put Epsom salt around the peppers and tomatoes today. the peppers are doing so well I can't image they will do better, but I have been told they will. Here is picture of one of my sweet bells. 
My husband built me this arbor last summer. Originally i had transplanted some grape vines from my grandpa's grape arbor in CT but they didn't take. So I decided to plant morning glories after seeing them up a flag pole this fall. They are starting to climb and by the end of summer into fall they should cover the whole arbor. 
After lunch I decided it was time to build my new compost bin. The owner of the garage in town brought me up some tires the other night and 4 of them are perfect! They are racing tires and are very deep. So I put some plastic on the bottom, piles up the tires and cut some more plastic for the top to keep animals out and heat in. Hopefully this will work. We put it int he corner of the garden that isn't being used. It will also be easy to move if it needs moving in the future. 
Here are a few different views of the garden from a distance. this is the front view from the arbor. 
side view from the blueberry bushes: 
Logan and I had a treat this morning. Raspberries are ripe. there was about 6 , I had 2 and Logan had 4. Most should be ready in the next few days. Logan also got to eat the first 2 peas out of the garden. 
We ate it! 
Here is Logan next to my tallest sunflower. He is about 40 inches tall to give you prospective. In the second picture he is next 2 one of my lemon boy tomato plants. 
The tomato plant that gave me my first tomato of the season is about to give me 2 more. I am restraining myself and want to keep them on the vine a few more days. It is hot and sunny and they should ripen very nicely. 
Here are just a few blooms that found today. 2nd Clematis blooming: 
Close up of morning glory: 
Bea Balm getting ready to burst open: 
Sunflower getting ready to open: 
I mowed the new lawn for the first time and it looks very good. After lunch we spread some more seed to fill in the naked and thin bits. I think it looks very good for our first attempt at sowing grass seed. 
After lunch and a nice hour inside away from the heat, we went back out and Logan got to put some water in his pool and splash around for a bit. Logan worked very hard this morning using his wheel barrow and wagon to take the weeds out of the yard and into the woods. He is a very hard worker and deserved to splash around a bit. 
We are all exhausted but it is so worth the hard work when you see the final results. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative and we can stay on top of the mowing etc. WE had nearly 3 weeks of rain everyday and that makes for difficult mowing. I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! Last edited: Sat Jul 12, 2008 9:03 pm This blog entry has been viewed 450 times
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