January snow storm

   As I sit her watching the snow pile up outside and contemplate going out to shovel I sit with my computer and seed catalogs planning this summers garden. I can see the little white mounds in the yard and know that underneath the raised beds lay dormant, waiting for the warm weather and sun to bring them alive again. The birds are at the bird feeders braving the wind and snow giving the promise that in a few short months they will also be enjoying the warm sun and the sunflower seeds fresh form the garden.
   I have planned the vegetable garden and have ordered some seeds. I would like to get an early start on the onion seeds and a lot of the flowers. I think I'm going to try and grow the begonia,dusty miller & impatiens that I usually buy at the local garden center. I've got tons of flower seeds that I'm going to start @ the end of Jan. early Feb. I will need them for the flower garden and containers that I put around the house.
 I think, if this works you can click on/ or cut & paste the link to see the veggie placement page that I made.
file:///F:/garden/Page.htm

Very Busy Summer

A friend of mine told me tonight that I really needed to update my blog. Well, I tried to tell her that it has been a very busy summer. We've been doing a lot of things with the family, including the garden and I have not had time to update my blog. She did not take that for an answer so here I am updating my blog. Thanks Janet, I needed the extra push.
August:
The garden got out of control this year, between the heat and the sunny days things just took off and had a mind of  there own. We could have had a little more rain (according to my water bill) but things were just perfect.
Here are some pictures of what things looked like in August.

                                              

As you can see things were growing pretty good. This was the first year we tried trash can potatoes. This was Tam's project. It did pretty good. We got a lot of produce from the garden this year. We canned and froze most of what we did not give away. This year we did a lot of different flowers and experimented with cut flowers. It was fun way to try different kinds of plants. It was really nice to have cut flowers in the house all summer. Wish they would last all winter.

 

September brought the big harvest and the time to think about closing up shop. I started bringing in some of the pumpkins and other squashes and started pulling up the spent plants. We were canning fools. We have run out of place in our freezer (deep) and I don't have anymore shelf space for canned goods. I also have started collecting seeds for next year. All this is now sitting on my porch waiting for me to do something with it. 

     

So today 2 weeks into October I pull up the rest of the lettuce and a brussel sprout that did not sprout and put the beds to bed. I tilled them, put some compost down with about 2-3 inches of mulched leaves and covered them up for the winter. Hoping the covers will buy me some time in the spring and offer me an early start. So this will be the last of my blogs for a few months until I start the seeds again. I think I will actually start some of the flowers in January. Until then hunker down it is going to be an interesting winter. Bye