I haven’t been posting much lately. I don’t have any real reason why not. I haven’t been overly busy but I just haven’t felt much like writing at all.
It’s been a pretty standard summer. Garden did okay – bad pumpkin crop, but at least I got some. We tried to camp again and did get one good night but it started raining the next morning and we went home. Damn those hurricanes. Even in Maine they won’t leave us alone.
This is what happens when you’re impatient.
I read several ways to tell if a watermelon is ripe. One said that if there’s a yellow spot underneath, it may be ready. This one had a yellow spot so I cut it open.
It was on it’s way, but nowhere near ready. Tasted like a raw potato. 
They were planted there years before we moved here so I have no idea what they are. I really like them and think they would look good on the north side of our house where we get a lot of sun but there is nothing there but a blah blank wall.
So, all of you garden gurus, do you know what these are? Please leave a comment if you do, thanks! If you need a closer look, click on the picture. It will take you to the gallery where you can blow it up to a very big size.
In the middle strip of my garden this year, I started getting a new weed that I had never seen before. At first, I let them grow, thinking they might be the carrot seeds I planted weeks before. I finally pulled one when the plant got about a foot tall. Definitely not a carrot.
I’ve been pulling a lot of them, probably about 30 so far. I found out today what they are.
They’re freakin’ tomato plants! I’ve been pulling perfectly good tomato plants because I didn’t recognize something I spent several hours pouring over at the plant store earlier this Spring. I just happened to be reading a gardening blog and he posted a picture of his tomato seedling and it suddenly clicked.
I know how they got there, too. Last year, my tomatoes became infested with moles who ate a lot of my tomatoes. I didn’t throw them out – I just mixed them in the dirt as compost. Since I’m still pretty new to all this gardening stuff, I didn’t stop to think that all those seeds were going to do something.
I’ll probably still pull any seedlings because it’s too late for them to really do anything before it gets cold but my goodness, I feel rather stupid and very unobservant.
This summer has been pretty good, weather-wise. We haven’t had any really hot days, and only a few sticky days. This past week we had quite a bit of rain which made my garden explode. I once again did not plan the pumpkins very well and they have already overtaken the cucumbers and are halfway through the strawberries. I just hope they don’t make it to the watermelons because the melons are doing so much better this year.
On with the pictures.
After the rain last week, we had some beautiful puffy clouds roll through.
One of my favorite new plants is my Astilbe. It flowered in the past few weeks and butterflies love it.
That’s all for tonight, kiddies. My computer is moving way too slow and it’s time for bed. Hope you enjoyed the pics!
Things in the vegetable garden haven’t been going well. The tomato plants seem to be doing okay – the flowers have started blooming so that’s a good sign – and the pumpkins are doing well, but not much else is.
The lettuce and squash never even sprouted. I think I have three pea plants, but they stopped growing at about 1 inch. I have three watermelon sprouts, but they’re still tiny. The strawberries are growing and getting ripe, but they’re really small.
The things that are growing the best are the vegetables I planted for someone else – radishes. They were the first thing to sprout and I’ll be picking them this weekend. They did great! I’m not a huge fan of radishes, but I ate one the other day and they are so much tastier straight from the ground. I’m not surprised by that – I was just surprised that it made me want to eat the whole thing.
The flowers are doing much better than the vegetables this year. The plant I’ve really been wanting to flower finally did this week and wow, is it beautiful. The yellow roses opened up and they’re huge and have a pink fringe around each petal. Here, check it out.
Edited Saturday, June 23rd because I called my radishes both turnips and radishes in the same sentence.
Spring is here – but it’s been a rather wet and cold one. I’ve gotten the gardens widened and plowed, etc. but I still haven’t been able to plant anything. I wanted to get it done a couple of weeks earlier than I did last year but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’m just hoping that it’s sunny over the Memorial Day weekend so I can get caught up.
The two Hosta plants and Iris have done great this year. I looked back at a picture of the first year those Hosta came up and the ones this year are already twice as big. The Iris really needs to be split - it’s huge as well – but I don’t really know how to do that. Until I do, I’m just going to let it get big. Maybe next year I’ll two or three of them.
The vegetable garden has also been extended. Maybe this year I can keep those pumpkins from taking over the entire patch. I’m planning on planting more items so I’ll just have to keep them under control.
Here’s to hoping that this year’s harvest is better, faster and healthier than it was last year.
As you can tell by the header, I’ve harvested the pumpkins. I left three in the patch because they were still very small and green, but I cut all the rest, which totaled out to 11. I think that’s pretty good for my first year.
I was going to wait to cut them, but we’ve had a few frost warnings and I didn’t want to risk losing them. This means that I’ll have to be lugging them outside on sunny days to get them to finish turning orange, but I would rather do that than risk losing them completely.
In general, my first garden was pretty successful. Not everything grew like I wanted it to: We had lettuce for a week – then the pumpkin plants staged their coup and overpowered them. The cucumbers did great, but the tomatoes, while growing well were a bit of a disapointment because all those damn mice ate them.
I learned a lot, though. Next year, I’m definitely staking the tomatoes. I’m also going to have a separate area for the pumpkins and I’m going to train them to go where I want them to instead of letting them take over so aggresively. And maybe I can get the carrots to sprout.
If anyone has been visiting this blog, you may have noticed that the header seems to change every once in a while. It’s always those same two pumpkins, but they seem to look a little different.
I’ve been taking pictures of the progress of my pumpkins and those two are my favorites. (Shh, don’t tell the others 
). They’re turning orange the fastest and I find it a little fascinating to watch them change so quickly.
Here are a few pictures of their progress so you can get a better idea of how much they’ve changed in just the past 30 days.
August 10th:
August 23rd:
August 27th:
Nifty huh?
In other gardening news, I actually had some Gladiolus bloomed. Earlier this summer, my sister-in-law gave me a box of 75 glad bulbs for my birthday. I planted every one of them. Problem was, the wildflowers bloomed first and crowded the glads so badly that the only thing they did was grow the long, green leaves. I never saw any flower buds.
Until last week. Three on the end did bloom. What I find very interesting and quite bittersweet is that the ones that bloomed were the ones I bought last year and re-planted this year. The only glads that bloomed were the ones I bought in memory of my grandmother. Not all of them bloomed, because I bought pink ones last year as well and the only ones that bloomed this year are orange. Of course, I prefer orange over pink so there’s something else to think about. 
And to close out this post of pictures, something happened yesterday that would never have happened if we were living in Florida. I was sitting in my office when I thought I saw two large dogs running in our back field. I looked closer to see if I knew the dogs when I realized they were a doe and her fawn. The fawn was still small but old enough to have lost it’s spots. They stood near the camp road for a bit, then continued on into the woods. I’ve seen a deer before, but never a fawn.
Sorry for the fuzziness. I was taking the pictures through a screened window.
Well, that’s all for today. Hoped you enjoyed the pictures!
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