Breakfast al Fresco

First thing this morning I spent time outside.  I glued on the rest of the pieces to my mosaic.  I enjoyed the birds sitting on the wall. I watered all the potted plants that are not watered by the rain. I have to keep an eye on those because the only way they get watered is if I remember to do it. The jasmine is fragrant. I put my welcome sign with the bunny back on the front door since Easter is just around the corner. I tidied up the front porch. And I trimmed the asparagus fern from around the water faucet. It has little thorns so I don't want to plunge my hand in there to turn on the hose.

I still need to have a major clean-up day back there before I can teach craft classes in my yard, but it was good to eat breakfast out there and read a bit.

Red nasturtiums.

Nasturtiums Are Blooming

The weather can't decide if it wants to be hot or cold.  I let my nasturtiums go to seed and they are blooming like crazy now. I never know what color they will be so it's a nice surprise every time. I'm not sure if I will plant any veggies this year since we went to move out. But the succulents are doing well. My pansies in the front yard are hanging in there too. The rain keeps damaging the ones in the shade.  They aren't as happy as the ones that get more sun.

Originally I planted seeds & each year they come back.

The leaf behind this one is almost more stunning than the flower.

Pansies and Johnny-Jump-Ups

Months ago the automatic watering system in the front yard stopped watering one of the flowerbeds in front of the apartment.  The landlord never fixed it and 2 of the camellias he planted when he bought the place died.  The gardeners eventually dug out the dead ones but left the holes. So I thought maybe they were going to plop in 2 new shrubs any day.  Well, it's been about six months and we recently found out the landlord is putting the place up for sale. No wonder he stopped taking care of the place. So when we went to Lowe's today I picked up some pansies and johnny-jump-ups and planted those in the gaps, and filled the two holes with the soil I had dug up to plant the bedding plants. Problem solved.  And pansies cheer me up.  Now I just hope our lead footed neighbors don't squash them when they throw a ball out of bounds.

Just Like Linnea's

Yesterday I had an epiphany while sitting in Linnea's coffee shop in San Luis Obispo CA.  I realized that subliminally I was trying to make my patio look inviting like Linnea's, where I have spent many happy hours sipping iced tea on warm days and Mexican hot chocolate on cold days.
First off I want to plant a bamboo screen to block my view of the dumpsters and make an obstacle to keep people from throwing things too far, missing the dumpster and landing in my backyard. I want to move a bunch of junk that has piled up from using our backyard as a workshop. I want to restore my altar that my boyfriend has piled junk in front of so I can't even get to it to light candles or anything. He's the biggest obstacle to making the changes I want to make. I'm constantly aiming at beautiful and inviting, while he's aiming at storage and tool usage. I used to dance out there but now there is no room. I think half of the clutter can be thrown away.  Then I have to weed whip all the edges of the garden. And as usual I'm struggling to control all the vines. I sure have my work cut out for me.

Opuntia Cactus

I didn't plant a garden this year because money was too tight.  But my little cactus is hanging in there. Most of my succulents got munched on by snails.  But even they can't handle the spiny ones.

When I was a kid they called these teddy bear cacti, but please don't pet them. 

Brown Eyed Susan Vine

My brown eyed susan vine is finally doing great. I had to hang up new twine to give the tendrils a new patch to grow on. The leaves have some insect or snail damage.  Could be grasshoppers though I haven't seen any on there. So far it's a mystery to me.

Planning My Spring Garden

I'm planning for my spring garden.  This time I'm either going to have a square foot garden or no garden at all. It's a much superior method and the way I've had the most success in the past. And it cuts down on maybe 90% of weeding. I'm building the boxes to be 2' wide x 4' long and I'll put as many on the space as I can while leaving a path to walk between them.

This year I hope to grow a gourmet lettuce mix, purple carrots, orange carrots, pear tomatoes, if I can find a fusarium wilt resistant variety, beets, nasturtiums and radishes. One box (8 squares) will be dedicated to growing herbs.

I also want to plant a pomegranate tree to replace the tree my idiot landlord removed last fall. I'm keeping it in a pot so I can take it with me when I move.

Parsley, Apples and Chives

I just pulled the last of the radishes and beets out of the container. They weren't fit to eat so no love lost there. I replanted the pot with parsley and chives seeds. Then I covered it except for a few vent holes to keep stray cats away from it.

I got some tiny apples from the market and I've saved the seeds to sprout as an experiment. I know apples don't grow true to form, but you never know if you will stumble upon a new apple!  I saw a TV show on it once, how apples used to be bitter and were used for hard cider. But then prohibition happened and bitter apples fell out of popularity so the search was on for a great tasting sweet apple.

I also want to get to the nursery and pick up some daffodil bulbs and iris rhizomes. I think the daffodils will look great in the front flower bed and compliment the yellow roses.

Dear Tree I loved You So Much

Why did the landlord wait until after 8 PM on a Friday night to call and say he will be here w/ gardeners to remove the tree in the backyard? The only tree that we have that shades the house, provides privacy and shields us from the noise the neighbor's kids make all day long? The tree that holds all my hanging plants, windchimes and the birdhouse? The tree that has had numerous hummingbird nests in it.

I think I'm going to be sick. Then he hinted that he'd be more than happy to let his gardeners clear the rest of my backyard.  The gardeners that only did that once before and buzzed the trailing geraniums so close to the ground that they were all dead in 2 weeks.

Oh yeah, now I remember why I hate renting. I love how the landlord didn't even ask us how we feel about the tree. He said neighbors have been complaining.  Evidently they just see a tree as leaves to rake. This is a perfectly healthy tree. It's only crime is that the people that sit under it's shade think it's a nuisance. It was one of the very few redeeming qualities of living in this location.

Labor Day and I'm Weeding

Since my last update, all my tomatoes have died. It even killed the two or three plants that were two years old. So I'm thinking where did the virus come from? I didn't have it two years ago or last year. Did I bring it in with some of the plants from the nursery in their potting soil?

Today I gave my neighbors some lemon cupcakes and they gave me 3 beautiful tomatoes. I told them my dilemma and they said spray the plants and soil with a mixture of 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water.  Please note I haven't tried this yet. I have no plants left alive to try it on.

Even my sunflowers were wimpy compared to the glorious ones I've grown in the past.They are already going to seed and are about half as big in diameter as the previous ones.

Maybe my soil has lost all its umph.  Anyway, I did an hour of weeding today.  I'm glad I stopped after an hour because I'm sore already and my hands are almost too tired to type.

The Mysterious Stranger

As if my poor garden hasn't had enough weird issues this year, last night we had a prowler of the four legged variety. My boyfriend caught the possum red handed wedged into my metal trellis. At least it posed under the light so I could get some good photos before it knocked over the trellis. Then it tried to climb up the sunflower stalks and broke one of those. It's been coming around for a couple of weeks now. I can hear it crunching on the dead leaves outside of my window.

Radishes

After I pulled some radishes and saw they were quite the boring white and green, I trimmed off the leaves and tossed them in the fridge.

Then a few days later when I cut one open I had quite the surprise. The middle is a beautiful purplish red color like a starburst. I haven't taken a photo of the inside yet but I will.

Fusarium WIlt

My tomatoes have been unhappy. After some glorious progress they are just withering away to nothing. I suspected fusarium wilt, and after reading about it on the Internet, it seems it's a fungus in the soil and the fix is to not plant tomatoes, peppers or potatoes in those spots for 4 or 5 years. It's one of the problems with Heirloom tomatoes, but even with modern disease resistant tomatoes, new strains of fusarium wilt may attack those plants as well. Or I can just plant them and hope for the best. We have way more tomatoes than we can eat as it is, and we are still getting plenty ripening. It just makes me sad that the plants are not thriving.

Sunflower Seeds

I'm really excited because many of my sunflower and marigold seeds have sprouted. I'm so glad I bought new sunflower seeds. Looks like I got a good batch this time. Now if I can just fend the snails and birds off until the seedlings get strong enough to survive.

I have a bunch of almost ripe tomatoes to pick too. I dug up the deader plant after harvesting it's last 2 fruits. I'm going to let the ground rest a bit before putting another plant in that spot. We also swept up a lot of debris today so it's more fun to be out there. The hummingbird is busy and eating out of my feeder again. She got a bit agitated when my cat was sitting in the window.

Planting flowers

I've been working on my garden every day. I had moved the hummingbird feeder and was happy to see a hummingbird drinking from it this morning.

I got marigold, cilantro and nasturtium seeds planted all around my tomatoes. The marigolds I planted last week have already come up as well. It's going to be nice to have more flowers in the garden as well as their benefits at repelling insects.


In my green planter the radishes have been getting chewed on by something.  I planted some nasturtiums and beets in the blank areas where the radishes either didn't sprout or got eaten by bugs.

Nettles, Nasturtiums and Snails.

Last night I took my neighbors a tomato, and they were so pleased they invited me out back to see their urban garden. They had made excellent use of every available spot. Their tomatoes are just starting to fruit so they were happy to get a ripe one from me. Their garden was so tidy and lovely, not at all like my jungle, even though our yard layouts are identical. When I mentioned my problems with snails, they told me in a rather confusing discussion in broken English and Romanian that they use nettle spray to repel the snails.  They get the nettles from a park, boil it in water to make a soup, then spray it on the plants.
While researching that on the Internet, I came across this site on companion planting. While it didn't say much on the nettle thing, the bit about nasturtiums has me inspired to plant nasturtiums all around my tomatoes. I had nasturtiums all around them before from volunteer seedlings, but they got dug up with the weeds and grass we had to discard to plant the new tomato sets. I have a few left in the other flower bed, and the hummingbirds have been feeding from them. I want to make some nasturtium salad too. I keep reading that you can eat them but I never remember to try it.

Moving the Plants

This morning before it got hot I dug up some more jasmine roots and smoothed out the surface. Then I moved my white shelving unit over to the wall to put all my cacti and succulents on. It also has the terrarium and the spider plants on it. I just hope they don't fry. Before they were under the upstairs patio so they never got direct sun, but my boyfriend didn't want the shelf in the old spot anymore so I picked the best spot I could. It took me a long time to get all the leaves out of the succulents. I was being careful with the cactus and still managed to poke my thumb with some spines. The vines killed some of the succulents and the snails killed others so it's a pretty sad lot that I have left. I just hope they start doing better now that I've moved them to another spot.

New Tomato Plants

I planted tomatoes this morning. I got them at Lowe's. I planted 2 yellow pear tomatoes, a black variety called Black Krim, and a yellow small tomato called Sungold. I also planted Mammoth Sunflowers along the back wall.

Cilantro blooming.

Feeding Hummingbirds and Cleaning Hummingbird Feeders

http://www.birds-n-garden.com/how_to_attract_hummingbirds.html

A handy reference guide since I always forget the ratio.

Tomatoes Are Getting Ripe

Bit by bit the tomatoes are getting ripe. We had one in a salad and it's so much tastier than store bought. 

And the snails haven't found the radishes yet. Hopefully they don't like radishes.