Winter Sowing day 1

I started Winter Sowing today! I'm making a flower garden for the south side of my mom's house. I plotted it out on graph paper then I started with the milk jugs: Sweet William, 2 kinds of Zinnia's, Bachelor Buttons, Catchfly, Coneflowers, Bee Balm, Bells of Ireland and Lupine. I still have to put together jugs for the hollyhocks, cosmos (2 kinds) foxgloves and Sunflowers. I tried to pick a mixture of annuals, biennials and perennials that would be pretty low maintenance and would attract birds and butterflies as well as work as a cutting garden and self seed (is that too much to ask?). The bed is already there. It's great soil filled with weeds. It gets great sun, it kills me to see it full of weeds. I do one bed per holiday for her. This will be her Mother's day present. I've already done her front garden and the bed on the north east side of her deck. This is the holy grail bed, I don't want to screw it up.

Jack Frost nipping at my toes.....

....Well, not yet but he's gaining on me. The weather people were waffling on whether my area would get hit or not on Thursday night. I was out in the dark covering up my tomatoes. False alarm. I kept the big sheet of plastic hanging on the garden fence so it's ready to go when Jack arrives. Heritage is blooming (see photo) I forgot it doesn't have much of a vase life until after I cut it. Whoops! I also cut some zinnias and cosmos. The zinnias aren't really too impressive this year. I'm warming up to the cosmos. Some of the blooms are really tiny and delicate-lilliputian is how I would describe them, some are medium sized and some are large. The colors range from pale pale pink (almost white) to Raspberry pink. Some are pink with Raspberry edges. Very pretty.

Bodie got under the deck again this week. This time he decided to try the other end -right next to the Heritage rose. Aaaagh! Luckily, the rose bush came out unscathed. My perennial Helianthus wasn't so lucky-it had been infested with tiny red bugs so I cut it all down about 2 weeks ago. If it doesn't make it I won't be bummed. Some sweet peas got clobbered too they are the annual kind so they're about done anyway. Father in law was at the house when it happend (we were at work) he's a good one not to panic and got Bodie out from under the deck with a trail of dog biscuits.

I dug up one of the daikon radishes I planted back in July. Not at all impressive. Didn't look like much of anything so I put it back in the ground.

Well it's Sunday and Sunday in the Fall means Football!!! Go Bills!!!!! Hockey season is right around the corner-Wooo Hooo!

Woe is me!

Veggie garden is being assaulted on 2 fronts: squash vine borers and powdery mildew! That coupled with the green tomatoes has left me very discouraged. So far we have had 3 ripe (peacevine) cherry tomatoes 4 more are ready to come in. I harvested 1 black beauty zucchini and another cucumer and a green serrano- the serrano wasn't hot at all. We had a couple of cool nights (down in the low 50's) and the garden is starting to look a little sad. The powdery mildew seems to have taken off over night. Yesterday was a very warm 90'F and it's back in the high 80's today. I woke up this morning and the powdery mildew was everywhere! I cut a lot of leaves off the squash and zucchini and sprayed the rest with a milk solution to try to contain the powdery mildew. I've also cut out 5 squash vine borers from 2 plants (the only 2 plants that have produced thus far!) I'm thinking they are so stressed out now they will probably kick it. I hate squash vine borers! One plant that had them was planted early and not covered, the other was planted later and covered with a floating row cover until the week of July 4-obviously that didn't work well!

I broke down and went to the farmers market today and bought tomatoes. The ones in the garden don't seem to be producing much fruit and the fruit that is there isn't growing very fast and it's not ripening at all. I got some heirlooms, some hybrids and a ton of cherries for drying in the oven. I haven't tried them yet.

Good news: Winchester Cathedral, Gruss an Aachen and Sweet promise all have buds. Zinnias and cosmos are blooming-tiny flowers -it's weird! Veronica has sent up a second flush and the cone flowers are going bonkers.

I'm not feeling the garden today so I decided to share a picture of Watkins Glen taken on Aug 1 when DH and I went down there for a hike. A beautiful state park at the south end of Seneca Lake,