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,

Progress...?

I think I may hav 2 potential zucchini's-it looks like 2 zucchini plants each have a female flower, fingers are crossed! It also looks like I may finally get some tomatoes to ripen-one of the cherry tomato clusters seems to be changing from green to an orangey color. I believe it is the peacevine tomato. Most of the seeds I have planted are sprouting.

On the flower front-Sweet Promise and Winchester Cathedral have buds again. Eden has little worms munching on it-I have been squashing them. My "Cut and Come Again"Zinnias are finally blooming-the flowers are tiny and rather pathetic looking. I really don't have much luck with annual seeds!

Bad week for Bunnies good week for roses

I'm sad to say the bunnies aren't doing so well. They left the garden yesterday, unfortunately their timing was really bad. Bodie was out in the yard and caught one. I was yelling. Lovely husband got him to drop the bunny and I took Bodie inside. Husband took bunny out of the yard and put him on the other side of the fence in the shelter of a woodpile. He said the bunny looked ok, we're not sure if he made it or not. Husband found another one (deceased) in the yard. We don't know what happened to him as Bodie was confined to the house for the evening.

On the garden front: I planted the Zinnias (Cut and Come Again) that I had started from seed. There were 22 of them. Bodie stepped on one and something ate another one so I'm down to 20. I love growing plants from seed-it started out as a necessity as I was poor and couldn't afford to buy plants and I wanted a vegetable garden (much more economical than the produce section). I started in 2002 with a shop light hanging from the clothes rod in an empty closet with plant trays on top of the ironing board. I had a great garden that year. The biggest challenge was keeping Bodie the puppy out of the garden- he loved to play with the eggplants. 2003 Veggie garden wasn't as successful-I was dating my future husband and I was in luuuuuve-the garden suffered. No veggie garden 2004- I put my house on the market and realtor said that veggie gardens aren't buyer friendly. Garden was replaced with grass-so sad. 2005 we moved from NC to NY- no house, no garden. 2006 Veggie garden started from seed, husband was very good about keeping everything watered when I travelled for work. Too many paste tomatoes that year. Eggplants didn't do well. Last year I didn't get off my butt in time to get things started. I had to buy my plants-way too expensive! Back to seeds! This year things started out slowly-I got very frustrated, I couldn't figure out why everything was so slow. I had shop lights on timers, heat mats, I made newspaper pots so I could be a little "green". Dear Husband the non-gardener had an idea: too cold in the basement, I should move ghetto BigLots plant stand and shoplights up to the spare bedroom and see if that improves the little seedlings dispositon-Brilliant! That did the trick! Plethora of tomatoes have hardened off, now bunnies are out of garden we can plant! I have some eggplants, habanero peppers (seeds were free Aji Dulce peppers didn't make it), cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, zinnias, cosmos and marigolds. I might make some more newspaper pots and start some other flowery-type stuff.

The rose situation is looking up: Eden, Heritage, Distant Drums (the new one!) and Capt. Sam all have buds. Capt. Sam the oldest rose at 2 years, has a buch of buds. Eden and Heritage have only been in a year so it might take them another year to get established (?) Honestly, I have no idea as I've never grown roses before. Fingers are crossed. Winchester Cathedral is doing great, I planted it bare-root (grafted) in April. Distant Drums and Gruss an Aachen are both doing well, they've only been in a few weeks-they seem pretty happy. Sweet Promise is another story. It's growing, but it's really short. I think I may have a problem: it's grafted and I'm thinking that the new shoots are coming from the root plant. Who knows how that will end up? I'm looking forward to seeing what happens!

Side note: I spent the weekend at my Aunt and Uncles house in the Finger Lakes-Beautiful! Uncle's rhododendrons are gorgeous(see picture above)! Lilacs, Columbine and Iris were blooming too, their gardens are really breathtaking. Uncle is a professional photographer and Conservationist (and writer like Aunt). Check out his website to get an idea of what the Finger Lakes region is like: http://www.thefingerlakesimages.com/

This is the deal: there is a Native American legend that says the Great Spirit found the most beautiful place on earth and put his hands there to bless it. The fingerprints filled in with water and the Finger Lakes were created. The story is actually much better than that, I'm giving the Cliff Notes version. I was very sad when I lived in North Carolina. It's hard to grow up in a place as beautiful as this and then move to a place that's all concrete and highways, glass skyscrapers and strip malls- no soul. The whole state isn't like that. The mountains are gorgeous, the beaches are really nice. Gas and taxes are a lot cheaper there! Luckily, North Carolina has been invaded by New Yorkers and met my husband who is from here too and wanted to move back as much as I did. People in NC thought I was from a place like Manhattan-no way! That's a good 6 hour drive away! Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there!

Blooming: Miss Kim, Paul Thirion, Beauty of Moscow Lilacs. Lily of the Valley, Allium (giganteum?), Chives, Bleeding Heart, Weigela. Some weird plant in the front that has pretty blue flowers. Previous owners planted it. I plan on moving it after it finishes blooming-it's too close to the new Japanese Maple, too pretty to toss.

About to bloom: Allium moly, culinary Sage (!), Salvia, Lady's Mantle, Peonies, Iris

Getting going: Buddleia, crocosmia is peeking through!