Wow! Everyone, all of it looks great! And some of it is making me hungry, lol. Must be lunch time. At any rate, I can't believe it's taken me this long to get back here. I am usually up at 7am, in the garden by 7:30 and out by 8:30 pm. Long days. We have managed to build 12 gardens this year. I didn't think it would get done, but it did. Then we had one rain. One rain. It took out tons for me. I know I watched at least 10 bags of mulch float down the drainage system. That doesn't even include plants it took with it. Nor does it include what my husband killed with weed killer. I finally threw the biggest adult fit I've thrown in my life when he took out the Queen Red Limes that were beginning to bud. Uggh. What is wrong with this man? Two times this year he's taken out some of my fav plants I traded for. It took so long just to get them started! And they were ws'd and I had waited so patiently for them.
But I did manage to resow or replace plants that would be too late to sow. The rest will just have to wait until fall to sow. Below is a couple of pics of what happened.
My front porch. Yep, that's some of my ws'd and ds'd plants floating away.... I was going to plant them the day before. I ran out of daylight.
This is my side door. See that water gushing through my beds? This all happened in 5 minutes time. It was all gone. I've spend the last 2 weeks repairing damage. Luckily, the dwarf black velvet nasturtiums Cheryl gave me are still there.
Sorry about the bad pic. I just wanted ya'll to see what I dealt with the entire summer before. Last year I did this on a daily basis. Pouring rain, wait for it to stop, go out and repair what I could for the next rainfall. If you look to the right in this picture, you can actually see the water white capping in the drainage ditch. That ditch is 4 foot tall.
But, I will say this. I have enjoyed my season so far. I've really loved seeing the things I've gotten from ya'll come on up and try to grow. And honestly, I'm really excited to see some of the same plants i've gotten to grow from ya'll and your plants from the same batch of seeds. Very interesting.
This year has been an odd year for flowering. Everything mostly comes up and leafs out. Then I get this sweet little bud. Then I get a flower whose color is not what it is supposed to be. Very weird. For me though, even the different colors seem to go with everything I have so I can't complain. I have watched a rose colored coneflower I have (noid) that I bought at the nursery last year. Reputable nursery at that. The buds are blooming now. The first one came up an odd colored pink. It soon faded into the color it should have been. Now? It's blooming a neon orange! I won't lie, how in the world is this going to take on a rose color? My petunias from my neighbor? I love them. The red ones actually do come out this magnificent black/red. I almost think they are even deeper in color this year than they were last year. Best petunia I've ever had. I'll always keep seed of this one.
The deep black purple ones? Lol. I'd be lucky to get purple out of those. A color range of neon pink to deep magenta with a couple of purple ones in there. But the purple is not deep and dark. Don't know if it will change. It's really that way with alot of my flowers. I had bought some dark purple and magenta, frilly, velvety petunias to go in my diamond shaped corner. The colors? deep purple, deep magenta, deep pink, deep red. Just really odd.
Odd colored coneflower.
Jimard, I managed to save one of the purple ruffles basil from you. That bad rain took the other one downstream. :(
But on the bright side Jim, I have Black Prince snaps that are gorgeous and starting to bud now... I did end up moving 3 salvias out of the planter. I looked at it one day and just saw a different way of showing them off so out came the three salvias. I left 2 in there.
For the most part, anything I ws'd that made it has not started blooming. Only calendulas are blooming from that group and the petunias from the neighbor. Everything else I am still waiting on.
Elena, I am the one who got the night and day snaps. When Chuck took out my Queen Red Limes, he also took out a petunia and some snaps. I had nothing to replace that set. I had these sweet little snaps that I had no place for. Until then, lol. They've yet to bloom so I really have no idea what they will look like. I'll snap a pic when they do. It may be August before I see anything though. I do have some frosted sunset snaps from you and only one of the three that made it has a bud on it. I'm hoping this week it comes alive. If so, I'll take a pic so you can see how it turned out.
And lastly, this is why I garden. It is hands down my favorite part of vegetable gardening and this year I'm looking forward to it like no other. For the first time, I have help canning. And twice as much! I harvested the first flush of 3 rows of green beans. I managed 22 quarts. Yay! We're eating green beans this year!
I really do hope everyone else's things are coming out well. I really have enjoyed this year like no other. I have people who stop on the street just to tell me how nice my gardens are. I could not have done this without ya'll's help. It has made every trade, every ws project that didn't turn out, every rainfall that flushed what I did manage, worth it. Thanks ya'll. You all made me very happy this year.
