garden journal: success stories

tomorrow is the last day of 90 degree weather in the ten day forecast.  i'm getting excited about the thought of possibly planting pansies next weekend.  perhaps i am making an ever so slight shift toward  a fall mindset.  i did, after all, rip out the painfully ugly tomato plants last weekend.  changing seasons.  i thought today would be a good day to share a few summer success stories.  this was our second year on our little acre, and we had a few more gardening endeavors and, thus, a few more successes.  a taste of success and i am already dreaming of what we might be able to do next spring.  this was my biggest one day harvest, and i am proud to report that i put five bags of corn, eight bags of bell peppers, four bags of tomatoes, and three bags of banana peppers in the freezer.  it's exciting!

my favorite has been seeing my mini field of wildflowers out the kitchen window.  these came up, no problem, from a bag of seed that i bought the year before.  it was a butterfly and hummingbird mix.  my heart skipped a beat when i discovered a pair of goldfinches enjoying them on a daily basis.  do you see the handsome little guy in there?

and i have had a hummingbird visitor all summer.  i think they are little miracles.  i was delighted to capture him resting on the fence with that old zoom lens my brother-in-law gave me.  too sweet.

lettuce is so ridiculously easy to grow.  it's supposed to be a early spring and early fall crop, but i was even able to grow it in the heat of summer on the morning sun side of my house.  i need to get more in the ground for fall.

i've never had much interest in marigolds.  last year i brought a little four pack home from the high school plant sale.  i think g may have picked them out.  i was charmed to find that they had reseeded themselves this spring.  i found ten baby plants and was able to transplant them without losing any.  these things are so lush now.  they're practically bushes, so tall and thick.  they bloom profusely, and i think my favorite part is that the foliage stays pristine and gorgeous all summer long.  i'm glad that i learned how amazing they are.

peppers are troopers.  they've produced all summer and are still putting out blossoms.  next year i want to add habanero and jalepeno.  they're such pretty plants, especially when they're full of brightly colored peppers.  i like having them on my deck.  there's something new to see every morning.

sweet banana peppers.  if you've never tried these babies fresh in tacos, you should.  what a surprise.

my goodness.  these are the clearance raspberries that i got for $2.25 a bush.  i was just hoping to overwinter them and maybe get a few berries next year.  i didn't realize that they were late summer/early fall producers.  i got them in the ground fairly quickly, and they have just thrived.  g's been able to pick a little handful every two or three days.  it's been so fun.  fingers crossed that they come back just as happy next year.  i'm also seeing lots of new foilage on the blueberry bushes that i got at the same time.  i'm holding out on naming them a success story though.  i need to wait till the spring and see what happens.  same with the strawberry patch, although you probably wouldn't believe how thick those guys are if you'd seen how pitiful they were after being transplanted.  they have been very resilient.

and the morning glories.  i planted the seeds a little late in the spring, so it's just been since august that they've started blooming.  that's been neat though to see them come alive just as some other plants are saying good-bye for now.  i've enjoyed training the vines over my deck and i've had four different colors show up.  they are so nice to wake up to each morning.

i think that's it for my summer gardening stories.  you can find more gardening tales in the link-up below and we'd all love for you to join in with your own gardening stories.

how does your garden grow?