Backyard last day of July

By the time I deboarded the bus yesterday the sun was out. This is remarkable because It rained for nearly all of the previous 48 hours.  This sort of weather is atypical for summer in Colorado. I was anxious to get into the backyard to explore and see how the garden was doing.

The excess moisture yielded many mushrooms, some very small:

The succulents had slightly tightened up, perhaps due to the relative chill during the rain.

One of our pepper plants has beautiful white flowers dripping from its limbs.

the yellow pear tomato plant is full of little veiny fruits.

The sunflowers are almost as tall as Seth and they are forming flower buds.

Even the raspberries are coming in. The bees are hard at work on them.

We are happy about the garden progress!

August in the blah life

I already had a post about the most fun thing I did in August (the 4 Pass Loop). So, what else did I do?

We made the pasta – well, mostly Seth made the pasta. He crafted a seriously beautiful Italian parsley-filled hand-cut pasta:

I ran the zombie run 5k with Lacy. This is an event where volunteers dress up like zombies (their makeup is professionally done) and they try to grab the three balloons you have secured to a belt around your waist. If the zombies successfully get all three of your balloons then you have not survived the zombie apocalypse.  We did not survive…

The zombie run was actually pretty fun and I did run faster than usual as some of the zombies gave good chase. Some were very aggressive and others were just run-of-the-mill zombies. If you run it in the future, don’t be afraid to bat away their hands.

We saw Rodrigo y Gabriela at Red Rocks Amphitheater. They played part of the show with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. It was a lovely and surprisingly energetic show. Here is Seth doing the parking lot thing prior to the show:

Of course, we had many a garden harvest in August, which was actually pretty fun. Every time we went out to the garden there seemed to be more and more vegetable and fruit bounty. Here are shots of two such evening garden runs:

We made the good foods with some of the garden products too! One evening we had grilled scallops and nectarines with corn and tomato salad. Grilled nectarines are surprisingly tasty, especially on a fork with a bit of scallop drizzled with basil sauce and fresh garden tomato.

There was also hiking! The night before hiking Mt. Princeton (14,197’), we camped at ~12,000 feet. It was pretty chilly but dry and clear and we were surrounded by mountains.

We rose to a rosy sunset and those mountains lit up amazingly:

The hike to Mt. Princeton wasn’t 100% dog-friendly with all the boulders and some scree, but Dempsey powered through and eventually was more nimble than we were.

We also got some hiking in at Vail when we were there for a wedding. We hiked Notch Mountain, which has a wonderful view of Mount of the Holy Cross.

So, August was actually pretty full of activity and ripe fruits and vegetables and wonderful dinners and maybe not as blah as I at first thought…

Garden and growth

We planted our garden May 4th and by September 21st it has grown wildly. We even tried an experiment with ground cover plants (plants that grow low to the ground). We planted chicks and hens, pink chintz thyme, old man’s bones, “Heidi” moss, and “ruby stars." Below is a shot of the planting in action. As you can see, the plants were pretty small and compact at the start.

Here’s a shot from above of the same plants several months later. The thyme (bushy plant on the right) has grown to be full and lush with little white flowers (and kind of in the shape of a heart – I hadn’t noticed that previously). The “ruby stars”  (sort of top left) grew quite a bit as well and developed lots of purple flowers. The “heidi” moss really struggled (you can barely see it in the far left of the photo). The chicks and hens didn’t grow a ton but three new chicks appeared from the two we originally planted!

Then there are the garden boxes. The beginning days were captured in a previous blog. However, I have provided a shot of what we started with back in May:

By late September the tomatoes have taken over and the serrano plant is producing overtime. Here is a shot of the tomatoes and hot peppers (basically one garden box):

Here’s a shot of the other garden box with the brussel sprouts and green and red bell peppers (it had snap peas, lettuce, radishes, and carrots, but those have come and gone).

I wish I could say that I also grew as a person over the summer, but, alas, I don’t think that happened much. I worked and rode my bike and hiked and knitted and visited towns in Colorado and spent a good amount of time in the car, but I can’t say I know myself better now than in May. It was still a good time though and I thoroughly enjoyed the garden and watching it grow and change and produce over the months.

Little things

It really is the little things in life that make every day worthwhile. This summer I’ve taken great pleasure in perusing the garden in the evening and it seems every visit there is something new to see.

Just last week the raspberries and blackberries started to fruit, turning from light green globules to pink to purple.

The wee Serrano plant is practically raining peppers. Every time we inspect the plant there are more little green nubs forming a new spicy package.

The watermelon plants that had until recently been modest little guys have recently exploded in every direction and flowered. I find the tendrils of these plants fascinating as they form perfect curlicues and grab everything within their reach.

And the tomato plants! All five of our plants are growing nearly out of control. The most picturesque are the chocolate stripe tomatoes with their light and dark green markings that will soon turn red and brown.

Our cherry tomato plants have been slowly producing little reddish fruits. This is the most recent harvest (that avoided Seth’s mouth):

Not a recent discovery, but we have been seeing more and more aphids on the tomatoes and brussel sprouts.

Seth did a little spraying of soapy water on the plants but we finally brought in the biological weapon – the ladybugs! We bought a little sack of about 1,500 squirmy ladybugs and set them free in the late evening. Some of them immediately found little puddles in leaves and nearly drowned themselves, others roamed around seemingly aimlessly, others got right to coupling, and a few did locate and start a little insect dinner. In the next few days their numbers dwindled and we seem to only have a small group that remained. Oh well.

While pulling off some flower buds from our sage plant I came across the cutest little praying mantises! As you can see in the photos below they are quite small and adorable.

Anyways, the backyard is proving to be a pleasant surprise every evening. Who knows what will happen next!

Garden–The Beginning

For most of my adult life I’ve either lived in a condo or an apartment, with no balcony nor backyard. I’d yearned for one of these but never really wanted to deal with the maintenance of mowing and weeding or the cost of buying plants and so on. Last year (2012) moved into a house with a backyard and a garden.

At first I didn’t take much interest in the garden, I mean, I don’t really like vegetables and didn’t know much about gardening to really talk about the plants and such. However, when things like cucumbers and watermelons started to grow into real edible things I began to notice and became fascinated. I bought Gardening for Dummies and started to plan for 2013.

Last weekend we planted the garden! We have a salsa garden (hot peppers, tomatoes, garlic) and lettuces, cucumbers, pumpkins, radishes, shallots, carrots, brussel sprouts, peas, and bell peppers. There are also strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries but these were here before me.

Set did the majority of the planting, while I dealt with the window box flowers and did fertilizing of the newly planted garden.  Here are some action shots:

 

A week later most things are doing well. We lost one of three pumpkin plants and the cucumbers are struggling to adapt to their sunny spot, but the radishes sprouted last night and the peas are starting to send out tendrils!

 

It’s all far more exciting than I would have expected but there is a little nervousness that we’re just going to kill stuff because we don’t *really* know what we’re doing…we’ll see.