Grow Your Own!

Used to be everyone grew a few tomatoes and cucumbers for the summer. You get a big 5 gallon bucket and set it in the sun or on a porch. Every house had a few flowers to pick and bring in. Neighbors traded vegetables at weekends. Americans have become addicted to whats easy and fast. They don't even go to the trouble to know neighbors!  Our addiction to cell phones, television and video games has destroyed our need for other people.  We don't go to a ballgame we watch it from home and eat snacks! We don't pay attention to each other we'd rather LOL them on our phones If you go to a coffee house you'll notice it's silent now because people are too busy doing social media instead of being social! Now the Fourth of July is upon us I issue this challenge...
Here is a list of what you'll need...2 five gallon buckets, a bag of miracle grow garden soil, some gravel and a drill. Drill 5 holes in the bottom of the bucket put in about three inches of gravel. Then add the soil. Now go to and buy some of those big tomato and cucumber plants and out them into your buckets! Now put them out in the light and feel your life get better!

Happy Fourth of July Everyone!

Father's Day

I remember sitting in my third grade desk staring at the teacher who kept smiling at me...I think it was Ms. Haney. She hardly ever smiled. She would look at you through her bug eyed glasses and make you feel shivers down your spine. The class got quiet because we felt impending doom. She stood up and pointed at the door still staring at me and I thought "Oh no! What have I done!" I turned around and there was my father. Tall, handsome in his uniform he held his arms out to me and I all but burst out of that chair. He had been gone for 3 years to Vietnam. Fathers have flaws, they are people like any one else. They make mistakes and as we grow older we realize that we do too. Today I remember that little girl and how her father made her feel. Even though he is gone now I still remember that moment. I love you Daddy years don't change that.

Sappy until the end. (won't change, don't want to)

When J and I first decided to move into "our first apartment" not my apartment or his apartment but our apartment I took a cutting from the Gardenia bush that grew outside. It was four feet wide and almost as tall as me. We almost killed it a number of times in it's pot until years later we decided to plant it in "our back yard at our house. It bloomed today and looks better than it ever has. Love you J here's our first plant together thriving.

 

and now for this mornings blooms!

Plots, Pans and Garbage Pails

I have been plotting for most of the spring to get these iris into something other than a bright blue Kiddie pool. They were given to me by a lady who bought them and then found out her ground was mostly tree roots. We managed to get them home and drag them under the grape arbor...then we collapsed for the sheer weight of moving them! I have made plots and put things in pans, garbage pails but never a kiddie pool! I choose to dig when it's damp for red clay because though it is heavy as crap and dense you can dig and it holds it's shape like a clay pot...you just have to make sure you make a way for the water to get out or it'll drown your plants. Just like a pot with no hole in the bottom!
I have this thing about iris...they seduce me every time I see one. J and I have bought Denim blue, Damask purples, Immortality white, as well as inherited palest apricot from my grandmothers.  Now we are searching for a black iris called Old Black Magic which is a re blooming iris! So here are the pics of whats blooming for the week...Blessings and prayers!

Life Began in a Garden

As you grow you start rethinking things. I like to think of gardening as an art form. It is painting with plants, therapy with soil! Gardening is a very forgiving medium of art.  You can have failure after failure and begin with a clean canvas every time. Dig it up plant something else, somewhere else. Get plants from all your family and become the historian.  Some people like a garden that's one color and minimum ornamentation, some like masses of color and structures. I happen to like color! ALL of it! I haven't yet met a plant I didn't fall in love with. It adds to your life in so many ways. I have learned to talk to people! Did you know I have not met a gardener who didn't like talking about what they did how they did it? They are the most caring and sharing people I have ever met! Want to start a conversation ask someone about a flower or plant and see their eyes light up!
I have also learned that we need to be good stewards of this small earth. Little things matter! That everything you do has repercussions. Want to teach a child to be responsible? Begin in the garden!