Summer/Fall Garden

With all the busy craziness happening here, my poor garden (and yard) has been shamefully neglected.  Our hydroponics experiment had many successes and a few failures.  Earlier this year we reevaluated my garden and decided to redo a few things.  This worked great when we decided to start the chicken nugget adventure…our redesign didn’t take much to adjust for the chickens.  Unfortunately, redesigning also delayed my garden this year.  Not ideal, but life happens and we move on.  🙂

Health and Wellness

It has been a long couple of months with only the smallest glimmer of relief on the horizon.  Our little family has been hit hard by a nasty virus that apparently has been “going around”.  (Don’t you love that?  Everyone seems to say that…”it’s been going around”.)  I’ve lost count how many times I’ve had to take one or another kidlet for fever, cough and/or ear infection.  And the long nights of coughing and “breathing watches” is definitely taking it’s tole.  I think I got a little over confident with how we breezed through the winter months with hardly a sniffle…and because of that I think I kind of expected this “virus” to run it’s course pretty quickly.  I didn’t put into action a lot of our “illness plans” when I should have…and as time and energy drained away I even forgot there was an “illness plan”.  Funny how exhaustion can do that.

Evidence of Spring

The weather here can be pretty unpredictable this time of year.  One week it can be hot enough to need air conditioning…and the next cold enough to freeze.  That’s not always very good for gardens and crops.  And not so good for Optimistic Gardener’s nerves either.  But I do love the signs of Nature’s awakening. Here’s a few pictures from my own little garden.

Orange Trial and Error (Big Time)

Want to see my wonderful canning bungle?

Garden Hair Cut

Another step in the “Operation Fix the Garden” is complete. Last weekend we finished the winter pruning. We’re still feel like novices, but after watching a true Master Gardener prune his trees I think we’re feeling quite a bit more confident. I don’t have pictures of the citrus yet. Most of the pruning on those was shaping anyways. But here are pictures of the apple, pomegranate and grape vines.

Lemons

With the pile of lemons we got last month, I got about 3 cups of Lemon Zest, about 3 cups of Citrus Candy, 9 quarts of Lemon Bug Repellent, about 3 gallons of Lemon Juice which I then used about 2 gallons of that for several pints of Lemonade. The recipes follow.

Lemons, Lemons Everywhere

Our climate here is perfect for citrus. I’ve seen many wonderful examples of that all over the area, but I’ve only had minimal success.

Introducing my Garden

Maybe I should have titled this embarrassing confessions. My sister was asking if my garden was still green, so I figured this was probably as good a time as any to introduce my garden to all of you. Before you shake your head in shock and disappointment, and ask how I could ever consider myself a gardener, know that my garden doesn’t always look like this. The nasty bermuda grass, spurge and other weeds have gotten out of control because I haven’t been able to do all the gardening I need to because of a back injury I got while having the baby. We have plans that will should address the weed problem and hopefully make my garden productive and efficient again. I’ll post the progress and updates as we go…and maybe all my adventures will inspire someone else to start their own garden. Besides…as GadgetMan once told me, we can’t all have gardens like Martha Stewart…some of us have to pull all our own weeds and squish our own bugs — 2 things that remind this optimistic gardener that the Garden of Eden I do not have. But I try, and that’s what’s important.