A tour of the gardens....

Ok...I really don't have "gardens" on the premises, not in the hoity toity way anyway. This is the first spring we've spent here though, and when we bought the place the person(s) who mowed apparently had no idea what was a flower and what was grass, so it's proving to be interesting. I've found a peony bush that was mowed last year, and a bunch of iris's.

This is my french lilac bush. The eastern swallowtail butterflies LOVE it and it just smells soooo good. That's my lawn tractor parked in front of it. I rarely let the Major drive it...I like mowing it gives me much needed quiet. I know...mowing and quiet are kind of an oxymoron..but I consider the dull hum of the mower and my mp3 player peace in comparison to the constant barrage of "Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooom" I get in the house. Hearing damage here I come!!!
This is the patch of iris's I was talking about. Strange thing..last year this patch was all daisy-like flowers...weird. I love iris's though, so this makes me happy :) I also found a ton of them at the end of the driveway in a flower bed that has been taken over by brush and weeds and who knows what else. Oh..and I think I found rhubarb down at the end of the drive as well....and a TON of American Plum trees.
This is that peony bush I was talking about. I have no idea how whoever was mowing managed to think this was a weed. Maybe he was 90 and blind. I don't know.
Beans! We put up the tripod for our Aunt Jean's Baking Beans yesterday...we've been planting them for years. They are an heirloom variety, so we keep harvesting and replanting. My hope is that SOMEDAY I actually get to EAT some.
More of that row. You can see the peas at the other end of the row, we also have lettuce, spinach, kale and a few chard. I have no idea why the chard decided not to come up, I always thought it was supposed to be an easy thing to grow.
Tomatoes and peppers. I pulled mulch out of the barn yesterday to use on them.
Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, TONS of green beans in this row. I can't wait for fresh green beans...they are my favorite thing to harvest and eat.
Lyli's garden. She wanted sweet corn, sunflowers and a myriad of other flowers, which are in the triangle garden to the right.
Garlic!!! The white on the ground is the mulch we used....The Major took some bags of shredded paper from his work and we used that as a mulch. It really seems to work well!
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I always feel like I'm being followed...Hmmmmm....
Recently the Major got out his trusty chainsaw and took down trees by the pond. His plan is to build a pavilion down here for us to eat and hang out. This is my favorite spot on the whole property and many times I come down here alone (well...I usually have one or two animals in tow) and sit by a fire and listen to music or just the sound of the woods....and occasionally the sound of the neighbors 4 wheelers, guns and fireworks.....not quite as relaxing but short of a neighborhood massacre, what can ya do about it?
My little pathetic start to a herb garden. Next year it will be bigger. It was so hard this year knowing what to get...we had no experience with this soil and didn't know what we could expect. It's still a learning process, but things seem to be growing pretty well...of course the cache of composted horse manure we found helped quite a bit too :)
Squash bed....Grow squash plants! Grow!!!! We also planted a couple of seed packets of summer squash in the compost pile..and WOW! they are already HUGE and GREEN! We threw the pumpkins in there as well...I think we should have a decent harvest this year!! There is something pretty gratifying about growing and eating your own food.
The boys...Baa'rack and Sonny. You know what they're thinking? I do...it goes something like this "Woman! Get your @$$ in the house and call the shearer!! We're DYING out here!!!"

How are your gardens growing???