The slow gardener

I had big ambitions this year for my garden, but between being pregnant and the weather, things didn't quite go as planned. (Surprise, I know) Would you believe Robert was scraping frost off the windshield of his truck on June 6? This didn't help my efforts any. Other than a about 5 brave souls, my corn refused to come up, and the potatoes were even worse--I've only seen 2 that survived. I dug up a few and they were just moldy mush. Sigh. Otherwise, it isn't looking too bad. We will have peas, and I'm just about tired of eating spinach already (If anyone is interested...I can certainly send some by. In another week you may want to lock your door if you DON'T want any!) although I am planning to plant more, since it's about the only thing is making me look good this year. The beans are coming, but they were a bit upset about the cold, and it looks like the tomatoes are actually going to come back. I did manage to get way behind on my weeding though. After enviously admiring Aunty Linda's completely weed free garden, I figured I better get back on the ball. I actually like weeding, but it's considerably more difficult with a VERY helpful little girl who is very excited to help pull weeds, dig up worms, sit on beans, pull up the few surviving carrots, run through the poor peas, you get the idea... At any rate this is what I started with, pretty sad huh?

And how it looks now--three days later!

We had some help. My gramma Betty was wonderful enough to donate Grampa Ben's gardening tools to the cause. My grampa died about a year and a half ago, and I feel like I'm getting to know him better through his things that I've been given than I ever did in real life. He kept immaculate care of his stuff, only bought good quality and took good care of it. Everything was clean, well maintained and worked. I really appreciate what I've been given by Gramma--which also includes the great camera I'm currently using to fill up this blog with pictures.

A few of my iris managed to survive the cold, and actually bloom. Gramma Pat had sent me a fabulous box of iris bulbs last fall that I had planted in the garden. Robert managed to run over most of them when he was adding fertilizer to the garden in the form of corral manure, some didn't survive the winter, and some didn't survive the cold. But of the few that managed to come up, an even smaller number actually bloomed. This one is my favorite. I've never seen an iris quite this bright shade of sunshine yellow. It looks so pretty and cheerful. I also had some dark purple and a couple light purple ones. Here's to hoping next year is a better year for them! I really love iris and hope to get lots more planted in the next few years. They are so easy and pretty, and generally pretty hard to kill although I'm trying real hard to put that to the test!

I also figured I better add a picture of my fancy new bird feeder. Technically, it's Robert's bird feeder since he seems to be getting the biggest kick out of it. I really like the fancy pole that he made to hang the feeder on. It's so nice to have a handy man around! It didn't take the little birds very long to find it. I tried to get a picture with some of the finches on it, but they are pretty suspicious today.