My Uncles Garden

As I've mentioned, we had a wonderful visit with my aunt and uncle this past weekend. I loved seeing his garden. It is so far ahead of anything I'm growing! He said they put lime in the garden this year and it's made a big difference. I guess so, but any time I've seen his gardens they've been beautiful.

The potatoes are very bushy! They're eating some of them already!

The broccoli is forming heads!

The peas have a lot of flowers.

This is a coffee plant. My uncle has three of them. He's kept them indoors in front of the picture window for 2 winters, remembering to mist them with water often. My sister also has coffee plants that are about the same age. Hers are about a foot tall as compared with his three or four foot plants. He really has a green thumb. I hope it rubs off on me!! Any way, these plants are supposed to grow coffee beans in the next year. He plans to roast them. Yummy!

These are his replacement chickens. I got my new laying hens from him when he decided to start over. They're Rhode Island Reds. He likes them a lot as an all purpose bird. His family eats them once in a while and likes the meat, and they lay really well.

I've got a few more fun pics from this visit to share, but for now I'm done. The uploading is just too slow. You can look forward to a great tip on keeping your apples healthy as they grow, corn that's HIP high by the Fourth of July and a tree that grows something very unique.

Today I worked quite a bit in my gardens. I got a few tomato plants that the Hovland Garden Club was "giving away" if you made a donation. No one was taking them and they were looking a bit worse for the wear. I had a pumpkin plant that was in sorry shape. It was obvious that it would never grow a pumpkin, so I took it out of the garden by the house and put in one of the tomato plants. We also just finished another 4 square feet of our other garden, so I put two more there. I thinned out all the carrots and beets and filled in the bare spots in the garden with radishes and turnips. Lastly, I planted two small rows of spinach of two different varieties. I plan to shade them from the sun and see if I can get some more spinach before fall. Oh, and I weeded, of course! I really have to get out there with my little hand cultivator and go after the edges again. The grass is doing it's best to take over! The little girls took all the thinned out carrots and had a tea party with them. I didn't know that baby carrots were meant to go with tea, but you learn something every day! :) We ate the baby beets, tops and all, steamed for supper. The leaves were tender, but the little "beatlings" were...well, a combination of chewy and crisp that squeaked in the teeth. Not the best, but they didn't go to waste.

We're having fun, the girls and I, spending some time together without the big kids. I miss them, though! It's awful having to find so many things that are lost around the house without Molly. That girl somehow knows where everything is! If I need it all I have to do is ask her. Without her I'm a little lost myself! And without Sam, there's just no music! It will be nice to have him around filling my life with sound again. There hasn't been any drumming going on in two days. I sure never thought I could miss that!! :)