All my toys in the yard

I was trying to get as many ladders as I could in the yard as I painted the house today.

Harvey

Harvey the watermelon has grown to 5".

The flowers she plants

We have not really made much of a landscape plan for this place, other than pull out weeds and remove the variety of trash from the property. As we do that we are left with empty ground that we will work on later. My wife however runs around and puts flower seeds in this type of ground which turns into the following flowers.

There is a big old bumble bee on this sun flower if you click on it you can see. Wouldn't it be funny if when you click on it there is this guy that jumps up on your screen and screams, "AHHHHHH!" Go ahead click on it. lol

Look at the melons grow

This is Harvey the watermelon. If you just stand there looking at your garden long enough, food appears. This morning I was doing this and there was this 3" melon growing. It is the first one as far as I can find. So his name is Harvey the watermelon. Now if I can just learn to speak melon I could tell Harvey to encourage all his friends to grow and I will put their baby pictures on the blog too! I am praying that Harvey becomes a nice 40lb watermelon in September. Just imagine an organically grown, pesticide free, sweet melon melting in your mouth. This must be close to the food angels eat.

A New Paint Job

For whatever reason I woke up on Thursday and thought, "I am going to sand down the deck and repaint it." Then Friday morning I took my bride to The Home Depot & she picked out the paint for the entire house. Which is now our current project. It is good because my mind tells me that Summer hasn't even started and it should be about March 15th of 2009 but the days have actually gone a little faster than I expected in this life. I keep thinking I have lots of time left this Summer to paint the house. This is by far the fastest & greatest Summer of my life. Sanding and painting a deck isn't a big deal, or even remodeling a house isn't that new to me. What is new is seeing everything through Kristines eyes and her happiness as these things take place.
I look foward to this week and watching the house change colors. Well that is if it doesn't rain all week. That tends to mess up painting plans.

Melon Cage

We have these little creatures called Cucumber beetles down here that will not only eat your squash, cucumber, pumpkin & watermelon vines but once they bite the vine they inject a bacteria that is unstoppable and will kill the plant. So while we did get a lot of squash and such the plants have died and we replanted melons where the sweet corn was growing. To protect the melons we have made this melon patch cover that I retract a few hours a day for the bees to pollinate the melons. I put a ton of good compost in this bed after the corn so we are hoping we will have too many melons to eat and can give some away.

Straw in the garden

I am always in search of grass for the compost. I would also like to put down wet newspapers in between the garden rows and pile grass upon it. The problem is, there just isn't enough grass for both projects. Then yesterday I found a local nursey selling straw without chemicals on it. So I did two rows today and made a place for the melons to grow out on to. The cucumber beetles are hard on them so nets have been the only solution I have found. Working outside on a day like today last year would have been out of the question, but now 96 degrees isn't so bad.

Garden Produce

The tomatoes are coming in pretty fast now. We have heirloom varieties that are wonderful. I pick some but eat a good part right out there in the garden. I love them when they are warmed by the sun.

Garden July 2nd

The garden has changed a bit. The corn is harvested and melons have been planted there now. The tomatoes have just started to come in. We have learned alot this fisrt garden and we are looking foward to next year and having a second batch of compost to add to the soil. A gardener can never have enough compost I am finding.