These are Chinese Red Noodle Beans. They get 18 inches long. They are growing up the Gray Striped Sunflower in my garden. Both of these are non-GMO and Heirloom seeds. I will be drying the seeds for next year. I also have Chinese Green Noodle beans growing too.

Sunflower Sunday

This is my whole garden. In the middle of the sunflowers is my tomatoes. cucumbers and beans.

Spring in full bloom

Wandering Onions

Blueberries

Wandering Onions before they mature

Wandering Onion as it is maturing

Queen Anne's Lace

Lemon Mint flower head

My Jungle Backyard

       The bee hive a friend of mine has had on our place, split this Spring. He captured it and now we have 2 hives at the garden. I bought the new hive so I cold start my own colonies. I want to have as many bees here as possible. We don't use pesticides and I am hoping that we can get the bee population going strong around here for better crop production.

This is the Fig tree I bought earlier this spring. I was just a stick with buds. Now it has 3 little figs on it.
I can't wait to taste them this fall. It is still in the greenhouse cause of the wind here. it keeps blowing it over so I have it sitting at the door so when I open the greenhouse every morning it is right there. It is amazing to see the fruit come our of the joint, no bloom. All the fruit trees we grow here have blooms first and then fruit.

I just got back from a trip to Florida to see my sister. I went crazy buying plants there. I got a Meyer Lemon tree. I hope to get lemons one day. There are no blooms on it so it will not happen this year. I would love to have a dwarf banana tree that actually has bananas on it.

Here is what the greenhouse looks like now.

 

I love to walk the woods. There are so many beautiful plants there. Here are just a few.

Day Flower

Yellow Lady's Slipper

Lady

Trout Lily

The weather has been so up and down lately. The poor plants don't know what to do. Some of my small shrubs budded out and looked really good. Then "dogwood" winter came and now their leaves are brown and dead. I am hoping they come back out. 
It warmed up some and the trees exploded. Green everywhere.

Now it is cold again and I am hoping this is "blackberry" winter.  I have a greehouse full of plants that need to go in the ground. So we wait for the weather to even out.
It will be a while before that happens. It rains and then before the ground dries out enough to disk the garden, it rains again. It may be June before we can get in there to plant, AARRGGHHHHH!!!!

Here are some of the things that have made it so far.

Romaine lettuce

Blueberry bush

Fig

 

 

 

  I discovered figs last year at friends garden and fell in love with them. I ordered this "brown turkey" fig tree online. It is the hardiest of the figs so far. It will live outside this summer and fall and then spend the winter in the greenhouse. I can hardly wait for the figs.

THE BOSS

Every morning in my front yard. These are gobblers and jakes. There were about 6 hens with them. They are so funny to watch. The gobblers strut around each other while the hens go about their business. Sometimes the Gobblers bump chests like jocks about to fight. But they never do.

I'm not sure how I will do in the greenhouse. I put the humidity/thermometer in yesterday. I went back to check it a little later and it read outside 71 degrees, inside 101 degrees. WHOA!!!
  I need to read up on how to keep the temperature  inside down to about 70-75 degrees. I have a feeling this is going to be a full time job. Hopefully, I won't kill ALL of my plants.

  It is cold, cloudy and damp today. It is supposed to be low 70's this weekend. I will probably start some seeds. 

Going to plant carrots in a large pot so Zoey can get to them easier. Our clay soil here is hard to get carrots out when they are ready to harvest. I may plant a lot of veggies in big pots. Just got to buy lots of "potting" soil.  

This is greenhouse about half done. Took six and a half hours to get this much done. I was sore all over. I have never been up and down a ladder so much in one day in all my life. Instructions said it would take seven hours. #!**^(>^???

Here it is done. It took another seven hours to get the panels and braces on. I am still not done. More braces to put on today. Storms coming and got to get it done. I just hope it stands up to our wind and weather. It will be nice to get inside and start growing things. When this happens, I will post more photos.

OK, SPRING, where are you?!!!
We got an inch of snow overnight. This is NOT funny anymore.
The winds have been wild too. Gusts up to 40 mph.
Can't put the greenhouse up. Looks like it may be May before the weather decides to cooperate.
I can only hope.

Wondering what this mess is?

It is the beginning of my Greenhouse.
This is the base, made of 6x6 treated timbers, weed barrier cloth and then gravel to fill in for the inside area. I chose pea gravel to help with the humidity and I will put stepping stones in the areas where I will be walking. We have water and electricity installed already.

 Can't put the Greenhouse up yet because of the wind and rain we keep getting.
 It will probably be after march before we can put it together.

I will keep you posted with photos as we progress.

Bird feeder

More birds

 I feed only Black oil Sunflowers seeds. They won't eat anything else.If I feed a mixture they kick it out onto the ground and it comes up around the feeder. Then the deer come in and eat the plants.

This is Joe. Rescued him on his "D" day. Most loving do I have ever had. He loves the sun.

My Greenhouse is here!!!!!

My greenhouse is here and waiting to be assembled.
I ordered an 8x16 greenhouse kit. I have always wanted one.
My husband is retiring this summer and he wants to  put in a LARGE garden this year. 

I have bought 52 packs of seed. Green beans, Sugar Snap Peas, Bell Pepper, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Lettuce, Cukes, Collards, Carrots, Squash, Swiss Chard, Gourd, Pumpkins, onion and herbs.

We buy some of our tomato plants. They will be mostly for making tomato juice. My husband makes his own juice. 

I have plants that I cram into my house to over winter and they struggle to survive. Now they will have a home of their own. I also love orchids and I don't have any luck with them in the house. I will try them in the greenhouse. Hopefully they will do better there. 

We are waiting for 2 days of warmer temps to put the greenhouse up. It may be April before that happens. It is 25 degrees one day and 55 the next.  It's hard to plan anything. So I will keep looking at the seed catalogs and waiting for Spring to come. I can hardly wait.

Photos will come as soon as we can get started. See you then.  

Today is January 11th. Temperature today will get up to 71 degrees.
This is NOT normal. It is winter not spring!!!
Buttercups coming up, trees with buds on them, Redbud tree with blooms on it. The bees were all over it. This is NOT normal!!
Temps will go down to 40 degrees by Monday. The poor animals and plants and birds are confused.

I can hardly wait for Spring but this is NOT normal!!! We need the cold temps to control insects. I guess a lot of them will die because the warm temps brings them out and then the cold kills them. But this is ridiculous. Even I, have a hard time knowing what to wear and how much.

But, we can't control the weather. We take what we get and live with it. So, I will try to wait patiently for Spring to come. I just hope I can continue to feed the birds, squirrels, deer and turkeys. They can be rather picky about their food. Spoiled wildlife!!!