Planting geraniums.

We scouted them out a month ago. When Daddy was out of town for days and days and I was about to lose my mind a little bit. I loaded up my little men in the car, along with our giant stroller that could double as a minivan on three wheels, and we went to the happiest place I could think of - Pike's Nursery. Everett is truly my son when it comes to plants and greenery and florals and whatnot. He and I are usually the only people at Pike's under the age of 60 but we lovvvve it. (Daxton has not quite caught on to the family adoration for this place, that child better learrrrrrn). We do this frequently, we walk all the aisles and sniff only the beautiful things and discuss landscape color schemes and Everett puts his hands in all the water fountains and I have to keep him from knocking over the $800 stone statues of frogs and it just makes me feel so close to him because it's like, he gets me.

Like, yesterday, he looked at me and said, "Mom, I love those hydrangeas you picked out." What a freaking blessing this blessed little angel from Heaven is. Also, he says hydrangeas like, "high-dangerous" which I love so much so I don't think I will ever correct him.

Anyway, the purpose of our little field trip last month was to scout out the wonders of my favorite deer resistant, all-summer-long-blooming flower - geraniums. We decided that we liked all the colors instead of just picking one type and that we would come back after the 15th of April, when the chance of frost in our area was finally minimal.

We had a good bit of landscaping done this past month - some diseased trees needed to be removed from our property so we decided to get them taken down and add some new flowers, shrubs and trees to freshen the place up. What a difference it has made! With the newborn situation (AKA the not sleeping situation), we opted to have someone help us out with all the work this time around, which I thought would be hard since I love doing all the planting myself but - who am I kidding - it was extremely wonderful to have someone else do it. But me and Everett decided we wanted to plant the geraniums ourselves, because it's kind of become our thing, so we did our thing. Everett used his new gardening gear, courtesy of the Easter Bunny.

I am not winning at life right now. I am not super mom or super wife or super friend or super rested, but I am winning in love, my friends. These little boys fill me with so much joy and I am the luckiest to call them my own. My little Everett has been so good the past few months. adjusting beautifully to having a new baby bro around. He is definitely aware of the attention being shifted from him to Daxton, so Stevie and I are doing our best to be intentional with both of them with our energy and time. It's so good for his heart and mine, finding these little pockets of time where we can do "our things" together and keep our laughter and love at the center of everything.

Things have changed. It's a brand new season. Which calls for new flowers pots. I fear its just a matter of time before I start collecting lawn gnomes, friends.

The 3 Plants That Are Killing it in My Summer Garden.

And by killing it, I mean rocking. And by rocking, I mean growing like crazy and producing all over the place. All this Georgia heat has caused a lot of my herbs to bolt and go to flower too quickly (sad day, I know), but there are a few things that are absolutely on fire, in terms of production and growth.

1. Cherry Tomatoes.
These bad boys are so stinkin' cute. Their process of turning from green to red is really striking, and for some reason they have just gone to town, producing so so much. Next year I know to add a few more of these plants (and buy taller stakes for them, because holy cow.)

2. Zinnias.
I added these to the back border of my garden, in hopes of adding a pop of color to the vegetable garden. I wasn't sure how well they would do, since I was planting them from seeds, and I've had very mixed success rates with growing flowers from seeds. But these are popping up in reds, golds, oranges, pinks and yellows! They are so gorgeous and big that I feel like a regular grocery store flower department. I've been cutting these and putting them in tall vases around the house and I feel so farm girl. Sigh. If you come over, I'll send you home with one :)

3. Celebrity Tomatoes.
These are the fattest, juiciest tomatoes ever. I can't believe how satisfying it is to look out my window and see these gigantic tomatoes growing in my own little garden box. It's a strangely wonderful feeling, knowing my soil and water grew such healthy, vigorous tomatoes. And you guys - they taste so good. Stevie has been making these sliced skillet-fried tomatoes coated in a bread crumb/flour situation and they are seriously savory.

In case you're wondering what my child does while I tend to the garden. I'll be honest, it's turned into a weedy jungle out there, because I've been pregnant and it's been hot. etc., but I am finally feeling energetic and able to get back at it! Everett throws the frisbee at my head every time. It's scary how accurate this kid has gotten with a disk.

My basil should get an honorable mention, because this particular batch is actually doing quite well. I had one purple batch that grew like crazy and then went bitter really early in the season.

And the you have it! Any suggestions for what I should try in my fall garden? Because I am already making lists of new vegetables and flowers I want to plant...

In the Garden, Vol. 3

You might think that this is the time of year that the garden is napping. Not producing. That's sort of what I thought might happen. Not so, my friends. Things are really getting fun out in those garden beds! I spent some time winterizing my little patch of earth and I wanted to share the progress with you.

Since we had 70+ degree weather here this weekend (in December!!!), my plants have been getting a little confused. My strawberry plants started flowering, which means they are preparing to bear fruit, but I don't want that to happen yet! It's sure to freeze here before winter is said and done, and I don't want my poor little strawberries to give up all their energy into a lost cause. I called Pike's and they told me to prune back the delicate little ballet-pink flowers. But I thought I would snap a shot for you before I had to end things :)

Aww that strawberry flower is seriously the sweetest.

Unfortunately, both varieties of lettuce (Galactic - the purple above, and Romaine - the green above) bolted from all this hot-cold weather. What is bolting? Well, it's pretty obvious when you look at them. They shoot up tall reeeeeeally fast, and then the unfortunate flower comes up from the top. In most plants, you want to see the flower, but with lettuce, that means, as my master gardener friend Dana puts it, "It's time to throw a wake, because that plant's life is over." Basically, the lettuce turns bitter and stops producing new leaves. See this little flower?

It means it's OVER. Pull it up. Till the ground. Start fresh. Sad day.

But also happy! Because I planted some peas and beets and loooooooook!

Pea babies:

And beet babies:

Just some tender little chutes. So cute. I might have planted the peas a little too close together because they will eventually get vine-y, but see, I have this problem with spatial reasoning. I just want to maximize my earth as much as possible and smash all my plants together so they just hug and love each other. But. I don't think I'm supposed to. I'm hoping that the fact that both of these varieties are supposed to thrive through the winter will sort of cancel out the fact that everything is planted in pretty tight quarters. I'm smiling right about now. Because I just re-read that sentence.

Another thing that's supposed to rock in the winter is kale, and I am growing two types:

Red Russian Kale: (hahah it's mis-marked in my garden. I had to google it to figure out why my blue kale was coming up red - because it's not blue kale!!)

and my Blue Dwarf Kale:

I feel pretty proud of these plants, because I grew all of them from seeds. Some of the others in my garden I bought as little plants, but I grew the kale from scratch all by myself. Heart swell.

I tried to pull up my carrots for Thanksgiving, but they just aren't ready yet! Look at these cutie tops. I can just see Bugs Bunny snapping a long bite with his toothy chompers :)

The Most Improved Player award goes to the cauliflower. Yes, the cauliflower. Remember when the #*%$ caterpillars decimated my cauliflower plants and left nothing to salvage? Well, slowly but surely, ONE of those plants has been resurrected to life. It's trying so hard to live, you guys. This plant is a fighter. Check it out:
 

See that little white cauliflower head tucked inside? I'm super curious to see how this is going to go.

I might have made a rash mistake with my radishes. I'm growing two types. See, a while ago, when I planted the radish seeds, only a few actually grew. And out of those few seedlings nothing actually produced the vegetable. Such a disappointment. So I threw a TON more seed out and tried again. This time, a flabbergasting amount of seedlings emerged, and instead of thinning them out (which is what you're supposed to do), I just wanted to see all of them grow. To make up for the ones that never grew. Welllllll. Now there is an enormous mess of radish tops and I have no idea how to distinguish one radish from the next. Oops. Overcompensation problems over here. Rookie mistake.

It's also very possible that no vegetable will be produced out of this either, because the probably don't have enough room under the earth to grow. I feel like I am learning so much about life from this little garden experiment of mine. Plants need room to grow! People need room to grow! And time! And love and care and nurturing! See. I bet you're pretty dumbfounded by those insights right about now.

Okay, it's fine if you're not. I'm alone in my dumbfoundedness. Typical.

Let's ooh and ahh.

Oh, my Japanese Maple. This shot was taken before Thanksgiving and it has since forfeited all it's lovely leaves. I love you, Maple. I luh you.

I'll leave you with one last plant that was a total surprise. A camellia! These bushes are awesome because they are evergreen throughout the entire year, and they actually produce gorgeous lush flowers in the winter. We all need some flowers in the winter, right?? This bush was a head scratcher for me, because since we moved in I wasn't sure what it actually was. I'm sure glad I didn't rip is up with some of the others! I definitely had some boughts of crazy where I went outside and tore up a ton of bushes to make way for this little garden of mine. Stevie was NOT happy. But this one, this escaped my manic episode.

Camellia!

To winterize the entire garden, I trimmed some unruly weeds, plucked out all the ragged leaves that had fallen into the beds and laid down some fresh black mulch. Mmm I love some black mulch. It's so striking. When it gets to be later in the winter season, it will be time to seriously prune a lot of the plants and bushes for the spring. And probably feed them something organic. I don't really know. My google searches are so dorky, "How to make hydrangeas pretty" and "I didn't thin my radishes and now they are crazy??" It's just one big experiment, friends.

If you have garden advice, can you tell that I need some? Talk to me!

Garden Update Vol.2

Oh, the garden. My, I have learned a lot since I started gardening. I had my first harvest this past week - my radish seeds reached their days of maturity and some lettuce was ready to be plucked. Exciting times in the garden world. So I scampered out in the hazy drizzle and fetched my fair food. And the things I found!

Out of all my radishes, this is the only one that came to maturity. This particular variety is supposed to be long and thin, but this clearly didn't grow to it's full potential. I looked up the variety and tried to figure out why mine didn't grow big enough, and apparently, you have to wait a lot longer for the fall harvest than in the spring. Oops. I was probably premature in picking this one, even though I followed the instructions. So, no radishes for now. But you can see below that I planted a whole slew of more of em, so hopefully I will enjoy a radish salad before winter's end.

While I was harvesting, my gorgeous husband dug up bushes and moved them around the yard for me. When we moved into the house, our box garden was full of bushes and thick hedges. Little by little, we are moving them so that I have more room to grow vegetable plants. He doesn't love that I'm doing this, because he thinks the bushes are pretty, but he is kind to me. (Seriously though, look at that plant in his hand - it's not that pretty.) So he's been moving them for me. I really had to make some room this time, too, because I had a ton of kale that I've been growing from seeds that had to be transplanted into the ground. So another hedge bit the dust. Or you know, got moved to the side of the house. EXCITING STUFF YOU GUYS. I know you are riveted.

My new radish sprouts! This variety will look like the traditional radishes you buy in the grocery store. I mean, hopefully they will look like that. In like 6-8 weeks.

Carrot tops! Cute, right??!

My lettuce is seriously lush. Leafy. And yummy :)

Radish top.

Oh, my heart breaks. This is my sad, sad cauliflower. I hate the demon caterpillars and the havoc they wreaked in my garden. I've plucked off over 60 caterpillars from these leaves, clinging to the underbelly of the leaves and creeping deep inside the plants - it's truly alarming how much damage those little guys can do. I concocted an organic garden spray to ward them off, but I ended up bleaching out the leaves and now the plants look worse than ever. Diseased. They're not diseased, they're just bleached. And eaten through. What's a girl to do??

SAD CAULIFLOWER.

I'm not going to lie. I've been praying for them.

But oh! A bowl full of lettuce! I actually learned a lesson after harvesting this time around. I picked too much! I only need to pick what we will actually eat on any given day, because otherwise the left overs wilt. Like I said, I'm learning! Only pick your salad for the evening.

My lettuce babies. Such good babies.

Is that creepy sounding? Stevie says it is.

But.

They are my babies. I grew them. I tended to them. I watered them when it was annoying to do so and fed them fancy organic plant food and, you know. That's it. That's pretty much all I did.

You're about to see it. That move I've always wanted to do.

LETTUCE BABIES!!!

And that's the update! Things are growing over here! I'm excited to see how everything does as we really transition into fall. Apparently, the cooler temperatures are supposed to help the lettuce and kale taste sweeter. So we will see how that goes. Thanks for coming to my garden, friends!