garden update...

We've been so busy (buzzzy?) getting the honeybees settled into their new home that we've forgotten to keep updated on the garden progress.  (bee stories to come!)

So it's early June here at Flannel Jammies Farm and so much is happening!  We're harvesting daily... lettuces, Swiss chard, sugar snap peas, beets, carrots, strawberries, garlic, and so many herbs.  Here are some photos from around our little urban 'farm'...

 Oh, the tomatoes to come!!!  So, we always grow too many and we tried to cut back this year, but who can resist a favored variety?  A few that we're growing this year are Juliet, Super Cherry 100, Yellow Pear, Purple Cherokee, Green Zebra, Mr. Stripey, Lemon Boy, Mountain Pride, and Brandywine.  (I'm sure there are more varieties out there... the hubs is very sneaky about tucking them into oft-ignored corners of the garden.)

Peppers are always wonderful performers in our garden.  This year we're growing green Bell, Anaheim, Cubanelle, and Jalapeno.

The Sugar Ann sugar snap peas are enjoying a second flush of delicious pods.

Carrots (Danvers Half Long, Chantenay Red Core, Cosmic Purple, and Parisienne) are finishing out the season happily next to just-getting-started Calima bush beans and Romano bush beans.

The cucumber trellises are filling in nicely with pickling varieties and a Market More (on the leaf-shaped trellis).

Potato towers are going gangbusters with Carola and Rose Finn Apple Fingerling varieties (and, again, with some rogue already-sprouted-in-the-kitchen potatoes slipped in by YouKnowWho).

There are also eggplant varieties, a couple of squashes out by the road, asparagus, onions, and Swiss chard.  The radishes, kale, and spinach are done for the summer season, but will return again in Autumn.

The bee and butterfly bed is growing and beginning to bloom with lilies, black-eyed Susan, Shasta daisy, lamb's ears, coneflowers, bee balm, butterfly bush, and blueberries, with vitex, sedum, and nandina nearby.  Oh, and we're growing our own wine bottles, of course (wink!).

And speaking of wine bottles, a new crop was just planted (creating garden borders for the small veggie beds in the front/side yard).

The woodland garden is lovely, green, and my favorite variegated, lace-cap hydrangea is blooming!

Part of that woodland garden is a tall, tall river birch tree.  It's so pretty and whispers and sways in the wind, but the hubs is allergic to it.  So much so that every time he works in the woodland area, he has terrible allergy symptoms for a couple of days.  That birch is scheduled to go, sadly.

Thanks for wandering in through the garden gate...

we are blessed

by working this green earth,

by the grace-filled rains and light from the Lord,

by the pollinating friends helping things to grow,

and by your visit today.