Tales from the Garden

I haven't been posting about our gardens simply because it's not very interesting. Don't get me wrong, it looks well tended and is filling in nicely and maybe that's the problem. Too low maintenance. Isn't that what all gardeners long for though? All I've been doing is weeding and dead-heading, and occasionally adding a plant or two that have germinated (inside, on a window ledge) along with store bought plants and flowers. Everything is pretty much where I want, with the exception of some spring bulbs which have to be dug up first, and I shouldn't really do that until September/October. We're trying to grow back the grass (from seed) where the yard was dug up for drainage and for the stairway to hell. We have been very successful growing grass, so I'm not worried about whether it'll grow or not... Here's a before and after of some grass we've grown from seed:


Back to the garden... When the weather was really nice in February and March I did a lot of gardening- moving plants around, adding more bulbs, et cetera, etc. Then the weather changed and spring came in the form of a 3 month long rainfall followed by our lack of sunshine summer (until recently). A couple of weekends ago we found a dead rat (could have been the same one that was in my compost bin) in a little garden by the garage. Derek took some pictures of it, but don't worry, I'm not going to post them... I will however post some pics of the gardens:

clockwise from left: "claret" sunflower- seeds from Thompson & Morgan; gladiolus from my neighbour Laura infront of the butterfly bush; a miniature purple rose that Ella was given by her grandparents for performing in her last ballet show, also a really cool rock from Jody; a beautiful smelling butterfly bush (and yes, it really does attract butterflies!); a cute little purple clematis I found in the backyard when Derek was digging the retaining wall; a corner of the secret shady garden that looks out onto the park (not shown); some sedum, hollyhock (grown from seed) and lotsa pretty little dead nettle. centre: our pumpkin vine is about 6'long and hopefully we'll be able to harvest at least 2 pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns (check back in October)

I guess it's really not that boring... after all, we've eaten a whole whack o' carrots, about 5 green beans, peas, strawberries, 4 blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb (yet to be harvested), and of course zucchini!
mmmm, it was good, too