Maintenance in the garden

Elephant ear bloom.  Kind of looks like a heron with a fro!

We spent today in the garden mulching and creating a garden path to the vegetable garden.  Its a work in progress.  I want to put some stepping stones on the path and flower beds on either side of it. Also, repotted plants from little seed pots.  I may have overdone the tomato plants.  Here are some pictures from the garden today.

Better Bush tomato

Those bloomin" peas!

Thinks she's boss of the garden.

The real boss of the garden

Doesn't care!

Charlotte!  The boss of the shed! Know what kind of spider she might be?

Day at the Beach

Christmas week and its in the 70's.  We went to the beach.  Enjoy the pics!

Shells we found.  One of them looks like a chicken foot!

Gardening tasks

Everyone loves chores, right?  Ha!  Raking leaves is one of my favorite chores, that is if I have a favorite chore. We rake up leaves and lots of times, have a good old leaf fight or pile them under the slide to slide in. Our Cypress tree dumped a bumch of leaves.  It is exceptionally beautiful this year.  Unfortunately, when you live in the city, trees sometimes get too big.  This one is going to have to go.  It is encroaching on our Oak tree and my vegetable garden.

In the process of removing the weeds from our garden and removing our old tomato plants, we found our rubber snake.  That snake made us jump more times this summer.  Our lab would kill that thing over and over again. I found it partially buried.  I'm sure Ruthie had something to do with it.  I pulled it up and the killing began again.  Our yard is now safe.

Broccoli all tucked in.

 

Ruthie and the snake, once again reunite

And what boy doesn't love a good snake!

What chores do you like in the garden?

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

In honor of Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, I present my flowers.  It froze last week, but today, the temperature is 75 degrees. 

Bluebonnets!

 

 I may have blooms in January!

 

 

 

 

Lavender and Marigolds The marigolds are a little worse for wear, but they are hanging on!

 

 

 

Here is my favorite knock out rose.  It starts off yellow and fades to cream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lantana!  You can't kill this stuff!

Travels

I drove to the Houston Arboretum and picked up recycled pots to plant some more plants in my shed. (Thanks to The Lazy Gardener's idea in her blog!  Then I drove to Buchanan's Native Plants.  I love that place!  Where are your favorite places to shop for seeds and garden supplies?

Gardening in the shed

The weather has been kind of cold, especially for zone 9.  It has been dropping into the 30's lately.  I have set up grow lights in the shed to start some vegetables and flowers from seed.  I even rescued an ancho pepper from the garden before the weather turned bad.  I have two peppers on the plant and some bell pepper and tomatoes growing in flats. You can see some beans growing up bamboo in a couple of pots.  Like my modified shelf?  I need some real shelves in there.  

Gardening under wrap

Here is the garden under the tarps.

 

It looks like the tomatoes are hanging in there. 

My broccoli and cabbage are doing just fine.  There is another cold front coming in Tuesday night. This time it is supposed to freeze.

 

Hay Bale gardening

We watched a few videos online about hay bale gardening and thought it would be fun to give it a whirl.  We don't have access to straw but used hay instead.  We moved the hay to the best spot in the yard for sun. We placed a sheet of cardboard underneath the hay. We stacked dirt on top of the hay bales and then put some in the middle.  Then we planted.  We put carrot seeds on one of the hay bales and rescued a pepper plant from another spot in the yard that was not going to be protected from the cold and we watered. 

 

Here is the finished product along with Josh, the gardener.  He claimed this garden.  

Winter has arrived!

It's now cold outside by south Texas terms.  The temperature dropped to the mid 40's last night.  I covered my tomatoes and green beans.  Tonight its dropping into the 30's. I hate to lose the tomatoes on the plants.  They are not full grown yet.  According to the gardening experts, if I can keep them protected through this, we should have until January before the next frost hits, plenty of time to get the tomatoes grown and harvested.  This is important to me because our spring weather was so bad that we had no tomatoes.  Usually we can get the tomatoes in the ground in mid-march and not worry about them.  This year, the cold lasted until the end of April and then it went to extreme heat within a couple of weeks.  They say if you don't like the weather in Texas, just wait 5 minutes, it will change!