Butterfly visitor

I love walking down to the garden in the morning. It's a small garden, but I seem to always find something neat. My sunflowers opened yesterday. I only have 4 very tall sunflowers growing that I planted in the spring. One opened fully, another is half way there. The other two, still growing.

I planted several sunflowers for the fall on the side of our house for my neighbors to see. The kids also planted pumpkins with it. I hope it looks cute come fall.

The Squash is coming, The Squash is coming!!!!!!!

Yippee!!!!!!!

Again, my garden is a mystery this year. My garden stakes failed me. Not sure what these are, lol. Could be: Acorn, butternut, long island pumpkin, little pumpkins, big pumkins, and honestly, not sure if I planted summer squash, lol. The bottom two look like summer squash. Next year. I'm keeping a journal. writing it down.

I'm VERY excited to see these :)

Another Garden surprise this morning :)

This morning I found my spreading petunia with a flower. I started this from seed indoors in February. I started many of them, but this was the only one that made it when I planted them outdoors. I totally expected it to flower MONTHS ago, but it waited until today, July 19th. I'll start them from seed in January next year instead. I love spreading petunias.

Below: My luffa plant. The flower cluster. Neat plant.

Below: My grape tomato plant. I purchased this one from Lowes. I pick about ten off this plant daily for the last couple weeks.
Below: My watermelon still growing. The other one shriveled up, so I tossed it to my dogs. This one is now larger than my hand spread out. I see a couple more watermelons starting. Hope they do well.
My back yard needs to be weeded, but this still looks nice. It's our firepit area. Sadly we rarely use this area but to look at during the day. We are not night people, hard to stay up that late, lol, but we do use it at least once/summer and do smores.

Yesterday's lunch

Oh My! Yum! and Garlicky to the max! I went to the library this week, picked up the book Love Soup by Anna Thomas

Yesterday I made this, Page 350, Deconstructed Hummus Soup. The kids loved it! So did I. The recipe is easy and basic. I added the tomatoes, avocado and goat cheese which are not in the recipe. Fit just right! and looks pretty.

Tomorrow I'm making Summer Tomato and Basil Soup, page 320, using my garden tomatoes and basil. cool! and trying out one of her bread recipes, page 394, Oatmeal Molasses Bread. fun fun!

I'm still finishing my first cup of coffee, about to go out to the garden. Wonder what I'll find out there today, fun fun!

Have a great day!!!

Today's garden pics

July 15th.

Below: What I picked this morning. I decided to pick these tomatoes early. Few small leeks (the last of them), Few small onions (not sure I'll do these next year), couple grape tomatoes.

Below: yellow blossoms tucked away here and there. pretty to see.
Below: Today's Sunflower pic.
I only have about 4 sunflowers growing, three of them are about 7 or 8 feet tall! The sunflowers are from my brother's seeds.
Below: Watermelon flower.
Below: I tried to grow the three sisters here, but only one squash took and one Luffa plant. The luffa seeds I got from Target two years ago. I started the luffa indoors in Feb. From the deck I noticed the flower from the luffa plant, funny how excited I get over things like this. It's a pretty flower, in last two pics.
Sadly, I have no idea which squash this is. I'm hoping the long island pumpkin, but could be just about anything. I need to get better stakes next year, or keep a better log. Such a healthy looking plant though. Seems happy with it's spot.
The luffa flower, about the size of a baseball, pretty big.
Same flower. I can see this from the deck. What a fun surprise this morning :)
Have a great day!

Just picked

My first large tomatoes this year. Same tomatoes from last post. They turn red fast! Hmmm, what to make for dinner tonight?

Garden looking a little rough

I took these pics just a few minutes ago.

My Garden today:

My first large red tomato this year! (plant I started from seed)

sunflower, will be here soon :)

Crimson watermelon, about the size of a softball. I bought this plant

squash flower, looking healthy (started from seed)

cherry tomatoes, you can see the fried up leaves from the summer heat/no rain. (plant I started from seed)

Roma tomatoes, not plentiful, but giving me a few. Started from seed

I think watermelon leaves are the prettiest. (below)

My garden from the deck. Notice the brown grass. More rain the in forecast for this week, yippee!

I haven't spent much time in the garden, except to pick a few things here and there. We finally got some much needed rain the other day. The last rain was over 30 days ago (June 8th) which is not normal for this area. Normally we get thunderstorms rolling through and dropping rain every couple days. So my garden is looking a little rough. I have been picking cherry and grape tomatoes, a couple roma tomatoes, some peppers, few carrots. I'm hoping my squash plants produce well. I LOVE squash (butternut, little pumpkins, and big pumpkins for decoration). They seem to be happy and growing well.