More pictures of plants

A few weekends ago we did some gardening in the front yard, but never got around to posting pictures. Here they are!
The hydrangeas and holly bushes have been there for several years but just about everything else is new.

A few years ago Gina planted some ornamental cabbages along the front walk. You know, for fall, like a harvest-time kind of thing. She thought it looked cool but Thomas made fun of them! So she was pretty surprised when he picked these out at Lowe's.

Gina's favorite place in the house right now is the front porch. She brings her laptop out and does her lesson planning there. It will be so sad when it's too cold to sit out here anymore.

Bye, summer.

Some backyard improvements

We took a little break from lesson planning last weekend to do some work outside. Here's the end result: a new border to the right of the walkway. Hopefully those poor half-dead grasses will survive... we bought them several weeks ago but didn't have time to plant them right away, so they just sat out in the blazing sun in their little plastic pots until they were extra crispy. Gina has killed lots of plants this way. We added a stepping stone. See?

Things we grew that we are going to eat

This little fig tree just looked like a stick when we bought it so were surprised when it actually grew three figs.
These cantaloupes here are the size of a tennis ball. We'll have to keep Winnie away from them.

Finally

Fresh tomatoes and green beans from the garden. Yum!

T's flower pics

Strawberry blossom
Iris

Fiveleaf akebia

Sunflower closed

Sunflower open

Horrible beastly creatures

The Rudys are here and they must really think we live in the jungle. Turns out the black widow spider is not the only beast lurking in the inky shadows of the backyard. Here are some other monsters we unearthed yesterday.

Does anyone know what kind of snake this is by the way? Does it kill you by strangulation or by poison?
Gina really has a hard time with this one. There are a lot of legs here. This is much worse than the snake.

And this.

Even this bird is freaky.

This might be our last post.

We could have died!

We've had such nice weather that we decided we'd go out today and clear out the vegetable beds that we built last year. First of all, we needed to rip out and throw away all the carrots that were still there. It was kind of a waste. They just rotted.

Next we mixed in compost and fertilizer with the old dirt. For that you need a pitchfork, which Gina helpfully agreed to fetch from under the crawlspace. Even though it gives her the major heeby jeebies to go under there.

Well just look at what was lurking there in the hollow handle of the pitchfork. A deathly dangerous black widow spider who was waiting there to bite us at the first sign of spring. Smart Thomas, he looked inside the handle before he grabbed hold of it and saw the spider there. Otherwise he would have been attacked for sure. He poked it out of our pitchfork with a stick and took pictures of it before squirting it with spider spray. Then, we went back to work. We divided our beds into square-foot sections to cram a lot of plants in (kind of like this) and Thomas' reed thread works perfectly for the job. These chives here look like they survived the winter.

We planted seeds for radishes, snap peas, beets, rainbow chard, broccoli, and carrots.

We also planted baby lettuce seedlings. Just one more month until we can put everything else out!

Things around the house

Most of our seeds have sprouted and they are so cute. Our little broccoli plants wish they were outside in the sun.
These tulips have been cheerfully adorning our table.

Our newest healthy idea: berry breakfast bars. We got this recipe from You've Got Supper this week and they're delicious!

Seedy

With 60 degree temperatures all week, it sure feels like spring around here. We did a little research online and saw that the frost free date for Greensboro is April 22, and that's only 9 1/2 weeks away. Time to start planting seeds!

You need vegetables to survive, so this type of project certainly takes precedence over dissertation writing.
You can see one of our future delicious dinners right here.

Tomatoes

We don't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but we went out tonight and picked every last tomato from the garden. It's so cold at night and we don't want them to freeze to death.

We even picked the tiny ones.

Winnie doesn't care if they are ripe or not. He loves all fruits and vegetables.
Hopefully they will all ripen in the kitchen window.

Home Sweet Home

Thomas found these Johannesbeeren at Harris Teeter.

He made the most delicious Thomas cakes out of them, along with some blueberries. Here they are before:
And after. They didn't last long.

The carrots from the garden are ready now. We're trying some tonight.

Cucumber

Garden

Our little carrot

We knew the carrots in the garden weren't ready yet, but we decided to yank one up anyway to see what it looked like. Turns out it just looks like a tiny carrot. Winnie is a real vegetable enthusiast, so he had to have a peek too.

Peas

Coleus Farm: Before and After

Here's the side of the house before we did a little gardening...And after.

Thomas ripping out the grass with a pickaxe. It's a hard job, but Thomas is a beast and he cleared it quickly.

We've had a "coleus farm" next to the kitchen window since last summer. They are easily propogated; if you pinch off a branch and put it in water, you get a new plant. Thomas turned last year's 6 plants into 30 or so. All the excitement has turned us into coleus pinching thieves. We acquired a few new varieties from the zoo parking lot last week.