HOW THE GARDEN LOOKS

These are purple peppers... supposedly very hot! The stems are purple, the underside of the leaves...and the leaf veins and of course, the peppers are all purple. (Those little purple things are the peppers!) The entire plant is

about 12" high and the peppers are the size of your finger nail. There are 6 of these plants in different parts of the garden. I think they have a special name, but to me they are just the 'purple peppers'. Jeff ordered a lot of heirloom seeds by color this year, trying to make the garden look different and inviting to pollinators...but still no bees.

This is a photo of the garden taken through my bedroom window. This year, all our supports are PCV pipe held together with different plumbing joints (elbow's, 45's. T's, 4-ways) and hammered into the ground. (The guys in the plumbing department at Lowe's ask what we're building now every time we go in!) Nothing is glued together. Some of these pipes started out as the frame to the greenhouse we had over the gutter garden and the plastic covering the peas this spring and will be used this fall to extend the season for the peppers and tomatoes. The miniature apple tree(about 10' high) in the middle of the photo...with the hummingbird feeder in it...doesn't have any apples again this year. Last year we got 2 beautiful, perfect apples but the late frost got the blossoms this year. Our neighbor's trees are bare, too.

We're using garden net on most of the trellis's this year and the beans and squash are doing quite well. Jeff saw a video online about using slings with the trellis's and we talked about putting a sling of pantyhose on the fruit as it gets big to take pressure off the stem so I sacrificed what was left of my navy blue pantyhose since I won't be needing them any longer. This butternut squash, one of several and the largest on that trellis,

is about 8" long. Without the sling, the squash hung down and covered the blossom you can see below it. Jeff planted several kinds of melons and squash...including watermelon...and I think using the slings will let them get bigger, and maybe riper, on the vine. It will keep the watermelon off the ground, too.

The hot, dry weather has been a real obstacle this year. We're on a well but Jeff has still been watering at least every other day. He tills between the rows and hoes around the plants...in fact, that's the plan for today. The soil is very fine with all the leaves and compost he's added and holds moisture very well but Jeff's not quite satisfied with the results. We've been harvesting seeds as some of the spring vegetables bolted. I collected broccoli flowers the other night and got too close to the mustard plants, being rewarded with a nice raised rash on my arm...that itches and burns like the dickens...but it got me relieved of my collecting duties. However, I can still knit!! I've got another size 2 pinstripe sweater about half finished and as soon as that's done I want to do a girl's sweater in Red Heart's new With Love in 'bluebell' that I'll use the ladybug buttons I got at JoAnn's on (Some of our old friends from camp drove down for lunch last week and Paula told me that's where I'd find them.) Photos to follow for both those sweaters. Family and friends have been stopping over to see the garden after hearing us talk about it and we're always willing to show them around. I'd say the gate's always open but we don't have a gate but you get the idea, huh?

p.s. got to say something about retirement: It's heaven! Too bad it's wasted on the elderly. There still aren't enough hours in a day to do all that I want to do but I'm doing so much more than just going to work and coming home!