My Not So Secret Garden

Seeds of Change was having a contest on facebook. They displayed 3 pictures of flowers on their facebook page and contestants had to be the first to correctly guess the popular AND scientific names of each flower. And guess what? I won! They told me to pick 3 seed packets from their catalogue and they would ship them to me. I picked Dragon Carrot, Rosa Bianca Eggplant, and Cherokee Purple Tomato. As A bonus they sent me one packet each of the flowers that I guessed correctly. How Nice! The packets the seeds came in are really neat too. They are a light weight plastic that reseal. That means next time I forget my seeds outside and it rains, They wont all be ruined! YAY! Here are the pictures that where given for people to guess on: Mckanna's Columbine Aquilegia vulgaris Everlasting Starflower Scabiosa stellata Pacific Beauty Calendula Calendula Officinalis

As of today we will have recieved 40 inches of snow this winter. By Monday that is supposed to go up to 44 inches. Thats double our average amount of snowfall that we usaually get. We've still got 2 months of this! I've got snow piles taller than me in my front yard, some of which the poor dog has fallen into and gotten stuck. I think it's safe to say I'm ready to be done with the snow. Who knows when I'll be able to start my garden- I'm sure it will take forever for the ground to dry up once the snow has melted. Right now all I'm left t do if shuffle through seed catalogues and read Garden blogs. My favorite catalogues have turned out to be Johnney's, Seed Savers Exchange, and Baker Creek. Johnney's seems to have alot of the traditional what I'm expecting when I think about vegetables kind of stuff. SSE and Bakers Creek have some of the more exotic heirloom types. I think I'll get a bit from each catalogue. As for Garden blogs acouple o...

Forbes Magazine recently chose Monsanto as its "Company Of The Year". At first I thought it was some kind of sick joke. I was wrong. How Forbes could have done this in good conscience I'll never understand. Besides pushing family farmers out of business by coercion and harassment , Monsanto has something comparable to a monopoly on seed. This not to mention the problems I have with their chemicals and GMO's . Shame on you Forbes!

Here is my first watermelon! I'm not sure if it will ripen before the cold weather gets here but it's worth a shot. It looks kind of ucky, but the black stuff on it is just flowers peices with mud on them. It's been raining here quite bit. Speaking of rain, A storm 2 nights ago blew my pole beans down :( Just as they were really getting going. I managed to prop them back up and spent an hour picking beans. I also had alot of tomatoes, banana peppers and cucumbers out there as well. My Yellew Bell Peppers finally turned yellow! I picked a bunch of those too! By the time I got back in my counter was full. I didnt have time to can everything, so I froze it. I ended up with 5 quart bags of peppers, 1 bag eggplant, and 2 bags of green beans (and yes, I blanched them first) I also picked 2 red habeneros for mom. I hope shes hungry... I only have about a million more out there. This huge tomato snuck up on me. It looks to be two tomatoes stuck together but I think I'll co...

The odd plant thats in my frontyard has taken over. I think it must grow a foot a day!I was thinking it must be a pumpkin of some kind, but now I dont think I'll ever know! It has bloomed and has many more blooms ready, but they are all male flowers though. The big blooms stay open for just a few hours then they close up and fall off the next day. Oh well Jer likes it so I guess it will stay out there until fall. I thought this was too pretty to leave out. Its an upsclose picture of the flower of the odd plant. This rainbow is from a couple days ago. I was driving home and it seemed to stretch all the way across town. You can just barely see it right above the garage. It was a nice cap to the day... It had rained all day and cleared up just long enough for this.

Here it is in action. It took a while to figure out just how much heat I needed to make it work properly. First it jiggled too fast, then too slow. I eventually got it just right. Here's what I got done today. 4 Strawberry jams and 2 1/2 mushroom spaghetti sauces. I didnt know you werent supposed to only fill a jar 1/2 way if thats all you had. Oops. I guess I will have to use that soon. All of the jars popped close, but my jam did not set well. Its kind of runny :( Oh well I'm sure it will taste good on biscuits or on Ice cream.

Its entirely too hot to do anything! I got 3 clematis plants and a couple clumps of daylilies off of craigslist, but its too hot to go plant them . I think they will sit in the garage for a couple hours until it cools down.