Garden Odds and Ends

Last winter, we couldn't play outback, because of the snow. We know! You'd think a snowstorm would make a great time to play outback! But, it was two 24+ inch snowstorms with a couple of 12 inchers thrown in, so we couldn't even see above the snow! (Mommy did tackle it a few times to feed the poor birdies.)

Well, we weren't sure if the snow and salt, (since you need salt to melt ice), damaged any of our plants. We're happy to report little damaged. We're sad to report our favorite container didn't survive though. We had a coffee cup container that we loved. The snow broke it.

Here is a photo of our old coffee cup.

Fuzzy Wuzzy took some damage, too. He's our teddy bear ivy topiary. He's a little browner than usual, a'cuz many ivy leaves have died. Anyone know if we're a'posed to remove the dead leaves? Ivy leaves aren't a'posed to die, so we don't know.

Sixty inches of snow were removed from our front steps last winter. Every time snow was removed, we added salt to the steps, so our postman wouldn't slip. As you can tell, we don't have a front yard, so 60 inches of snow from our steps had to land on this container. We were worried the plants would get too much salt, but they haven't! That bush is our forsythia. (We bought it last spring, so this was its first winter with us. We got a tiny branch of flowers, but it went straight to leaves. Beary strange!) The plant hanging over the front is our ground phlox blooming. The leaves sticking up behind it are our Stella D'oro daylilies. Everything survived the big snows!

Our Welcome sign fell down again. It does that sometimes, but we didn't have time to put it up quickly, so Mommy flopped it under a table. Why are we showing you our composter? Because of what she found under the sign when she moved it after it rained – worms! So what? Did you notice our garden is on cement? Worms don't come to our yard often. We found one last summer, and stuck it in our composter. We think it was a mommy and had lots of babies. We placed all those worms into our composter, so now we have a full-fledged worm farm! Now, we have to compost. Kehehehehe

We also lost a decorative watering can in the winter. The spout fell off. It's below the Clematis. (That's the big flowery vine.) We're still getting around to gluing the spout back, but that was the extent of damage over the winter. Cool, huh?

The Clematis was really blooming, so we have lots of pictures to show. We'll show some with other beauties climbing on them, the next time we blog. But we wanted to show this beautiful bloom now.

And speaking of pretty flowers, here is our flower container this year. Mommy got worried that we didn't have enough flowers last summer, so bought a mixed container of flowers to continue all summer. She's made a new tradition for our garden. (We've always had flowers in our garden. She just gets worried. Kehehehehehe)

But, mostly our garden is to eat fresh stuff, so we wanted to show you something we will eat – spinach! It's not ready yet, and was a bit naked in the middle, so we sowed more seeds. Last fall, (yes, you can grow spinach twice in one season 'round here, just as long as it's not too hot), this entire container was filled, giving us enough spinach for one dinner. Kehehehehehe But, how else are you going to get kids to eat their spinach, if you don't show them how to grow it?

Oh, and we just had to show this picture! This isn't in our garden, but Mommy likes these bare bears.

That's it for the day. More to come.