The garden path

This is the path between the raspberries and the hops

You can see that I laid landscape cloth down and now

I'm covering it with pine needles from under the Spanish pines for weed control.

This path is especially hard to weed, so Eric sprayed Round up while I held a large piece of cardboard to protect the plants from getting round up.

That was a challenging job. Now that the weeds are gone I decided to take a safer and time saver approach to the narrow path dilemma.

I also placed soaker hoses along the berries and the hops for more direct watering,

a water saver and back saver.

Golden Plum Tree

Yellow plum jam in the background.

I give jars of jam away at Christmas.

This is the color of the yellow plums, the juice is in the background and the pulp is in the bowl.

I add just a little juice to the pulp when making the jam.

Making juice and plum pulp is made into jam

They yellow plum tree is the first tree that blooms in the garden

The yellow plum has a nice size and shape when it's ripe it's golden yellow

This tree never fails to have a great year of production.

We make juice, jam and eat them fresh.

Lilacs

The lilac is starting bloom

The lilac bushes are just outside our bedroom window.

We are slowly trying to bring the lilac bushes below the gutter.

You prune them after they bloom. I'm going to prune the lilac to the height of the middle

of the windows and maybe try to make a hedge out of them.

We will see how this works.

I found a bird nest in these lilacs and now it sits on the dining room buffet table.

I love the fragrance and they are great in a vase in the house.

Iris

Daffodils, and Purple Iris planted around the hot tub.

The iris came from John and Marilyn's farm house in Turner, Oregon.

John's grandmother planted them around the house. John and Marilyn were re-doing the foundation and removed the iris and were burning most of them in the burn pile.

These were the ones that I brought home and planted.

They have since filled in.

I've since read that after the Iris bloom you dig them up and add compost in the bed,

rototiller in then replant the iris.

I need to remember to take pictures of the blooms this year.

Yucca

My parent had a large yucca plant in their yard and it fell over one year 

they dug it up and had a lot of roots. 

They gave me some of the root. 

I tried to make shampoo out of most of the roots. 

But I saved one root and planted it in this pot. 

Now I have a yucca plant. 

Grapes

I don't know the types of grapes we have but they taste great.

There are green grapes.

There are purple grapes and red grapes.

We were blessed with this grape arbor, we painted the arbor green at first but when we built the new arbor black iron arbor for the kiwi we painted this arbor black to match.

The harvest of the grapes haven't been more than a large bowl full.

There are too many large trees competing for the sun.

We just eat the grapes fresh one year I did make one jar of juice.

I'm hoping to get some old sawdust or compost to mound over the grapes to fertilize them.

I put a soaker hose around them to keep them watered.

Fig Tree

This fig tree in by the front driveway. 

The fruit is ready in August. 

I have pruned this fig tree aggressively so that you don't get whacked when walking by it. 

I also have been pruning so it doesn't touch the house and have brought it down to the height of the gutter of the house. It use to be so tall and fuller. 

This is what the fruit look like, this fruit has some time before it's ripe. 

When you eat the fig you eat the skin in all. The fruit is very sweet. 

One year I had three 5 gallon buckets of figs. 

I love to eat them fresh off the tree. 

They make great jam, and are also good dried. 

I planted a little King fig tree in the back garden and today I saw little figs on it. 

How exciting it will be the first year it has figs. 

I look forward to seeing how those figs taste. 

A tree with expression

This tree has expression Nate and Lissa gave me this one year I have it by the tree house. 

Isaac's Garden

Nate and Lissa after they planted Isaac's tree

The tree has grown a bit since they planted it

We planted a tree in memory of our first grandson Isaac.

Nate and Lissa picked out the red Maple tree and Nate planted it.

Lissa found a rock on the beach and painted it with Isaac's name and date.

Then Eric and I bought a concrete bench top and placed large bricks for legs.

I planted sea thrifts because they reminded me of the flowers in the movie Horton hears a who

In the fall This is was the color of the tree, I planted mums around the tree

Isaac Andrew Forbes

October 16, 2007

As time goes on I will try to improve this area of the yard

I call it Isaac's garden

Just this week I planted cascade hops along the back fence

Early this year I planted some blue berry bushes

Last year I planted a butterfly bush

Just this week I realized Isaac would have been a year old because he was due in April.

I look forward to seeing him in heaven some day.

In the mean time I will continue to make his garden special.

Kiwi

This is the drawing of the fence we had built. 

We actually took a kiwi leaf and the ironwork man mimic it to create the vines on the gate. 

This is what the Kiwi fruit looks like they are ready to eat in December. 

One year we had a 5 gallon bucket of Kiwi fruit, so I made Kiwi jam.

This is the Kiwi arch, we took down the old rotted wood arch and had a steel arch built. 

We decided to gets creative and had metal kiwi vines made on the gate. 

When we had the new fence made they built it around the Kiwi trunk, so the trunk becomes part of the fence.

Unfortunately when we had the new arbor built the female Kiwi plant died due to root exposure. 

So For Christmas Eric bought me a new female Kiwi plant. 

We will see how long before we will have Kiwi again. 

Kiwi can be aggressively pruned because it grows so fast. 

Bleeding Hearts

Forget me nots and bleeding hearts just off the back deck

Bleeding heart do well in the NW and come up year after year

Rubber Tree Ring

I ordered 3 rubber tree rings for the 3 trees in our back lawn. They are heavy and look like shredded walnut colored bark. I like them because they keep the weeds and grass out of the area that they lay. I can mow over them. Water can still get to the tree, and it maintains the circle around the tree nice and neat. They can be kind of spendy but I consider them an investment. I also look at the fact that I don't have to replace bark year after year which is spendy. The rings cost $49 to $80 depending on the size you get. They can be ordered from Gardener Supplies. 

We cut down 2 old apple trees

We cut down 2 old apple trees and took the trunk and cut the trunk into seat high logs to sit around the fire. 

Container Storage

Nate and Eric built this fence box the side you see opens like a gate. Inside this lovely fence box is all our containers for planting. No more pile of ugly pots by the cherry tree. The pile of pots didn't bother me as much as it bothered Eric. I'm glad it bothered Eric because this is really nice.

Berry Support

The finial on the top of the berry support. 

I found this old horse shoe when digging in the garden. 

The berries are coming to life

We built this berry support 2 years ago for the berry plants that Nate and Lissa bought me for my birthday one year. This year the berries should produce. 

Electric & Power

Eric is bringing power to the greenhouse

The water is up and running

Basil

I planted Basil seed and they came up over 150 seedlings. I gave some to some friends and a flat to my parents.

When Eric builds me a new raised bed I will plant a lot of basil for pesto and fresh eating.

Hops

I received my hops from Territorial Seed company by UPS the day before yesterday. I planted them yesterday. They were live plants in special boxes. 

We will see how they do planted in Isaac's garden.

Soaker Hoses

When I purchased some new soaker hoses for the garden I found that Bimart had 50' soaker hoses that had a 7 year warranty. These new soaker hoses look better than the old hoses they had last year. 

Lets see if they last 7 years.

Soaker hoses

I find that soaker hoses are convenient, but have a short life span.

Due to intense sun and cat chewing my soakers hoses are lucky if they survive a years season. There have been a few die harts that have lasted longer. 

I need to put cat bowls of water all around the yard so my cat doesn't chew threw the soakers hoses. 

We now bring our hoses in for the winter so they last longer. 

But even then the soaker hoses do get brittle from the hot summer sun. 

Today I was placing all the soaker hoses where they needed to go securing them with landscape staples. 

Most all the hoses looked like they were in good condition until I hooked up the one for the hops and raspberries. I screwed in the hose to the faucet, carefully laying down the hose in position and placing the landscape staples then I went to turn on the water and a blow out occured at the screw in connection site. Yes the hose broke because it was brittle. 

That means a new 50' soaker hose, I notice also we are short two other soaker hoses one from the back yard and one from the front yard so that means 3- 50' soaker hoses. 

I consider that repair and replacement. 

Off to Bimart for soaker hoses we go and Home Depot for Landscape staples.

When you have an acre to water the less hoses to drag around the better. I still have to move hoses for watering pots, window boxes, raised beds, green house plants and lawn. 

But having soaker hoses for beds saves me a lot of work.

There is the flowers by the driveway, 

The peas and hydrangias by the black iron fence

The lavender, sage and pansies in the front bed

The grapes

The roses 

The hops and raspberries

The plants behind the living room 

Black Iron gate and fencing

We had built 2 iron gate and black fencing last year it is beautiful. 

But over the long winter and heavy rains the fencing and gates need a bit of paint touch up. 

The rust is coming threw.

I pulled out 4 cans of black rustoeum black gloss paint and started painting. 

It looks like I will need to buy more paint cans.

Pansies in stress

I planted pansies along the heather and the rains have kept them healthy and going strong. Now that the rain is off and one I needed to help these stressed plants.

Not only were they wilting but the bugs have come in to make them dinner.

So this morning I put down the soaker hoses with the landscape staples to hold the hoses down.

Then I powdered the plants with Diatomaceous earth, this will kill the bugs not the plants.

Pansies are a cool weather plant and now the weather is getting warmer I'm not sure how much longer they will last.

I guess we will see.

Until then we will help them out with a little TLC.

Potato bin update

The potato bin is working fine. 

This time I filled the dirt almost to the top.

It is so exciting to see something work the way it should. 

In the fall we should have potatoes. 

Athena Cantaloupe

#3110 Athena Cantaloupe: 70-80 days Athena is an early-maturing, Middle Eastern hybrid cantaloupe, and like the Greek goddess, this melon is in a class by itself. Big, flavorful cantaloupes are borne on sturdy, disease-resistant vines. Pick these well-netted oval fruits, weighing a hefty five pounds at maturity. Athena produces reliably even in cool summers and the thick orange flesh is highly resistant to cracking and splitting. This cantaloupe is fit for the goddesses! (F1.) Packet of 17 Seeds / $3.35 Sharon gave me a partial package of these seeds Sunday She said they were old and didn't know if any of them would come up or not. I planted the 12 seeds that were in the package today and I will let you know what happens Sharon. I hope all 12 come up.