I want to thank all of you for the nice comments about my first video. It was fun to do - and hopefully future ones will be more polished!! Thanks for the encouragement!
I'll just take a minute and catch you up on some of my current projects. First, Zoey at Perennial Passion sent me a seed packet. I think this is so fun. Next year I'm planning to collect seeds and share too. She sent the cute seed packet above and an information sheet. I've never grown rose campion, so this will be fun. I think I have a couple perfect places picked out in the gardens. I can't wait until they come up next year. Thanks, Zoey - I loved getting the seeds and the packet you made!
I've been busy weeding gardens and think they are all finally done. So no doubt I can plan to start all over again in a couple days. Weeding is a never-ending chore in my gardens. I still have several areas that need mulch added - another big chore. I'm also hoping to get some cooler weather to move some things around - something I seem to do every year! My neighbor has some beautiful dark coral daylilies that I'm going to divide and add to my garden. And I want to put the Knockout rose in the ground (it's in a half-barrel planter in the driveway now). And I'm pretty sure I'll find several varieties of tulips etc that will have to go in this fall too. I think I'm going to be busy for awhile yet!
This is my hibiscus that was supposed to be a pale yellow. Still looking pretty white - but I see in the photo that the camera picked up both a little yellow and a little red - cool! The center of the hibiscus and the rose are very similar in color.
This is an iron table and chair that was on Craig's list. Mark ran over and picked it up yesterday while I was at my French class. It's child-size - which was a surprise - but way cool. I think I will probably end up putting it in a garden and let the flowers grow up around it. In the bottom photo you can see that it's quite a bit smaller than my "normal" size table and chairs on the patio. (Well, actually, it doesn't look all that much smaller does it? Hmmm...guess you'll have to trust me on this one.)
I also read an interesting article the other day about butterflies. In my previous post I referred to the caterpillar and the cocoon for the Eastern Black Swallowtails. In fact, moths come from cocoons. Butterflies come from chrysalids. I had thought that chrysalis referred to the process. It's good to learn something new!Also, I wanted to share how my French teacher, Nadine, prepares her tomatoes to put in the freezer. She washes them. Then she puts the whole tomatoes in large freezer bags. When she wants to use the tomatoes, she removes as many as she needs from the bag - puts them under running water - which removes the skin with no further effort on her part. I'm not sure I have the freezer space to do this - my little bags of roasted tomatoes lay nice and flat in the freezer. But it sure sounds easy!! And it would be much nicer to roast the tomatoes for an hour in the winter before I make soup or lasagna than to heat up the kitchen in the summer. Thought I would pass it on to anyone who might be interested.
Note: my mom just left a tip in the comments section - she does the same as Nadine, but quarters the tomatoes instead of leaving them whole - so they fit into limited space better. Thanks Mom!! I still want the roasted taste when I add them to our meals, but it would be easy (with a little planning!) to do that before you use them with either the whole or quartered tomatoes.
A turning red tomato!!!! Does this fall under the category of "just ask for what you want"??
But Kobie saw this as a great opportunity to get some fiber in his diet and sharpen the old teeth a little.
Tomato blossoms!!