2015 Garden Update

Our veggie garden is taking it's sweet time this year.  The plants really struggled at first. It think because I planted everything a weekend to early in May. The Lil man enjoyed his first garden peas a couple days ago.  Still no cucumbers or beans. 

this moment

THIS MOMENT: a friday ritual. a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. a simple, special, extraordinary moment. a moment i want to pause, savor, remember & cherish.

Strawberries in our own backyard

I'm breaking the rules this week for "this moment". I've been meaning to plant some strawberry plants in our backyard for a few years now, but never got around to doing it. This year however, I finally went out and bought some and they are doing well! They are a little late but they are really yummy.

Hydrangeas

There is something about fresh cut flowers in a mason jar that just makes them even prettier.

 

 

I simply love these beauties.

 

 

I wish my hydrangeas bloomed all summer and had more blooms.



 

 Last year I found this giant bloom buried down near the bottom of the plant in a shady spot. It sure did love the shade!



 

I was in shock when I found it ... it was almost like finding a lost treasure. Keeping my fingers crossed I find more blooms like this on my hydrangea shrub this year.

 

 

Thanks for visiting! Have a lovely day!

Hens and Chicks

Do you have succulents in your garden? I have some Hens and Chicks but they struggle near the end of the summer. This year I need to relocate them.

I was introduced to these succulents when I first started gardening at my parents. I really like the different texture it adds to a garden. If they are planted in a desirable location they can get really big and they are relatively low maintenance as they don't require much watering or care.  The "hen" is the main plant (the Mommy), and the "chicks" are the offspring, which start as tiny buds on the main plant and soon sprout their own roots, taking up residence close to the mother plant. These guys even bloom, unfortunately I do not have a photo of the bloom. Will have to add it to my list of photos to snap this year!

Hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend! Have a great day!!

Red Current Shrub

Hello there! It's hard to believe March is already coming to an end and Easter is this coming weekend! It is finally starting to feel like spring around our place. We are still getting the odd flurries and some snow, but it is not staying around for long. The robins have started singing bright and early every morning and throughout the day. Plants are starting to poke up in the garden (our tulips, peonies, iris's and daylilies). Most of the snow that fell throughout the winter is almost all gone!! The last couple days the temperatures have dropped and it's still chilly, but it did not stop me from opening up the windows on the weekend to air out the house. All these signs of spring just warm my heart and make me so happy!!

 

This is our Red Current berry shrub that my MIL gave me! Over time they do get large. Over the winter when the Lil Man is over at Oma & Omp's place he likes jumping on their bed and looking out the window to see if the birds are eating any of the berries. Her Red Current bush is as high as their window.  Oma has informed me that you can make jam with these berries but they are sour. I love having it in the garden! It's a perennial and it's a great food source for the Birds.

As I was working on this post I realised I do not have many great photos of this shrub, so these two will have to do. I usually trim it down in the fall because it seems to grow a lot each year and I don't want it getting too big. I am thinking this year I will leave it to trim in the spring of 2016!

Have a lovely Monday!

Hostas

I'm back! Slowly starting to get my energy levels back up and feeling better. I don't ever remember being as sick with the flu as I did these last couple weeks. It feels like I blinked and the first two weeks of March disappeared.

This week I have decided to share my hosta photos. My flower beds have a lot of shade, as a result, I planted lots of hosts. It's crazy how many different varieties there are.

 

 

The majority of the hostas I have in my flower beds are either from my Mother-in-Law or from my Mom's Garden with the exception of this one ...

 

 

I really wanted one of these hostas with the really large leaves and I came across this one for a great deal and had to bring it home with me! 

 

I love how hostas bloom in August. Sadly I don't have a photo of the purple blooms. I will have to try and snap some photos this year.

 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!



Hello March!

 

March is here ...which means it won't be long and spring will be here as well! We can't wait!! I haven't been feeling the greatest lately so I'm keeping this post short. This week's garden post is brought to you by the gorgeous peony. These are by far one of my top 3 favourite flowers in my flower beds. My white peonies always seems to excel in my garden. I LOVE how beautiful the blooms are and the soft scent they have. 

 

 

 

I'm not a fan of all the ants they attract but I do understand the ants need to work their magic to make these flowers so gorgeous.

 



 

 

I wish these beauties bloomed all summer long not just in June. Have a lovely Monday!



February Birth Flower

 



It's hard to believe the month of February is almost coming to an end. Man has it been a chilly one. This week I think we broke some records for the coldest day in February. It has been a really chilly one in our small town. The temperatures hovered mainly around -28 degrees Celsius, but with the wind-chill it felt like -42 for most of the week. The one good thing is the sun has been shinning which has been warming up the house nicely throughout the day and the snow has taken a break from falling.

With these extremely cold temperatures it's hard not to think about the warm summer months that lay ahead. Seeing as today is the last Monday in February I thought it would be a great day to share some photos of the February Birth Flower.

 

 

This weeks garden post is brought to you by the Iris. These ruffally beauties have taken their sweet time to start blooming in my flower beds (I think it took 3 years).  About two years ago they finally started to bloom and boy are they beautiful. 

 I love that they attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

 

 

But most importantly I love that I can cut them and bring them inside to enjoy throughout the day. It's one of those little things in life that we are able to enjoy during the month of June that we long to do during cold winters like the one we are experiencing this year. 

 

 

I guess in the winter we have to enjoy other little things in life, like cuddling with the Lil Man while he is still willing to cuddle with me. As I know this simple little thing will probably come to an end sooner than I want/ expect and how I know I will miss it. But for now I shall enjoy it. 

 

Have a great Monday!

 

Related to the Lily Family

A few facts about this herb (a must in our herb planter) ...

 

 

 

It's ...

• related to the Lily family
• high in vitamin C, potassium and folic acid
• known to promote good digestion, ease stomach upset
• and supposedly prevents bad breath 

We love them on our baked potatoes in the summer, clearly not the flowers but the stalks ... CHIVES! The flowers, however,  sure have a pretty purple bloom ... don't you think?

Hope you had a lovely valentine's day! To Everyone who lives in Ontario, have a wonderful Family Day!

Perennial Geraniums

Today's post is brought to you by ...




A little research on these pink beauties was required. I knew they were part of the perennial geranium family but had no idea what they were actually called. Oma has them in her garden and shared some with me. I am horrible at remember flower names. After a quick little search I discovered these are  Cranesbill Geranium (aka Bloody Geranium).

Cranesbill Geranium (aka Bloody Geranium)

These pretty pink geraniums start blooming towards the end of May in my flower beds and last till beginning to middle of July. These deep pink beauties seem to really love our clay soil. I love the texture the leaves add to the garden!

I have decided to include some of my favourite quotes that I often find inspiring to some of my photos. Hope today's quote inspires you this week! Thanks for visiting. Have a lovely day!

Spring is on it's way...

That's what I keep telling myself. I don't know about you but I find this time of year hard to get through. The temperatures outside are -25 or colder with the windchill, the sun barely makes a presence and everything is a blaaa white colour or looks lifeless. On top of all of this I'm another year older. Don't get me wrong, the fluffy white stuff is pretty after a light fluffy sparkly snowfall like we had two weeks ago, but that only happens a few times throughout the winter season.  Most of the time the wind just howls like crazy and blows the white stuff everywhere and makes it nasty to drive in ... oh the joys of Canadian winters in Ontario.

 

Here we are ... it's the beginning of February ... the middle of winter. Let's face it no matter what the groundhog predicts today,  we have at least another two months of this to go.  I thought this would be a wonderful time to sneak in some photos of the flowers I welcome back each year in my flower beds. I intended to do this last winter but the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months and I just never had an opportunity to get around to doing it. The other day when I was picking up the Lil' Man from Preschool the birds were singing such a lovely tune and it truly felt like spring was around the corner and it somehow dawned on me that I had to start working on these posts.  Most of the photos were taken during the spring/ summer and fall of 2013 as last year the weather wasn't the greatest in our area and the flowers didn't do so well. My goal (keeping my fingers crossed I succeed) is to post a photo of the different flowers from our flower beds each week until the nice weather arrives. A little glimpse of the beauty that lies ahead.

The first flowers to pop up will be these beauties and I seriously can't wait...

Our Tulips!

  I saw the above quote this past week and it's so true.

 

 

I wish I could have fresh cut flowers in this mason jar throughout the entire year.

What are the first flowers to bloom in your flower beds?

 

Garden Update - September

This will probably be my last garden update. It is hard to believe fall official arrives this weekend. Overall, we were quite happy with our garden this year considering the yo yo weather we had at the beginning of the summer. Our cucumbers are finally done and to be honest I am kind of happy about this because I am starting to get tired of eating cucumber. Our beans also did really well this year. I picked what was left last week.  Our tomatoes really struggled this year and they were just starting to ripen but I had to pick a bunch of them early because we had our first frost a week ago (it was kind of early this year). We have had two other nights of frost this past week and yesterday the weather felt like summer again.

Last week I finally had a chance to take out our potatoes.

 

I was shocked when I started to dig up the potatoes and saw the size of some of them. They are the biggest potatoes I have grown in our current garden.

 

 

Our carrots also did well this year.

 

 

And so did our jalapenos and red chillies. 

 

Our Halloween pumpkin is almost ready to be picked. I am just waiting for it to turn completely orange. I always have trouble growing pumpkins in our garden, so I am so happy one finally survived.

 

At the beginning of this season I was not very optimistic that we were going to get much produce from our garden, but we were pleasantly surprised.

 

 

 

Garden Update - Week of August 12th

As you know this year our garden was off to a late start and really struggled at the beginning with the yo-yo weather we kept getting in June. Surprisingly though, it is doing well

We finally had our first cucumber from our garden on the 1st of August. This year the cucumbers have been taking their sweet time.

  

This is the largest cucumber we've grown in our garden. It was delicious!

 

 

Our hot chili peppers are doing well this year.

The upside down tomato plant has two little tomatoes growing.  We are not getting our hopes up on these struggling little guys as they are tomato plants I started from seed and they should have been started sooner. Plus I did not use good dirt in the container and I think it is lacking nutrients.

The tomato plants in general this year at our place are struggling. The tomato plants in the garden have a couple tomatoes but they are really small and none of the tomatoes have started ripening yet. The cherry tomatoes are also not yielding very many compared to past years (however, this year I planted them in a pot and I think that may be why). Next year I will go back to planting them in the garden.

The purple beans are doing really well this year. Our snow peas and spinach on the other hand did not do that great.

This year I decided not to plant any lettuce. I found in past years it was grossing me out with the little bugs that kept growing on it and was not appealing at all to eat. To our surprise though this year, we still have lettuce in our garden and it does not have any gross bugs on it. It voluntarily came up all on its own and is looking great.

How is your garden doing this year?

Garden Update

It's been a while since we have done a garden update post, so I figured it was time for one. For some reason this year we have A LOT of weeds coming up in the garden. With all the rain we received from Mother Nature last week this is what the garden looked like

 

 

CRAZY WEEDS EVERYWHERE ... 

 

Everything in the garden grew a lot especially the weeds. It was crazy!! To be honest I did not know what end to start at with the weeding, but I was bound and determined to get rid of all the weeds and somehow I succeeded ...

 

The veggies are starting to really grow and do well. We picked our first snow peas last week. Earlier this week I was out super early before the Lil Man woke up and before it really heated up outside and picked some purple beans (these guys taste amazing)! I was really surprised when I went out and noticed that they were ready to be picked. Our potatoes and cucumber plants are also doing really well! We have a couple peppers on our tiny pepper plants which we thought we had lost at the beginning of June from all the cold weather we kept getting.  Our tomato plants were struggling, but they are starting to look ok with the beautiful weather we have been getting. I spotted 3 tomatoes so far {which makes me so happy}. This year I planted our cherry tomatoes in a pot and they are not doing the greatest. Something seems to be eating them {insert disappointed sad face}. I do not think I will do that next year.

 

 

23/52 - Our Little Water Boy

The Lil Man has discovered the watering can! He just loves watching me watering the plants and tree with it and of course he has to play with the water.

 

When it is empty he insists on carrying it across the yard to fill it back up. These photos were taken with my ipod so they are not the greatest quality. He had the biggest grin on his face and was so proud to be carrying it on his own.

The watering can is almost as big as him, but that didn't stop him!

 

 It will be interesting to see if he is going to become a gardener like his Oma.

 

Bacon & Tomato Sandwiches {8 of 10}

Bacon & Tomato Sandwiches for some is a lunch option, but at our house, we enjoy it for dinner. During the summer, when our tomato harvest is at it's peek, these are a top dinner pick for us! 

 

All you need for this quick easy dinner  are tomatoes, bacon, some bread, mayo and pepper.

 

During the winter months when we get a craving for these yummy sandwiches and obviously do not have fresh tomatoes from the garden, I grab vine-ripe tomatoes from the grocery story. Not the same as the ones from the garden (not much flavour), but they are not bad.

 

If you do not have one of these in your kitchen (a tomato knife) I highly recommend investing in one. It works like a charm when you have to slice tomatoes. I find myself using it all the time for a bunch of other stuff too ... so worth the $5.00 we spent on it!

 

During the summer months when I make these, I pan fry the bacon on the BBQ's side element.

 

 

 

During the cold winter months, however, I use the pan that came with our oven (I believe it's called a broiler pan). I add a bit of water at the bottom of the pan which the fat drips into. I find this way is nice to prepare bacon because it does not stink up the house so much. During the summer however, it is way to hot to have the oven going though!



 

 

 

The bacon turns out perfect. Just the right amount of crispiness.



 

 

 

We like Hellmann's.

 

 

All the items ready to be assembled into a delicious sandwich. 

 

 

The finished product ... yummy!!