Sunday Funday - The Weekly Garden Update

It's that time of the week again! Let's take a walk in the garden shall we?

The collard greens are NOT doing as well as they normally do. Not really sure what's up with that. 

 This is the acorn squash. One single plant - it's huge!

Hello acorn squash! This is the first year that we have had ANY luck with ANY squash - it's fantastic!

More little acorn squash! Squash? Squashes?

This is a new banana tree that came up IN the garden. That is the cucumber all around it and the tomato plant in the back. 

Speaking of cukes...after 7 weeks of nothing but crazy vines and tons of blooms...we have CUKES! I was sure they weren't going to grow.

Hee hee...curly cuke!

And this is all of the squash plus one zucchini plant. There's the new fence/gate in the background. I can see the garden being extended to the new section of fence next season!

 Did someone say squash? Aside from the largest ones there, that's all on one plant. We have 6 or 7. Too bad the zucchini isn't doing that well...

Yep...there's the zucchini. Maybe 6 or 7 on there, but they are VERY slow compared to the yellow squash. We've only harvested ONE zucchini. We're picking one or two large squash - squashes? - a day.

The aphids are doing a number on the tomato....

Yeah....and the caterpillars. So much for the tomatoes...they're rotting and gross and full of ants.

The strawberries are doing pretty well - the iguanas got to split a strawberry this afternoon. They were happy.

There's Smirnoff lounging in the sun on the screened porch - right after having her strawberry. Oh and the ginger is popping up like crazy! The ginger is the stuff standing straight up. The rest of that is lilies.

The palm trees are blooming like crazy. Looks pretty when it's like this, but then the fruit starts to come out and five million little orange palm nuts fall on the ground and they rot and they stink and it takes forever to rake them up and if you miss any you end up pulling little palm trees out of the grass in a few months. It's sooo much easier to trim them out before they can fruit...alas, this particular one is too high to reach - even with a ladder and the pole saw.

Here's the other basket of petunias.

And the deck - since it's all squeaky clean and re-sealed. We've got red begonias in the flower boxes and the spider plants are going crazy with little white blossoms. Those are Mexican Petunias along the railing. They're not really blooming at the moment, but they have pretty deep purple flowers and pretty much nothing will kill them.

And voila! The gate is complete - I thought you'd just love to see it from the other side. Obviously hubby was still working on the yard when I took this. The Troybilt is still out, the PHD is still sitting out and what's that in the center of the photo? All orange and chippy...a vintage wrought iron chair from the 50s i'm guessing (it's VERY low to the ground). Obviously, it could use a fresh coat of paint. I just might do that this week - along with the set on the front porch.


I rescued it from the garbage YEARS ago when I was still a twenty-something babysitter. She put out all of her grandmother's wrought iron patio furniture for the trash one day. Can you imagine?! I have 2 non-matching side tables with glass tops, a three tier glass shelf plant stand (?) - we use it as a serving station when we eat on the deck - and the piece I couldn't get was a sofa that matched the chair! It just wouldn't fit into my Jeep Cherokee. At least one of her neighbors saved it from the trash...I saw it sitting in front of their garage the next day. I really wanted that thing...


Come to think of it - I haven't BOUGHT any of my wrought iron pieces. That table and chairs on the deck - my parents' neighbor put it out for the trash when they moved. It was missing one screw for the table legs. Needless to say my fabulous father snatched it up for me. He knows me well...I have a rocking lounge that came from my grandfather's old girlfriend. You can see part of it on the far left in the deck photo. It's super comfortable once you get in it (if you can do so without hurting yourself...I can't LOL). I also have a spiral plant stand that holds 6 plants that was given to me by a guy that was renting one of my dad's duplexes years ago. He said he didn't want it when I went to pick up a rent check one day...don't have to ask me twice! And then the patio set on the front porch that I just recovered the chairs on...given to me by my mom's friend - it was her mother's and they were moving her into an assisted living facility. It served as my kitchen table for years! 


I'm a lucky girl...I love wrought iron.