Today is turning out to be much better in terms of what I had first thought of to write about.  It seems as though the garden had sensed that I was feeling low and did what any friend would do and decided to help brighten my day.  I had it on my mind to take a few pictures and then post them on the blog and leave it at that.  Kind of a so so start to the day if you asked me.  I was helping my sweet wife to get through a rough time after some meds had her climbing the walls yesterday so I was inside most of the day by her side.  Something to do with a shot that was misdiagnosed and panic set in.   She is better now but it was verrrry disturbing to say the least.  Soooooo,  to make a long story short my plan was to make a quick pic or two and out of the corner of my eye I picked up a sensory overload that was coming from the flower garden.  Flowers I only saw days before and nothing to be had and now an amazing sight of colorful Zinnia's.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Sizers in hand I made off to retrieve a fresh bouquet of Zinnia's and purple buddlea flowers.  These are the flowers I had given a full helping of the manure tea only days earlier.  AAAmazing!  A gift for the wife who needed a lot of love to get her back to where she would like to be. 

Some pictures were taken of course to send up to the blog so I included a shot off the finished product.   I also have had some wonderful raspberries to come in that seem to come out of nowhere.  Heritage are good for our zone 7 here as they produce a big crop in the fall.  Very easy to maintain by mowing or cutting down all the canes after they produce a crop.  The rose is another fantastic sight that has leaped up overnight from the help of the tea.  Do start to use tea if you haven't in the past.  AAAmazing results for me and proof is in the pudding.  I am making some more as soon as I saw what it is capable of doing.  Enjoy your day and have a wonderful week.  Over and out.  Jim

The Lettuce Has Arrived

I have seeded the lettuce and I think all the seed has germinated.  Wow!  Planting before a storm in the summer is right on the money.   I will have plenty of lettuce come fall.  I love to plant for fall crops.  The climate is perfect for cold weather plants.  With the climate so hot in the south I don't even try to keep greens in bed.  I not much of a fan for chard or anything but spinach and lettuce.  I have tomatoes coming in like gangbusters but I am not happy with the cracks that are showing.  I heard if you lime the tomatoes you won't have as many.  Plenty of sweet millions to snack on or give away to neighbors.  The roses are making a comeback after I fertilized them with the manure tea I made.  It was easy to do with a bucket of water and fresh manure that set over night.  Then I made a filter with the misses stretch hose and filtered that into a total of 4 buckets of water.  You can add air to it but this worked great.  I am ready to call it a day after mowing the yard after work and then helping with dinner.  So long for now.  Jim

Rain Power

This morning woke up to the sound of rain coming down.  Yesterday I had planted the lettuce as it is getting close to cooler weather in the fall.  The remnants of tropical storm fay moved in and I at last got to see how my rain saver was working.  Water was gushing out of the rain barrel so I know that part worked well.  I still have one more barrel to add to the system so I can complete my run off into the street.  It is amazing the force of water coming off the roof into the drain.  Maybe someone could think of a way to use that force to generate power.  The rain has stopped for now and I have 80 gallons of water stored up to water with.  Fresh clean water brought in from clouds up from the coast of Florida.  Amazing world we live in.  Jim

Rain Saver

This day is almost over and I have made some progress in the garden despite having to run around most of the day attending to my sweet wife who has had some health issues to take care of.  I pray she is better now that she has had doctors to see her.  The emergency room doctor was very helpful and so were the nurses.  Thank God for the wonderful medical professionals who dedicate there lives to helping others get well again.

The garden chore that I did accomplish was that I put up a section of downspout on the gutter so I could have water to empty into a holding tank when I need it most in the summer months.  It took me a while to figure out how to best do this and not compromise the look of gutter.  I did this by adding a piece of aluminum to the end of the gutter that is there with a drain and downspout attached to it.  I will add pictures to show just how I did this later as it is late and I don't have a picture made yet to download.  I watered the flowers and tomatoes as well as added some compost to the flowers that have been looking pretty puny.  Not much else accomplished today so I will end by saying I hope it rains only not on my sweet wife who needs a lot of love and support from family and friends.  Over and out.  Jim

Daily Gardening

This is the first day I am writing in my daily gardening site.  I put in the heading daily gardening in hopes of making myself do at least one thing in the garden each day.  Then in hopes of making some progress each day, I hope to write about it in order to have a record of my planting dates and whatever else I do in the garden.  To say one thing in the garden sounds very minimal but when you have a job and the garden is a hobby some days all that can get done is minimal at best.  Then again I will spend the whole day out in the garden on occasion as time permits but the idea is to learn a little more about the role of gardening each day.  

Today I have come home from a very busy week of work doing every thing chimneys or what I like to call "ETC".  This means I won't go out to the garden to do much as I need my body to rest up from all my hard labor.  So I took out the camera and got a picture of my Dahlia's that I planted from seed early spring and transplanted to the garden after danger of frost.  They have stayed healthy all summer and have bloomed some but they are just now starting to bloom in abundance.  So I got a picture or two of my Dahlia's and the butterfly that seemed to be not the least bit interested in my camera so I got a close up of it and the Dahlia's. 

  I also took a picture of the I told you so blueberry bush that was planted this spring.  This was a healthy bush when I planted it and now you can see the way it is looking in the heat of August.  Now I have to say it was told me by many a good sources on the internet not to add sulfur when you plant.  Did I listen?  No!  Well it is a good picture for the record books of an overdose of sulfur.  I don't think all is a loss as I was told by an expert to cut it back and so I did as this would stimulate the plant into putting out new growth.  And I am happy to say it is doing just that.  I am keeping my fingers crossed in the hopes it will survive the summer and then get its life come next spring.  I did plant two for cross pollination one is Tiftblue and the other is Elliot.  The Elliot is doing well but I need the two in order to produce berries.  The expert said if I planted the bush in one part soil and three parts peat moss it would have been fine.  I hope this has a happy ending.

The pictures of the tomatoes is to show how well they have done.  I really like how they have produced so many per vine.  I have had fun putting this together for whoever wants to read it and hope you can give me some input on what you have to say about all this gardening stew.  have a safe and blessed day.