The Little Patio Garden

The little garden has been keeping me quite busy with buying soil, mulch, more plants and pots to plant in. It hasn't rained much since I planted and I'm finding it hard to get the garden watered just right.  Behind the table there are more plants and plants in containers which I will feature as the garden matures. Many of the plants I bought were so root bound making it very difficult to get the water right where it needs to go even though I tried to break up the roots.  It's one of the reasons I'm spending more time than usual trying to make the garden grow.  I hope my efforts bear success and that everything will look a lot better in a few weeks.

Only two small strawberry plants are planted this year.  But I've been able to harvest a few small berries a few times already.  They make a nice little treat.  Maybe next year I'll be fortunate enough to find more strawberry starter plants or I'll get started earlier and plant my own seeds.  In the meantime I'm happy for what I do have and the little birds, bees and butterflies will have something to feast on.  I'm less happy about the big rat that ate all of my veggies last year before I could.  My neighbours only grow flowers so I guess he doesn't eat those. If my corn stalks grow the squirrel might come back. I really only try to grow corn for the squirrel to eat.

In the photo is a pile of my latest reading stash from the library. I've finished the book at the top of the pile, Bride of New France, about girls from a convent in Paris who make the voyage to Canada to settle with the men who came over before hand to trap for furs. It was a very interesting work of fiction based on history.

The other books are to whet my appetite for gardening in my small space.

Thanks for stopping by.
Enjoy your week.

Linking up with 

Our World Tuesday

A Profusion of Colour

It's been a busy time preparing for guests and doing deep cleaning in advance of arrival.
I'm glad all the cleaning is basically done because it is going to get far too hot for it in a few days.

After days of cleaning, I relaxed by taking photos and catching up on my reading goals. I've become very behind on my reading goals for the year and needed to make progress.

 

At twilight the sky is serene.

It's hard to get a good night shot.

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This week has been rather warm but it is going to get very hot by Thursday. I'll probably be looking to go to a mall or movie just to sit somewhere cool

Reading Progress This Week

The Temptress by Paul Spicer. This book attempts to solve the mystery of who murdered Lord Erroll in colonial Kenya.  I read this book primarily to learn more about the life and times of the early British and American settlers in Kenya. I enjoyed the quick read.

The other book,  West With The Night,  is the memoir of Beryl Markham.  It doesn't follow a chronological order of events in her life. Instead it focuses on  her life as an aviatrix and to a lesser degree on her experience as a horse trainer. I enjoyed the first half of the book a lot.  About half way through I got tired of  the style of writing and the lack of detail about other facets of her life.

However, Beryl Markham had high praise from the well known author, Ernest Hemingway who had this to say about her book

  "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? ...She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade b*, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book."

 ~~~~~

 I  also made some good progress on a few of the books on raw food eating that I took out of the library a few weeks ago.

New Book Started

 The new book I've started is a musical memoir written by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics.

I'm joining Lady Fi and others at Our World Tuesday.

Have a great week everyone!

(Note: Blogger seems to be doing funny things. It published my post twice but failed to publish several comments I've approved. I apologize to Melanie, Joanne, Teresa, Eileen and Sally. I don't know why your comments will not publish.  Thank you for taking time to leave a comment. I'm hoping they will yet appear).

My Little Garden

My little garden has been subjected to a lot of heat so the flowers aren't doing quite so well. I water them it but haven't much energy in this heat to really spend time deadheading. Pansies don't do so well in excessive heat and they do need regular deadheading. All the other flowers are also struggling. My anemones which I thought were going to do very well bloomed early and promptly died.

The loops got into the cabbages and the beets but I still haven't caught any of them. There seem to be a lot of ants this year too. My little cherry tomatoes are now starting to ripen but the romaine lettuce is so-so. Good thing I don't really grow the garden for food. At this point, I am experimenting to see what will grow but hope soon that I can actually grow a bit for food needs. The only food I expect to harvest from my garden are the cherry tomatoes and the hot peppers.

The cherry tomotoes should be ripe and ready to use soon.

This busy bee was so excited flitting from plant. It really didn't know where to land but kept coming back to this red geranium. 

I've had a particular species of  butterfly come by daily too but I'm afraid I don't know the name. It is a simple, pale yellow coloured butterfly.  But the birds who used to like to splash at the bird bath, haven't been around. I'm guessing they too like the shade. Plus with all the smoke around, I think it would be hard on their little lungs. At least it looks as if my garden is feeding the butterflies and the bees, if not the humans and the birds.

Thank you for your visit.

I've got some treats lined up in the next few posts so I hope you will drop by again soon.
 

Enjoy the rest of your week!
xx

After the Rain

I captured these images after a light rain today.

Linking up with Our World today.

For an update on BABY FIDELIS, please click here.

Thank you for stopping by!

My World

We're still having very unsettled weather where I live.  

On Friday it hailed and rained heavily for much of the day and the temperature dipped low enough to turn on the indoor heating for the night.

I tried to capture the hail in the photos above and below.

The rain makes puddles on the patio pavers. You can see how big the drops are by looking at the circles in the puddle.

In between raining and hailing, it would dry up for an hour or two and start all over again.

Monday the weather was a bit better and I tried to get a few photos of the garden.

I love this Solomon's Seal (photos above and below). It comes up nicely every year and needs no maintenance.

I just bought these pansies last week and I am only now noticing the spots on the leaves. I will have to check into how to remedy that. I don't think I've ever had that on any of my previous pansies. I didn't select the healthiest starter pansies.

When it stops raining the weather is quite lovely.

 I hope you are enjoying the weather wherever you are in the world.

Thank you for dropping by!

Joining in with Our World Tuesday.

Grey Skies and Garden Greens

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all enjoying your weekend wherever you may be in the world. In my part of the world it has been raining heavily all week. I was looking forward to having rain because it has been so hot and humid for me this summer.


Unfortunately I was not counting on the arthritic pain that came along with the rains. I've been moving more slowly this week as a result and not feeling up to much of anything.  After 5 days of rain, I am feeling better today.

As you can see from the photos, we've had thick gray skies with a sliver of blue (lower photo) but so far it hasn't rained today.

I was disappointed in my garden this year. Nothing really grew as it should. Some things matured too quickly and died.  Like the corn I like to plant most years so the squirrels can have some food. The sweet peas which I planted for the bloosoms also died rather quickly.

Even container plants which have always done well for me, like pansies and geraniums, died rather quickly even though I did dead head and water them.  I thought the pansies had died altogether.  But just the other day they started blooming again so I hope they will last for a little while yet.

I can't really complain too loudly about the lack of gardening success for I don't really tend to my garden too much except to water it almost daily and deadhead the container plants.

Everything looks a bit wild, lol!

Just when I thought none of the vegetables would grow I see the kale is looking healthy and the brussels sprouts are suddenly doing better too. Even the tomatoes are finally showing signs of growth.  Perhaps all is not lost just yet. I will be glad to use anything that grows. Sadly the sunflowers I planted for the birds didn't grow very big and are almost dead now after the heavy rains this week.

Almost ready to use. I've seen smaller leaves on bunches in food stores.

The strata council where I live will soon be uprooting all the gardens to test for membrane damage.  Hopefully next year I can plant and tend my garden without worrying what will happen to it. Perhaps next year things will grow better.

I've never grown these before but they look almost ready to harvest too. I've got a few bunches of them.

I have kept very busy trying to get healthy and lower my blood glucose levels (with some success),  looking after my mother's many needs and hosting some visitors a few times.  I haven't had a whole lot of time for much else, including the garden.

Thank you to all those who commented on my last post about trying to help me find pajamas and warm socks for my mother. I had been looking on line and not finding what I needed in the right sizes.

Last night I finally made it to several brick and mortar stores to see whether the selection was any better than what I've been seeing on line.  I was able to find what I needed:  4 sweatshirts with long sleeves and 3 coordinating sleepwear pants.

These are the tops (and one cami on top). Two of the long sleeved sweatshirts have a bit of glitter. 

 
It took some doing to find the right sizing and colours to coordinate tops and bottoms. But I'm happy with what I found for now. She wants to start wearing pajamas throughout the day so she can keep warm so I've bought things that don't scream "pajamas".

I will still be looking for thicker sleepwear.  If I cannot find them I will try and make some as the fleece and flannel selections will soon be in stock in the fabric stores. I will also wait to see how mom fares wearing what I've just purchased.  I labelled all the clothing today and hemmed one of the bottoms. I put together mom's favourite snack foods since she often says she cannot eat the food served to her at the residence.  On those occasions she needs something else on hand.  My brother will be taking everything up when he goes to visit mom on Sunday.  When I see her on her birthday later in the month I will assess how the clothing has worked out and take some measurements for the socks she still needs to ward off the chills.

Last, but not least, I just want to mention that there is still time to help Elvis in Kenya (if you wish, you can read more about him at the side bar on the right of my blog).  Elvis will take his last class at university in a week or so. He will then need some help with graduation costs and some small funds to help him while he looks for work. If anyone can assist, please let me know.  I know Elvis and his mom who raises 3 other school age children will thank you so much!

Linking with Our World Tuesday