The hydrangeas are in bloom in the backyard, so I just had to clip a few and bring them inside to cheer up the indoors.
We had an abundance of banana peppers from the garden (that you can see here). Daniel pickled and canned them (along with one of the jalepeno peppers) yesterday (white vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, and celery salt). Unfortunately, he didn’t get an in-progress pictures, but here’s the end result. We just have to wait two weeks until we can start eating them.
Our four tomato plants are really doing well. The cherry tomato plant is producing the most tomatoes right now, but I think that’s probably because cherry tomatoes are so much smaller.
I just picked the first big tomato this past week, and it was definitely a big one (and the tomato sandwich I made tasted amazing). This is it next to a Rubics cube:
We had LOTS of rain today! Hurray! I hope the flowers in the backyard bed will be happier now. Daniel and I also stepped our into the still-damp lawn and picked a few items from our garden: cherry tomatoes, banana peppers, and a jalepeno. In particular the banana peppers and cherry tomatoes have been doing very well. I think we’re going to try to pickle and can some of the banana peppers tonight, so I’ll let you know how that goes.
The other day I picked some of our first cherry tomatoes.
It’s absolutely the best thing ever to able to walk out the back door and pick food which you’ve grown on your own. Bright red and juicy homegrown tomatoes are the epitome of summer, so I started things off with a light summery salad: a blend of lettuces, fresh mushrooms,and sliced cherry tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar. Delicious!
Okay, this is not related to our house or Charleston, but Daniel and I wanted to say a huge congratulations to his stepsister Brittany and Austin on the birth of their daughter (our first niece!) Story Henson on June 6. She weighed in at 9 pounds, 4 ounces and was 23 inches long. She’s absolutely adorable!
I’ve been a bit of a slacker about getting posts up lately. It seems like this week has flown by, and I’m just now getting up posts from this past weekend. Daniel and I spent a weekend of serious yard work (and the thing about yard work is that it’s never completely finished–there’s always mowing, weeding, and so on).
Daniel tackled the front yard and I worked on the big flower bed in the back. Aside from mowing and spraying (yet again) for weeds, he also edged the driveway. It looks absolutely amazing, and I can’t believe the contrast. It really makes the yard look so much more manicured and well kept.
Here’s what it looked like before (unfortunately I had to dig up a picture from March):
And here’s the finished result:
The flower bed in the backyard is where our herb garden is thriving… unfortunately the weeds were also thriving. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that some of the weeds were like 4 feet tall (granted some did look more like wildflowers than weeds… very wild wildflowers). Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a before picture, but it looked similar to this picture, which was back when we first looked at the house:
Yes, I know, I let things get a little out of hand. I did some serious weeding though (in fact, I got the worst sunburn on my back that I think I’ve ever gotten, and the following day I was quite convinced that my back would never completely straighten). The hard work did pay off though.
One big empty flower bed:
So I made a trip to Lowe’s and stocked up on 60+ plants (it is a really big bed after all), mostly annuals (petunias, marigolds, impatiens, a couple of Gerber daisies) along with a daylily, geranium and some plants that I can’t remember their names (the clearance section at Lowe’s provided some excellent deals).
They’re definitely starting out small, but if they do as well as the herbs and other annuals that we already have planted, the whole bed should be filled with flowers in a month or so.
On a side note, I just saw a orange tomato today, so it looks like we might be taking a bite soon!
The yard is progressing extremely well. We’ve been blessed with a cooler (not scorching) spring and plenty of rain to keeps the plants happy (and our water bill under control). Here’s just a brief update of some of the fruits and blooms that are beginning to appear.
The herb garden continues to flourish. We added pineapple sage, basil, and more rosemary.
All of the plants along the side fence are really growing quickly. I’m amazed at the size of the tomato plants. We also planted a jalepeno plant and green pepper plant (a fabulous gift from friends for Daniel’s birthday). Also the grapevines continue to grow, but I still haven’t seen any signs of fruit (yet).
Daniel discovered a mulberry tree that is growing over the back fence into our year. It’s covered with mulberries right now, so I think we might try to make preserves at some point.
The Meyer lemon tree’s flowers have turned into tiny lemons:
We also have a plum tree (an old plum tree from previous owners) that’s been covered in small plums, although most of the fruit has fallen to the ground (still not fully ripe). Here’s one of the plums hanging from the tree:
The front yard beds are greening up (if we could just get the slugs to stop eating all of the plant leaves)! We have our first bloom too:
It actually hailed today before the rainstorm (golfball-sized hail at that). I managed to take a few pictures from the window and the front porch. It was pretty intense. Daniel and I did a quick scramble to make sure the cars wouldn’t get dinged too badly, but the hail didn’t last longer than 5 to 7 minutes.
Daniel pulled off the storm door, and I sealed our new door (using spar varnish, which is a sealant they also use on boats). While I’m going to have to resand and reseal where I puttied over the screw holes of the window (so much for using wood filler that was supposed to match the sealant), it’s still absolutely incredible how much better this new door looks.
Of course, it also makes us realize just how much we need to paint the dingy trim!