Front Foundation Gardens
I don’t often post all-around garden photos that show large areas of our gardens. Right now is when I love the way our front foundation gardens look. They’re full of color and bursting at the seams with vegetables, flowers and herbs. I thought I’d share some overall photos of them.
These garden beds are pretty most of the warm months, they’re full of things that bloom throughout the season, bulbs for spring, flowers for summer and fall and kale for winter interest. July, however is my favorite season in the front foundation garden.
These gardens change every year. I plant new things and move old ones, or get rid of plants that I don’t like. This year I gave my mom a bright pink tall phlox and next year I think I’ll be getting rid of the daylillies.
They’re still a work in progress, this year I’m adding the rock edging along the front, and I also added a lot of edible plants (can you spot them?). I have bluberries, cabbage, broccoli, sweet potatoes, dill, thyme, chives, basil and hyssop growing in these beds.
I’d really like to keep all bloom colors in the purple and white category with perhaps the occasional pink or green thrown in. I’m slowing working my way towards that goal.
What’s your favorite time for your ornamental gardens?
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Time for Pickles
When Mr Chiots went to the library yesterday, The Joy of Pickling, Revised Edition: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market
It came in just in time, because when I was out looking around the garden yesterday evening I spotted these.
I’m planning on making refrigerator pickles because I like them really crispy. I’ll probably be making them on Sunday or early next week when I have some time.
Are you already preserving from your garden harvest?
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What a Mess!
We’re having some work done on our basement and everything is a mess! We found out that we have radon in the basement and we’ve always had a bit of a moisture problem so we decided to go with a special coating for the walls & floor.
The problem is that we needed to have all of the old paint off the floors and walls. So we hired Alexander Sandblasting from Big Prairie, OH to come sandblast and paint the basement. Generally we’re DIYer’s when it comes to home improvement projects, but we decided that sandblasting, although messy, was the best option and we had no desire to try to tackle that ourselves.
So this is what’s in our driveway, and it sounds like we have a few very large jets taking off in the basement.
Needless to say spending the day in the garden where I can hardly hear the racket sounds like a good idea to me!
Anyone else tacking big projects this summer?
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Freezing Wild Black Raspberries
My mom has a nice area in her back yard where a lot of wild black raspberries grow. She’s had a bumper crop this year, so she invited me over to pick the extra berries she didn’t want.
I went over several days last week and one day this week and I spent about an hour each time. So far I’ve been able to pick 10.5 pounds of wild black raspberries for our freezer! I’m heading over again today so I should be able to add another 2-3 pounds to that total. That means I won’t have to go to the local blueberry farm to buy blueberries this year since I have so many raspberries.
I freeze the berries on a cookie sheet so that they don’t freeze together in the bags. When they’re frozen, I scoop them up and put them in a freezer bag.
This way I can easily measure out what I need for a recipe from the bags and I don’t have to pre-measure into smaller freezer bags. I prefer freezing my berries and dealing with them later when I have more time and when the weather’s cooler outside.
I’m looking forward to making some jam this winter and perhaps some cobbler or some black raspberry scones.
How do you preserve berries for those long winter months?
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Summer Fun: Swimming
Mr Chiots and I don’t have any children, but we have 2 nieces and a nephew and a new little niece (at least that’s what they say) on the way any day now. My sister has them all in swim classes this summer at the local pool. (more photos on Flickr if you want to head over there and check them out)
They were super excited to show me all of the swimming skills that they are learning so I went to one of their swim classes last week.
Hannah, the oldest, is doing great and she moved up to a level 3 this week.
It was a lovely day for swimming, nice and sunny, but it was a little cold as you can tell by poor little Heidi’s purple lips.
They sure do have fun at swim classes. I think swimming is definitely a fun activity for kids.
I don’t get that excited about swimming, in fact I think it has been more than 15 years ago since I was actually in a pool. Perhaps I’m just not a water person, I’d rather be gardening for sure.
What about you, do you love swimming in the summer or are you more of a dry land kind of person?
