Dwarf Meyer Lemons

I ordered two Dwarf Meyer Lemons from Park Seeds in February-ish 2011.  Last winter the trees attempted to produce fruit.  It was a rough winter, however, between the spider-mites, scale, and low lighting in my house, and all the teeny fruits dropped off the trees.  

This summer, the trees flowered again.  I didn't give much thought to the success of this round of flowers, especially since the trees sat at my house while I've been spending most of my time at the fiance's.  

Well, I'm happy to report, there may be hope for my trees to bear fruit this year!

This lemon is about the size of a golf ball, or maybe just slightly larger.  

The same tree is flowering currently.

This little guy is on the other tree.  He has seemed to explode over night and doubles in size weekly.  I've moved the trees to the Virginia Beach house and they seem to love the blazing sun that this house provides.

Tomatoes!

My first of the year!  Two Nonna's Prize and one Brandywine.  I will definitely be planting these varieties again next year.  They are both deliciously sweet without a high acid taste.

Spring has Sprung!

February 1, the first of my hyacinths bloomed.



This is early even by Southeast Virginia standards. I'm praying we don't get a cold snap... my roses and hydrangeas are putting out shoots...

Progress...

There's been big happenings with my Dwarf Meyer Lemon Trees!!






I ordered these at Christmas-time last year and wasn't expecting to see fruit for another year or two. We'll see what happens to these baby lemons!!

Changing Seasons

The summer flowers have now all been replaced with winter pansies...







I love that I live in an area where flowers can bloom all year long.

Last Rose of the Season

I can honestly say I was not up for the challenge of rose gardening. I had to coax the plants to put out the few blossoms that they did despite my over-all neglect.

I'm going to start mentally preparing myself for next year.

How to save a rotting tree...

with concrete!

I have the prettiest red dogwood tree in my front yard. Unfortunately, it is in a sad, sad state. When I bought my house almost two years ago -yikes! two years already?!- the tree was half dead and rotting at the trunk. Slowly but surely I've been pruning back dead branches, a few at a time, with a hand pole saw. This is work. Hard, hard work. Now it was (past) time to deal with the rotting trunk.

Here's the method I used.

I picked up a bag of quick-set ready-mixed concrete at Lowe's.

After mixing this up and beginning to fill in the hole left by the rotting wood, I realized I was going to need some sort of framework.

Hmmmm... what do I have around my house that might work for this purpose... hmmmm....?

I was instantly transported back to my Freshman Design-Build in Penn State's Architecture Department where a classmate and I used bubblewrap to form concrete benches. Maybe plastic wrap would work in this instance...



I wrapped about half way up the whole with several layers of plastic wrap and then filled with my mixed concrete.



I then added some more plastic wrap and some more concrete, working my way up the trunk of the tree.



Filling all the way to the top of the whole, completely covering the rotten part of the tree trunk.



I then waited for the concrete to cure before peeling back the plastic wrap.





If this worked like it should, the tree will grow around the concrete and heal itself. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I'm winning this war.

All spring and summer I had a flower thief. Someone was stealing my roses. And I don't mean some neighborhood kid taking them for his/her mom. I mean, someone was taking the time to clip them correctly. Someone who obviously knew what they were doing.

Finally. Finally, they seem to have given up.



These are probably some of my last roses for the year.

At least I got to enjoy them. :)

Salsa!

Last night I turned some of the tomatoes from my garden into this loveliness!





I used the basic salsa recipe from this book. And it turned out really well.

One thing to note, when they say 1-2 jalapenos for mild salsa, they mean it. More like, only one. I put in three because I was shooting for somewhere between mild and medium and ended up on the warm side of medium.

The only change I made to the recipe was to add the juice from one lemon. It seemed to make the flavor pop a little more. Just make sure to strain out the seeds first!

This is the first recipe I've tried from this book but I will certainly be trying many others. I was really excited to find a canning/preserving guide that scales back the recipes for small batches. It makes the process a lot more convenient for those people who are only canning for themselves and don't want a lot of excess or who have small gardens and their veggetables come in a little at a time.

I fall into both of these categories. While I know my work colleagues will be more than happy to be recipients of any excess, I only had 18 tomatoes to work with. I was worried they wouldn't hold over until more ripened for a full batch. This recipe was perfect. I even have a few extra tomatoes left for BLT sandwiches this week!

From the cutting garden...

...to my cubicle!


These have been brightening my cube all week long. I'm definitely planting more zinnias next year. Many more. They last forever after they're cut.

First Garden Haul!

Finally!!



This is what I picked this morning. Its the first time I've picked more than one vegetable at a time. However, once my tomatos ripen, I'll probably have at least a bushel. I'm feeling some homemade salsa canning in my future.

My grandmother would be so proud

My grandmother grew the most beautiful roses at her home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She had an amazing green thumb. I always knew that when I had a place of my own, I would plant roses and holly as a way of remembering those happy visits to the little house my grandparents built in 1956. The smell takes me right back to that place.

She turned 95 on May 3 this year and although the Alzheimer's has started to rob her of her memory, she's still going strong physically. I send her roses every year for her birthday.

She is part of the legacy of strong, capable women in my family. She put herself through school at a time when women didn't go to college. She taught English and business, even serving as acting principal for a time, and kept the books for my grandfather's grocery store. She raised two amazing children, my aunt and my father. She worked hard for her version of the American dream.

She is my inspiration in life and in the garden.

Norfolk Botanical Gardens

I'm a little late in posting this... oops. Anyways...

To celebrate National Public Gardens Day, Better Homes and Gardens magazine put a free one day pass to participating public gardens in their May issue. I looked down the list and... Low and behold... Norfolk Botanical Gardens! I looooove living in an area where I am actually able to attend the events listed in national publications! (This doesn't happen when you grow up in rural Pennsylvania)

But wait! It gets better!! They were having a plant sale! So I picked up a few hard to find varieties of Hydrangea and took a stroll through the rose gardens for some inspiration. Below are some cell phone pics of the roses. Enjoy!

A rose is a rose is a rose...

Of those seven rose bushes I planted back a few months ago, only 4 have come out of their dormant stage. I was a little disappointed that one of them was from gurneys but, two out of three ain't bad I guess. The Wal*mart bare roots roses are holding steady at two for four. I'm going to give the duds a few more weeks and then replace them.

But! How exciting is this!



A small hint at success...

Garden Improvement - Raised Garden Beds!

After last year's vegetable garden resulted in... semi-production? I knew I had to do something different. My plants just weren't performing at peak. Granted, this may have been due to the record high heat and long periods without rain. However, I felt the real issue was my crappy top soil and I was determined that this year would be better.

I decided that even if I broke the bank I was putting in raised garden beds. I had a year to think about how I wanted to do this and how to be the most cost effective. I did some internet research. I poked through my back issues of Better Homes and Gardens. And I did a little brainstorming. After all, 2.5 years of architecture school has to be good for something. After all, I didn't go to all the work and inconvenience of my dining room table looking like a potting bench for months as seen here:



Just to have another lackluster harvest.

And so, I decided my best course of action with my minimal budget was simply 2 x 8 x 10's cut in half by the wonderful people at Lowe's and nailed together with angle brackets. Add a few bags of garden soil, manure, and the compost I had saved from last year and hopefully... this year will see marked improvement. *Fingers crossed*

I started with this:


What a weedy mess!

And then there was this:



Then I decided that I wanted to add a third bed for a cutting garden. I love having flowers in the house and while I usually get a pretty good deal at the grocery store, it would be nice to have enough flowers in my own yard to cut my own. And so, here we are:



I still have some border to install and more gravel but its starting to look like the real deal. My mom even commented that it looked a little Williamsburg-esque when she visited. Quite the compliment. :)

Just one week's growth!

These were planted exactly a week ago. Look at those cucumbers! There are two types of tomatos, two types of cucs, yellow squash, zuchini, marigolds and zinnias here. I'm trying to go the cheap route and start as much as I can from seeds. So far things are going well!

The Newest Addition!

I loooove the color on these red hydrangeas. I'm still on the lookout for white Annabelle's but these are still pretty awesome.

Garden Update

Well, at least my garden didn't take a vacation!

I was watering last night and nearly stepped on one of these! I didn't even see them before now. I thought I was weeks from having cucumbers still.


And my tomatoes are getting ginormous! This is the first one to turn red.


All the rest still look like this:


But there's lots of promise!

Good Morning Sunshine

I found these at Walmart hiding in with the boring yellow ones. (I'm not a yellow fan, sorry) And this is the first bloom. What a beautiful greating as I stepped out the door on my way to work in the morning.

There is sewing in progress. Can't post pics til after the wedding. The bride has this link. :)

Growth

Here's the garden a few weeks ago...

Barely there zuchinis and yellow squash. Just planted tomatos. Lettuce and Spinach.

Here's the progress that happened last week...



I added peppers, brocoli, green beens, peas, cucs and marigolds. Oh, and some ornamental pumpkins/gourds just for fun. And the zuchinis and yellow squash are looking much better.

Here's a picture of my front porch with a few more flowers...


One of the pots the Easter Bunny brought...


I love these "antique" looking petunias.


My side porch with a little reminder to Molly McGee...


And dinner from my first crop of lettuce! Salmon cakes and salad with my mom's Virginia Dressing. Mmmmmm!