How is your garden looking today?

Gorgeous. I like the runner, too.

Thanks for the before and after pics, c.i.!

(Can you believe I still haven't had the roll of pics with garden photos on it developed? BAD soz.)

thank you! (taking a bow)

beans, beans, beans !
we had some nice thundershowers during the last several days and the beans are growing longer and bigger overnight.
we should soon have enough beans for a famous "hamburg meal" : beans, pears and bacon ... with small potatoes in the jacket on the side. it's also one of ebeth's favourite meals. hbg

Keeping an eye out for tomato hornworms. Pulled two little ones off the leaves yesterday. Need to water today, if it doesn't rain.

More roses from Francis garden:

And a phlox:

Niiiiice, Francis.

I shall be moving soon, to a house with a bigger garden, but by the looks of it, not much planting. Just what I wanted, a blank canvas......

So........I shall be coming to all of you green fingered people, for some ideas and plans.

Maybe I'll start a thread, mapping the progress, although it will probably take about two years to get it looking good.
Anybody want a cheap "gardening" holiday? Only six hours of digging per day, for three good meals and a couple of glasses of wine.

Takers?......

you know ... that's not a bad vacation plan. Better than paying to go to a spa. No good meals there.

we've had some much neede thundershowers. things have greened up nicely and i have started cutting part of the lawn.
beans are growing like crazy, and carrots are beginning to get fat.
hostas are almost finished blooming and i'll have to start cutting them back - that's about a month earlier than usual. tomorrow we'll have another hot day - 32 C , humidex 40 C + -, but it's supposed to moderate towards end of the week. all we have to do is wait six month and we'll have plenty of snow and cold weather. hbg

The past couple of days have been too hot to work in the garden. My wife and I went to see "The March of the Penguins" today. It really is a magnificent movie which shows the penguins during their one year trek to the inland ice to produce their young. How they manage to survive during the winter months is a story filled with joy and pain. Viewers respond with laughs and tears. Five stars - and thumbs up.

The garden centre nearest me closed for the season today, so I grabbed some flowering plants to add some colour to my perennials in the front - 3 hot pink pelargoniums, 2 vivid vivid orange zinnias, 5 burgundy and white spotted polka dot plants, some tiny orange mums, and 2 clematis that I need to find a good spot for.

Dug most of them in this afternoon. Watered a tiny bit - brought out some more dehumidifier water for the bucket out front - then we got about 10 minutes of rain - but it didn't make it through the maple.

It's too darn hot! Gardening loses its pleasure when every move is an effort and water comes before anything else. I have learned that in this heat, planting new plants is futile. The shock of the sun and the heat is too much to overcome. I'll remember next year not to put anything in the ground after the middle of June at the latest.

Portulacas RULE. One came up about a month ago from a stray seed. They love awful soil and can't stand to be watered too much. They are beautiful and tough as nails. Got to get Dys to take a picture.

We have humming birds coming round the feeders now. They are agressive little things even though it takes ten hummers to make one ounce. Dys was sitting outside wearing a red shirt and up comes a hummer checking him out. He's sweet, but no sugar water. Then a couple of days ago, one of them hovered right in front of Dys' face, turning side to side, looking at him very carefully.

I swear, Dys has some sort of animal magnetism!

Wow. I see the hummingbirds out in my garden from time to time but have never seen one within twenty feet.

Oh I'd love humming birds, you are lucky, all I have is a flock of resident sparrows, a pair of blackbirds and wrens and a pair of collared doves.

My garden is wet - rain for the last 36 hours and no let up in the next few days forecast thank heavens we went to the coast last week and not this week.

We left bread for the neighbour to feed our sparrows while we were away - they've all got young and descend on our garden and I was worried about the sudden food shortage!

terrific!

Oh catfish, great sequence of photos, but shame on you for not offering us a bite!

We have plenty of tomatoes ripening and we've had Sweet 100's popping off the vine. They live up to their name, almost like candy.

We planted Armenian cucumbers and they have been very productively producing. I'm a little disappointed, as they get so big that they become too seedy. Still good if I remember to pick them before they're giants.

Vivien, the hummers have become nonchalant about seeing us about the garden. It is a blessing to see them zipping around like little Tinker Bells.

hamburger often gets hummingbirds in his garden. it can be disconcerting to be sitting near the hedge and have one zip past your head on its way to the canna lilies.

their little nests are, well, so little.

We had a bit of rain and a temp drop of about 20 degrees....ah.

CatFish - great shots!