Our sweet hubbies (or our helpful Daddies) have worked so hard on our garden for us. Now, we know they don’t love gardening like we do, but they do love us, and, a’cuz they’re such good chefs, they do like the fresh veggies and herbs. Since the compost bins have been lightened by all their hard work, we only had a little time in the garden today, so we let them have a guy’s afternoon with their boys, Ax, Pex and some of the neighbor stuffies. Today is the second day of the baseball season, so we know they wanted to watch the Phillies. (Yesterday’s game was a fluke – at least, that’s what they tell us, but we don’t know how fish got involved with baseball?!)

Since it finally stopped raining, the local birds loudly demanded to be fed first. After spreading out birdseed in several places, so they don’t get pushy with one another, a whole bunch showed up. Mommy (Grandma) said it looked like “the monkey bar scene in Birds.” That’s a beary old movie from just before we were born. We don’t know it, but had to s’plain to her that we have a trellis, not monkey bars. (We think she gets confused, a’cuz the Garden Guys use it like monkey bars, until the vines climb up too high on it to play anymore.)

All our movements were carefully studied by all those birds for the rest of the afternoon. Some even askeded us questions about the seeds we were sowing, but we’re pretty sure they really wanted to know if they tasteded good. Good thing we were sowing bunching onion seeds, a’cuz they don’t like raw onions, so thought the seeds would tastest the same!

This is the firstest time we ever groweded onions, but especially in the summer, the chefs in our family (our guys and Daddy/Grandpa John) like to use scallions to add a little zing to a dish or salad, or simply because they tastestest really good when sautéed with fresh asparagus.

It’s so hard to figure out what to grow in our garden. We only have a 16 foot X 16 foot space, (a little under 5 meters X 5 meters), but like to grow lots of everything – flowers, herbs and veggies. We’d like to grow trees and bushes too, but that’s difficult to do in containers, so we only have a Hardy Chicago fig tree that’s only a foot tall ( less then 1/3^rd meter), our Russian Sage, Butterfly Bush, and Dwarf lilac out front. We also bought a hummingbird bush last summer, but it is showing no signs of life yet, so we’re not sure if it survived the winter.

Anyway, we also soweded spinach today, using some of our ParCel/Blue Fesque clippings as mulch, in hopes nothing digs into the container before the spinach grows.

Now, last winter, we pulled out our original Ivy (who has survived our transplant from a couple of years ago beary well and likes us again) from her spot in a big container, where we made sure she stayed in her pot, so she didn’t take over the whole container. That’s when we found out she has had a baby. We left the baby in that container, knowing it couldn’t take it over in the wintertime, and we placed that hummingbird bush in Ivy’s old hole for double insulation over the winter.

Well, original Ivy (her twin survived our dividing too, and is growing all over our topiary, now) was becoming root bound, but you just can’t transplant that close to wintertime, so we dug a hole for her in a less sheltered location, knowing she can survive winters around here. Now we see her turning a bit brown at her tips, so we made an emergency transplant into a bigger pot.

She’s next to our container of fescue and Russian Sage, sheltering our Tradescantia, a new ornamental grass that bright green and will grow little blue flower on it. We’re trying to convince her to grow through a little lattice shelving display, so her leaves can shelter Tradescantia, who likes shade, all year long. She has thankeded us for giving her more room to grow.

If we have time this year, we’re hoping she can be divided again, to cover up our next topiary project. We can’t decide what to make this time, so our Garden Guys have suggested polling for ideas. Can you help us? Our new poll is where we always keep our polls, above!