Garden Tour

First of all, while I'm writing this, Hosanna is playing La Spagnola by Vinenzo di Chaiara on the piano.  Anyone heard of it?  It's kinda like the theme song on Cisco Kid if anyone has ever watched that. I love listening to her play it and having Priscilla sing along in Spanish. (I think it's Spanish :)

  I wandered into the garden today for a few pictures.  This is my herb garden that my sweet Arthur built for me three years ago.  This is the chocolate mint.  The other mints behind it seem to wind down faster.  This garden is pretty dry so that's probably why.

This isn't a good picture but I don't want to hide anything!  I always plant a few early onions in this bed for early eating.  This year I planted the small leftovers from last year and their doing good.  The cilantro doesn't look like much as we just cut it all off so it will grow back.

In the middle of the garden are the prolific johnny-jump-ups and oregano, or maybe its majoram, on the right that's blooming. I can't keep the two herbs straight but we use them interchangeably so it doesn't matter.  They both come back so nice.

Here's my little strawberry patch with enchinacea in front.  It's the first time I've ever gotten strawberries to come back a second year so I'm happy.  

Okay, I know the chives should be trimmed down but I haven't gotten around to it.  The basil looks healthy though and the parsley behind that.

In front is the majoram, or oregano?  No matter. (I actually looked online before posting this and despite the ladies in this house doing taste and smell tests, and photo staring, we couldn't tell the difference!)  In the back is summer savory.  We put a large handful in the bean soup the other day and it has this awesome flavor!  I always plant a lot of it because both my mom and I freeze a lot of it for use all winter.  

On the left of the savory is the menarda flowers or bee balm.  A friend gave me these years ago and I haven't managed to kill them off like so many other plants! In the front you can see the other corner of johnny-jump-ups and parsley and the sage.

Next to the herb garden is a couple of apple trees.  We don't have a lot of apples but we are thankful for what we do have!

These apples on are on my South Dakota apple tree.  I'm sure I mentioned this last year but I got this tree years and years ago in SD at the home where my great grandparents lived.  They never got apples till last year.  I had pretty much given up on it.  There were six apples.  This year I think I counted 26 or so. They do need a longer growing season than we have so when we picked them really late last fall they were still on the unripe side.

Okay, you southern gals, you know what this is.  Okra.  Naomi was born in south Texas and Rebekah in southern California so I have two southern gals.  Naomi is the one, now that she's down south again, that got me growing these.  We did once years ago but it wasn't until I had her fried okra this last spring that I decided maybe I should grow some too. Gumbo soup anyone? Any other ideas of ways to use it?

This is my volunteer dill.  Most years we must weed it out or something but this year it just grew like crazy.  I will have an abundance so if anyone needs some, come on over. I also have a large patch I planted.

Okay, for my last picture I have to show you this pile of fence boards.  The new addition has a back door and I told Arthur I would love to have a little enclosed "courtyard".  (Courtyard sounds so much better than patio!)  Anyway, he figured it looked okay the way it was, at least for now.  I decided not to press it as we didn't have money anyway.  Well, when we were at Menards last week, they had eight of these fence panels in their scrap pile.  You know the one where they'll take an offer or sell it at some ridiculous price.  Well, Arthur got it really cheap compared to regular price so I'm happy.  Someday I want to have a nice table and chairs back there and a sandbox for the grandchildren.  Flowers and stuff too!

Hope you all enjoyed the garden tour.  I'm sorry I didn't show you the really bad weeds.  Believe me, they are there!

Have a wonderful day! May God bless all of you!