Flower eye candy to brighten up a ho-hum Wednesday. Enjoy!
2015_Day 231: A flowerful Wednesday
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Author Archives: Julie Riebe
2015_Day 230: Hope dimming for fall tomato seedlings
Still holding out hope for one of the two tomato plants in this pot. The volunteer zinnias, on the other hand, are doing just fine.
The pictures say it all — the tomato seedlings definitely look like they’ve seen better days. I planted them back in July, hopeful for fall tomatoes. They sprouted nicely and grew just fine for a good three weeks. Then the heat hit and they’ve struggled. Continue reading
2015_Day 229: Pumpkin like a wandering child
My pumpkin plant seems to have an attraction to the pepper plant in my garden. As much as I try to train it to grow toward the center of the raised bed (photo below), it keeps heading toward the pepper plant (photo above). Continue reading
Dr. Deb Interview – Keyhole Garden
2015_Day 228: This DirtNKids bog post on keyhole gardening has me thinking (again) about starting one of my own. It will probably be a few years before I get one going though. Since I’m leaning toward finding a place with more land (and peace and quiet and fewer neighbors with noisy dogs), I’m not sure I want to create one only to have to leave it behind.
But once daughter is out of school, I hope to find the perfect piece of land that will allow me to do more gardening in a more country-like space. Until then, I’ll just work on plans for a keyhole garden. Or two. Or three.
Hope you enjoy this post and video as much as I did.
My Keyhole…Revisited
The birth of a Keyhole
Back in 2012, I got excited about a new gardening concept, one which seemed to prove what I had been learning in my own yard — that building soil is the foundation to healthy plants.
The keyhole garden is a self-watering, self-feeding raised bed that is built entirely with recycled materials (stones, brick, phone books, cardboard, newsprint, leaves, manure, grass clippings, etc.) and maintained through the compost center basket. It is essentially a ‘hot compost’ that is directly planted into, volcano shaped for moisture retention in addition to the shading from densely packed and mulched plants on the surface.
Can you say seventy tomatoes in a 6-ft diameter garden? I never would have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself.
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2015_Day 227: Contact dermatitis puzzling, frustrating
I can’t figure out what’s causing this rash on my elbow and arm, which is itchy, to say the least.
I’ve been struggling the last week or so with a rash that I had hoped would clear up on its own. It started small, a couple of patches of red bumps on my hips. The next day it was also behind one of my knees. It wasn’t too itchy or painful, calamine lotion or Benadryl cream seemed to take care of that. Continue reading
2015_Day 226: Surviving the heat
While we humans may not be too keen on the heat streak of late, it seems the 100-degree temps are OK with some of the vegetation in my backyard. Continue reading
2015_Day 225: It’s here!
The cabinet we had built by Jim Pfau of Pavo Real Furniture was delivered today by Pfau himself. He even set up the two pieces with husband. Apparently he likes to deliver all the pieces he creates to see where they’re going to reside. Continue reading
2015_Day 224: Fun at Schlitterbahn
The tube floats were our favorite thing to do.
2015_Day 223: We got rain today — hooray!
Yep, we actually got some rain today.
2015_Day 222: Remembering the bumbles
A bumble enjoys a zinnia in my Wisconsin garden in 2013.
I have seen very few bumble bees in central Texas and they were my favorite bee while gardening in Wisconsin. They loved my flowers and my raspberries. I loved picking raspberries for hours at a time and sharing the patch with them. We both went about our business, neither bothering the other. It was a beautiful co-existence. Continue reading
Chocolate Chips and Chaos 