In addition to tending to the flowers, I’ve also been harvesting the fruits of my labours.

The shallots were dying down and ready for harvest, and I think I got a pretty good haul. Like the garlic, they are on the sunporch so theirs skins can get nice and dry.

My potato harvest wasn’t quite a abundant.(Hand for scale) I planted three seed potatoes, and this is was I got. While they aren’t plentiful ,they are a good size. I think I need bigger container – but for my first try at growing potatoes, I think I did ok.

The bean harvest on the other hand… is absolutlely out of control. I planted waaaaay too many plants, as I’m harvesting this many beans every two days. We cannot eat this many beans!!!! This lot went to a friend. And another lot went to the new neighbour behind us. I’ll be taking a pile to Mom when I head there in August. But I’m still going to need to find people to foist beans upon!

The cucumbers are starting to come along! These are the first harvest, and they are definitely a good size – they are a Japanese variety that is supposed to be similar to an English cucumber.

I was a little worried about my zucchini, because I wasn’t seeing any fruits on it, but then all of a sudden I found this monster hiding in the plant! I guess I’m making Dave some zucchini bread!

And last… the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen

Only three so far, but that’s fine. It was enough to toss on a bowl of salad for Dave.

All in all, it was a pretty good harvest day.

And of course, there’s still more to come.

The broccoli is starting to look like broccoli, and the squash… It’s looking pretty good too!

The monarchs have returned to the garden! I’ve seen them flying around my small milkweed patch (we’ve got about six or seven plants this year), so I hope to have some caterpillar content in the following weeks.

In addition to butterflies, we’ve also had rain – lots and LOTS of rain. I mentioned the six inches we got when Beryl’s remnants blew through. And this past week we got another three days (Monday to Wednesday) with three, two, and one inch of rain respectively.

As a result…

The gardens are overgrown and absolutely exploding. The squash tunnel stands about seven feet high, and you can see the Hyssop (a native plant) behind it growing at least a foot taller.

The False Sunflowers (yellow flowers to the left) stand a little over five feet tall, as does the native Bee Balm on the right (light purple flowers peeking through)

I’m five foot seven, and it’s a little taller than me. A lot of the bigger plants are starting to flop from all the rain, so while you’re reading this, I’m hopefully out in the garden getting it all staked up, as well as weeding (they love the rain just as much!) and getting the gardens looking respectable again.

The native prairie coneflowers are looking absolutely stunning. I really need to break this patch up and spread them around the garden a little.

The catio Honeysuckle had a hard start to the season – it got hit hard by aphids. But they’ve all disappeared and it’s bounced back beautifully and its blooming again. It’s a favourite of the humming birds.

The rain has even helped a few of my dahlias. These ones are in a pot inside the catio, along with some white pansies. I was quite surprised to see them blooming so well.

I can’t remember if I showed my cauldron or not this year… the celosia “fire” is burning brightly, and while the frothy bubbles of alyssum have died off, the white begonia is absolutely overflowing!

Day lilies continue to bloom

As do the Oriental lilies. The one on the right is called “Big Smile” and it certainly makes me smile every time I see it.

The Globe Thistle is starting to bloom. It’s odd looking, and a little on the prickly side (not too bad though), but it’s a pollinator power house and I love how it looks in the garden.

There’s much more, of course, but I’ll save it for another post.

That baleful look from his Lordship is because I came into the house smelling of DOG!!!! This dog, in fact.

His name is Loki, and he’s moved into the house directly behind us. Dave and Loki’s owner spent all weekend out in the horrible heat and humidity, cutting down trees along the property line (So long mulberry – I will miss the Cedar Waxwings, but not the purple bird poo all over my house and car!!!). I mostly stayed indoors and sewed, but I did take some time out periodically to make sure the boys were fed and well-hydrated – and make friends with Loki.

He’s a VERY big boy – a shepherd/lab cross, with I suspect a little Great Dane mixed in. Eventually, there will be a taller fence between our yards – the current one he could clear with a simple leap. But for now I’m making sure I have Milk Bones in my pockets whenever I head out to the back yard.

“Just don’t forget who your favourite, fluffy black boy is!!!”

We did it!!!!

Burton, Lemmy and I banged out another top for Yule-y.

We cut up a panel, made some coordinating snowflake blocks, and BAM! Instant top!

Working with a panel can mean a very quick-to-put together top, because you’re not making a million small blocks. But depending on what you do with that panel, it can also mean a lot of quilt math.

And they way I did it… TONNES of quilt math! And I definitely didn’t get it all correct, so there was some ripping. But still – I managed it in the end.

Here’s a closer look at the details of this one:

Now I have three Christmas-themed tops ready for quilting, along with backs and binding cut and ready to go.

And there’s still two weekends left to the month! I probably won’t get another top done this weekend, as Saturday is Dave’s birthday. But I might be able to finish one before the month is out. Either way, I’m thrilled with the three I’ve managed to complete!

Despite Burton’s supervision …

and “help”…

I haven’t quite finished the second sock.

but I’m close. I’m just a few inches from the toe. If I can get a couple evenings this weekend to do nothing but work on it, I can have it wrapped up by the weekend.

“I’ll hold your yarn for you!”

Some progress has been made on Mr. Moth! Not a tonne, but it is visible progress this ime.

I finished up his long tail pieces, and filled in more of the hindwings. The only purple I have left is filling in the veining. The “eyes on his wings are done in oranges/reds.

But he’s definitely beginning to resemble a moth now. And this pattern is much easier than all the thin lines of the butterfly I did.

This coming weekend, I should be able to finish up that purple, and start on the blue/teal of the forewings.

I said I was done expanding the gardens this year… but apparently I wasn’t.

You see, several weeks back, when I expanded the strip garden at the side of the front yard…. I had to put all the sod I dug up somewhere. Normally we bag it and drop it off at the transfer station, but that’s a pain (sod is HEAVY!).

But… the front lawn had a large dent in it from when we had the dumpster on it when we were doing renos when we first moved in. It made mowing the front lawn a bit of a pain. So I decided to fill it with the sod (upside down so it would naturally compost), some extra topsoil I had. I raked in some grass seed and tried to keep it watered.

But trying to grow grass from seed in the high heat of summer… the weeds grew. The grass didn’t. But then last week I realized I had a pile of plants sitting out back, in need of a new home. So I got to work. I pulled the weeds and the small amount of grass that had managed to grow, and got planting.

So now I have a little island garden in the middle of the front yard. It’s filled with two roses (Garden Party and Tournament of Roses), a peony, a Coneflower, some Veronica, a red poppy, a delphinium, and a few annuals (Dahlia, Cosmos and African Daisies).

It doesn’t look like much now… but by the end of the summer, I think it’s going to be amazing. And I’m sure I’ll be expanding it next year!

Anyone who has gardened for any amount of time, will tell you that gardening is an eternal experiment.

And what works for one person, will absolutely not work for another. While I do wonderfully well with plants in the garden – I have terrible luck with starting seeds indoors.

I thought I had it all figured out this year. I got a good set-up, I didn’t start my seeds too early… but it was not to be. A few months ago, I showed you my sad broccoli and tomato seedlings.

By mid June, the broccoli was totally toast, but there were two tomato seedlings still holding on. Decided to put them outside in the relative shade of the woodland garden to see if they would get any stronger. I’m happy to say one of them did -and the other day I potted it up into a bigger pot.

While it’s nowhere near the size of the cherry tomato I bought from the garden centre, but it’s coming along nicely. And at this rate, I will probably get some tomatoes off it by the end of summer.

The rest of the seedlings were flower seeds.

There’s one sad little Cupid’s Dart that is just taking FOREVER to grow.

But it is doing better outside than it was doing inside, that’s for sure.

In this one we have Delphinium, and the right… I can’t remember. I think it might be Canterbury Bells. I just put them outside a couple weeks ago. By mid-week the remnant of Beryl came through, and dumped almost six inches of rain on us.

The poor things (along with several other things in the garden) got beaten down pretty good. I’m hoping at least a few of them bounce back.

And while I haven’t had much luck starting seeds indoors, I do just fine when I start them direct outside. Most of the edibles – with the exception of the potatoes, shallots, broccoli and cherry tomatoes – were started by seed direct in the garden. And they are thriving.

I planted waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many beans (I’m going to have to freeze some), and we can barely keep on top of the snap peas.

And I planted these (Zinnia’s and Bachelor Buttons) in the pots a couple weeks ago. I expect to see blooms in a couple of weeks.

And these sunflowers were just planted last week. I planted them in the big tall planter after I pulled up the spinach that had bolted.

So what’s the verdict? I’m not going to try starting seeds indoors any more. It’s direct or nothing for me!

July is pretty much the peak in the garden. Everything is just exploding all over the place!

The lilies are busting out all over the place.

As are the daylilies

We’ve got Coneflowers galore

I’ve got two different sizes of Black Eyed Susans

And these beautiful two-colour fancy ones

Many of my native plants are thriving.

There are so many beautiful things in bloom, it’s hard to pick a favourite.

I’m thinking of changing the name of the catio yard to “Lemmy’s Stomping Grounds”

And by stomping… I literally mean stomping

Here he’s stomped a pile of sedum down.

This is the Pearly Everlasting he stomped all over.

This is a Coneflower he’s stomped down.

And he’s stomped down the top of the Mulberry stump.

It’s not that he’s making a nest, or a comfy spot to lay. I’ve watched him do it. He runs at top speed, dives into a plant, then stands there and stomps up and down with his back feet like a rabbit. Then he runs off, and does it in another spot.

“I do not know of what you speak, madam – I am the picture of innocence and feline perfection!”