Picture Thursday

Can I just tell you how much I am loving this summer here in Chicago?  We had a few hot days, but lately it has barely squeaked past 80 degrees and this 22 week pregnant girl (and her hands and her feet) are loving it!  The tomatoes in the garden?  Not as much.

So how is the garden doing?  I know that you were wondering.  ;-)

Well, we started with empty raised beds back in June and were worried that we were too far behind in the growing season.  We didn't get to plant our beets and our sugar snap peas didn't work out (partly because of the damn rabbits!), but everything else seems to be doing well.

On the left, yellow wax beans.  CP thought that he bought bush beans but they are climbing more than usual.  In the middle we planted carrots which like usual, didn't flourish.  *sigh*  On the right, mizuna in front and bok choy in the back.

Since I took this picture we have added some nitrogen to the soil and the plants seem to be doing better and growing faster.  Swiss chard on the left, spinach in the middle, and kale on the right.  There is a tree that shades some of this raised bed for some of the day- we may need to trim some of its branches as you can see the kale in the front is doing better than the kale in the back.  Not a bumper crop for us this year like usual, but hopefully it gets better as it starts to cool down.

Lots of green tomatoes on these plants.  Can't wait for them to turn!

The money raised bed.  Zucchini and yellow squash on the ends, hot peppers, eggplant and cucumbers in the middle.  Everything is doing GREAT and has been delicious so far!

One of our herb beds is going GREAT.  Starting with the spiky things in the far right corner- green onions, thai basil, regular basil, chives, parsley, chervil, and finally in the back left, dill.  

This herb bed looks a little sad, but it is because we recently took out all of the bolted lettuce, moved the rest of the herbs that had been in the ground (sage, two times of thyme, rosemary, marjoram and oregano) to this bed and replanted lettuce seeds with a heat-resistant type.  You can barely see the sprouts of the new lettuce but I can't wait for it to come in!

Any interesting flowers pop recently?  So glad you asked.

Our newest daylily to pop.  Isn't this so pretty?

The rose of sharon tree is blooming!

Close-up of a rose of sharon flower.

Pink and  yellow tiger lilies.  CP is mad that they face down, but I think that they are kind of cool and look like colorful chandeliers.  :-)

I honestly don't even know what this plant is called....but we needed to fill in some spaces in one of the beds and it looked cool so we bought two.  Fun spiky flowers!!

These hostas look sad but that is only because they were transplanted in the middle of the summer.  Still do-able but they probably won't look good until next year.  My parents have all kinds of hostas at their house in MI so we split some plants and transplanted them here.  Hostas are impossible to kill so I can't wait for these to take over this side bed so that we don't have to worry about doing anything with it!!