As I was preparing to start gardening, I heard a little commotion on our back fence.  I looked up and walking towards me on the top rail of the fence was our sweet little neighborhood bird-hunter.  He is the sweetest kitty and I love when he comes to visit us!  And being the crazy cat-lady that I am, I had to snap some pictures.  I have to say that I really loved the kitty company.  Greg was gone today and I’ve always wanted my own kitties to come outside with us, but for a variety of reasons, we keep them exclusively indoors.  Look at this little guy!

And please don’t think I was torturing him with the photos.  The second he saw the camera he ran over to see what all the fun was about.  That’s when I snapped the top left photo.  Just look at him snoozing in the grass!

His little visit to our backyard did not go unnoticed by a certain house-cat.  I think it is safe to say that Phil (our kitty) was none to pleased by the intruder!

Jealous Much?

Panzer and I were having quite the morning together until I spied him a bit later walking along our other neighbor’s fence…He started rubbing on the POISON IVY as if it was a piece of Salmon wrapped in bacon coated in tuna oil.  He couldn’t get enough of it.  As I saw him frolicking in the poison ivy and a shiver went down my spine.  Oh…My…God…*shudder*.  Needless to say, there was no more cuddling after that incident and I took a 2 hour long shower.  Have I mentioned that I’m deathly allergic to POISON IVY?

Well before all that business went down, I did actually get some planting done.

I planted two new tomato plants (on the left photo, the two plants flanking the photo) and two new green pepper plants along with a Thai Chili Pepper plant (on the right).  All of the plants look beautiful and healthy and I hope they like my garden.  I also got a row of onions in the ground…finally.

I also did another deck-planter full of cilantro and some French Thyme.  Did you know that French Thyme leaves are purple underneath?  Pretty.

And lastly, I found our first rose bloom trying to hide at the back of our rose-bush.  You cannot hide from my camera!  Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S. If by some one in a billion chance Panzer’s owner sees this, just know that I in no way harmed or imprisoned your cat during the making of this blog post, unless you count baby-talk and ceaseless photography “harm”.  I really think you have one of the nicest out-door kitties ever!

It is so beautiful out on this fine Friday evening.  The kind of beauty that was just screaming to be shared with the world.  So here it is…my Tiger Marigolds.  They just remind me of tigers.

As for the rest of the garden, would you like the good news or the bad news first??  Executive decision from Dr. Domestic: let’s get the bad news over with first.

Former Bell Pepper

Some…thing has been up to no good in my garden.  Whoever the culprit was, they knew to only target the little weaklings that I had planted myself.  Yes, 3 out of the 6 or so bell pepper plants that I grew from seeds were assassinated sometime in the past 24 hours.  I’m pretty sure its not bunnies, because they have been physically banished from the yard.  I’m leaning towards insects since they targeted only the tiny plants.  Lets hope they’ve had their fill for a while, although I’m doubting that fact pretty hard.

And as promised, I do have some good news.

Itty Bitty Broccoli

Signs of good things to come from the broccoli plant.  Do you think its big enough to chop up and steam yet?  Me too!!

Happy Friday!

Here’s the full garden, in its full newly planted glory.

The Garden

The part on the left has been done for over a week, but it was really hard to get motivated enough to finish that big corner on the right.  Yesterday after work, I got out there and planted the rest of the plants I had waiting for me in the garage.  And then Greg came out to help mulch, which we only finished (or mostly finished) tonight after buying several more bags.

So here are the newest additions:

On the top are peppers, I think that particular photos is of Poblano Peppers.  I planted Jalapeno, Poblano, Banana, Red, “Mandarine Orange”, and Green Bell peppers.  Think that’s enough?

On the bottom is cucumber.  I planted several varieties of pickling cucumbers.  This whole Summer garden feels like one big experiment to see what works and what doesn’t, but I’m looking forward to things being much easier next year.  Oh wait, do you hear that? Its Future-Me from next Summer laughing because things never get easier as you might expect them to.  I’m sure next Summer I’ll try a whole new crop of things that will be a huge pain in the butt, like strawberries and melons and lord knows what else.

Notice how optimistic I am about the onions?  We even left a nice un-mulched space right in front for the little buggers.

And while I was outside photographing the garden, I couldn’t resist snapping some pictures of all the pretties.  Enjoy something beautiful on this rather dreary Spring day!

The top left is Spirea and the bottom right is a Jalapeno Pepper flower.  I know I should pinch the buds off of the Jalapeno to stimulate leaf growth, but I just can’t bring myself to do it!