Flowers in my garden

I realize I haven't really shown any pictures of the flowers in my garden this season as of late.  And there really are some lovely ones.  I have a glorious hibiscus plant in a pot on my porch.  It is a new hybrid from Burpee called Cranberry crush and it is amazing.  This is it's second round of blossoms in the first year of growth.

I also planted some Scarlet O'Hara morning glories in the back yard alongside the vegtable garden.  They are a fushcia color which mimics red in the right light.  I adore them.

And the zinnias.... oh the zinnias.  I plant zinnias every year but this year they have been particularily lovely.  I have plans to plants more colors of zinnia next season and in more places.  The butterflies we have had because of them is astounding.









Garden update

Well.... let's see if I can summarize this without being too longwinded about it.
Lee backed over the peas with my car.  They didn't look very good anyways.
We have had over 40 days this summer of over 100 degrees so the broccoli bolted and then died.  We did get two good harvests and it was delish. 

We had plenty of good spinach and lettuce in June and then that went to seed.  The excessive heat really does take out alot of vegtables.
So far this summer though, the slowest vegtable to produce has been the tomatoes.  Don't get me wrong, I've been watering them to keep them growing and alive and I have tons of tomatoe plants.  They just reserved the right to flower and produce until these past couple of weeks.

In stark contrast, the pumpkins this year grew and fruited FAST.  I have 4 pie pumpkins already harvested and cured.  And there are a few more starting.  It's insane.  I wasn't expecting them for a couple more weeks.
Everything else seems to be sort of on time and if not then only delayed by a few weeks.  And that is only because I ran the sprinkler a LOT this summer.

Back after a hiatus again.

I just can not seem to motiate myself during the summer to blog about anything.  And so much has traspired over this particular summer that I am almost uncertain about how to compose this "I'm back" blog post.  Perhaps a list with select details will be best.

1.) The garden looks phenominal though as usual some things grew better than others.  I have lots of pictures about that to post at a later date.  We had some hellish weather this summer which made my watering of the garden more of an obsession than a passing chore.  Because of that, the plants grew big but haven't really officially started producing vegtables until these past few weeks. It's bizarre.  We had pumpkins ready to pick and cook before we had ripe tomatoes.  Positively strange.

2.) My friends have some serious drama going on.  One married couple split up the same day as another married couple... each of the dumpers leaving their respective spouses for the other. So.... it's been an odd social season for us.  We can no longer just call couple #1 and couple #2 for dinner or drinks because... well.... they are now single #1 and single #2 and couple #3.  It's a big, fat mess and we are all forced to deal with it. *sigh*  Doesn't make a god case for marriage does it?

3.) I have been busy doing Farmer's Market things once again this summer.  Since we've had 40 traight days of 100+ degree weather, produce has been slim and thus we have almost all resorted to making some kind of baked goods and crafts to sell in the mean time.  I discovered that Dodge City is comprised of a number of dog lovers.  So, I began making and selling homemae dog biscuts.  People and dogs love them. I've also been making homemade english muffins and scones which are becoming a big hit as well.  I've done quite well this summer.

4.) Lee, my boyfriend, moved into my home in January of 2011. Things have been going well for us.  So well, he got a promotion at work.  He is no longer an assistant manager of customer service at the car dealership but has been transfered to a different section and made a proper manager of customer service.  In other words, when your car breaks down or has the oil changed or is making that weird noise, he's the guy you talk to to schedule an apointment with the technicians.  And he's damn good at his job too.

5.) On the jewelry front, not much has been happening in the way of sales.  However, a lot has been happening in the way of PR for my jewelry studio on Artfire as well as my designs in general.  I've had pieces featured in Bead Trends magazine in the past and have pieces that were selected to be featured in the November and December issues for 2011 as well.  This July I received an email from the editor asking if they could use me as the Designer Highlight for the February 2012 edition.  It's a full 10 page spread along with a head shot of myself and bio page.  I am SUPER excited about this opportunity and will therefore be getting pieces put together and shipped off in the next 2 weeks.  How cool is that?

That's a good update thus far.  More to come later.... including pictures.