One of the nicest aspects of this country home are the gardens. I've put a ton of work into the vegetable garden so I lead with pics of it and finish with pics of flowers and shrubs ... it is lovely down there right now. We also have had a very wet spring so everything is growing like weeds including the weeds. And for all of those who are aware of my escapade with tomatoes last year ( I planted 130 plants and was over run with tomatoes ) I only planted 24 Roma type tomatoes and about 30 regular tomatoes .... The rest of the gardens are still in bad shape since I havn't had the time to attack them. On the agenda for this summer is getting all the gardens that skirt the house weeded and replanted with stuff that I know are flowers and not weeds. This itself will be quite a job since they are currently over run with weeds. I think the best thing to do is to identify any plants that I want to save and then just dig out everything else and get rid of it. Then replant the plants I took out and head to the nursery to fill in the spaces .... will keep you all posted.
An overview of the entire garden or at least most of it.
This may be a better picture of the entire vegetable garden.
As if I didn't have a big enough garden inside the fenced in area ... this year I added raised beds just outside .... last year I planted corn out there without raising the beds and it grew well, hopefully even better this year.. along the fence is sunflower plants .. in front of them I planted the corn and right at the front I planted french beans .. yum ... AND as if this wasn't enough garden yesterday I built 8 more raised beds for out by the pond and planted them with melons, more corn and beans ....
Potatoes
Lettuce
Roma Tomatoes ... all the cataloges and books talk about how red helps the tomatoes grow .. something about reflecting the right light spectrum up into the plants which help the fruit mature .. I found these red tubs at Vesey's out in PEI and bought some to try ... here's hoping.
My Garlic planted last fall after the Stratford Garlic festival ... Laura and I did this
Onions with Asparagus in the background ... got about 150 spears this spring and it was very tender and very sweet.
These are cages to contain my regular tomatoes .. last year believe it or not I planted about 130 tomato plants and was overrun with tomatoes ( this year only about 30 plus the Roma's) .. I read somewhere that the worse thing to support tomatoes are the ones I use last year which were those round cages. They restrict the light getting at the fruit and it doesn't ripen properly so I found these cages at Lee Valley and bought a bunch .. they are stackable and the one's you see here are about 6 feet tall ( 2 pieces high ) and I may need to add another section on top of some and will then have to use a ladder to pick the tomatoes
Red currants ... I think the birds will get these before I do
Every country home needs some toys to play with ... actually every auto analyst who owns a country home needs some toys to play with !!!
Following are some pictures of flowers and various shrubs out in the yard .. there is a lot of stuff out there ... I don't know what half of it is and I think I have more weeds than flowers but what I know that are flowers are quite nice.
My veranda ... I added some hanging flowers and put in a series of lights. The bench on the left is Bun's, I bought it last year in Stratford and she and Tom head out there regularily for a cigarette
... also following are some pictures from earlier this spring .. most of these plants, flowers and bushes are now long finished blooming or at least are past their prime ...
My mother had a white Lilac tree in our front yard so this brings back good memories. Everyone tells me that white Lilacs are hard to grow ... I have two nice ones on this property so I guess I'm fortunate.
