Tells us about your garden

[pacificstar]

Part of Cottage living is the garden. Please share with us about your garden. do you all like to garden? Do you just grow flowers or do you put in veggie plots? What is your favorite flower or plant?

[Chyna]

I actually do like to garden and the flowers are my favorite part. I do love peonys but haven't got the guts to to try one, have heard they are picky then I hear that they aren't. Not sure where I'd put it right now anyhow. I really like blue flax, it is lacy and has those delicate blue petals and yet can live just about anywhere.

We do plant a veggie garden or in our case tomato garden and pumpkins. We are going to expand the plot next year since everything grew so well it kind of over ran itself. I even tied the tomatoes to poles this year and they still fell over and are just wild. Guess this means we did good. ;) I would like to put in a raspberry patch along the fence behind the pear, plum and cherry trees, might as well put that bit of sidewalk to use. Thinking of putting in some ruhbarb in front of the garage where the grapes used to be but not sure yet. We have a grape arbor with four plants on the side of the house along with herbs and yet more tomatoes. There are some giant sunflowers over there too which is impeeding my being able to reach the lettuce. In a recent wind storm some blew over. I'm about done with sunflowers over there, they're a menace!:mad:

tanya:p

[pacificstar]

We all talk about color for our homes.......what about color in our gardens. What color flowers do you all have? I tend to love the purple's and orange's. If I ever figure out the posting thing here I'll send you all some pics.

[Chyna]

Mine are mostly pinks with other colors thrown in for accent. I saw in some magazine where this lady put lavender with her roses and it was beautiful so in the rose garden I have pink roses with lavender. They haven't bushed up yet to be really striking but there is that idea. I also have Russian sage in the roses and a blue/purple butterfly bush trying to grow.

Other than that I have multi colored poppies, snapdragones, 4 o'clocks, white daisies, negra (deep red) lilies, and giant sunflowers. My shade garden is mostly pastels, I'm trying to get some perrenials in there that make things pop more.

tanya:p

[ChrisNH53]

I haven't posted much here this summer but used to a lot last summer. Last summer my daughter got married and I went all out with the gardens. I had flowers everywhere and it was beautiful. In June of this year I had knee replacement surgery and because we had so much rain before that in NH I was not able to get much planted before the surgery. My husband took pity on me and planted some of the gardens but it still looked bare. But he did buy some large pots for me that I put on the front porch and the deck and I went all out planting those. I think that is going to be my preferred method of gardens now since kneeling is out of the question I think. I do get many compliments on them and have enjoyed doing them plus Cottage Living had some great articles on container planting. I do miss all my gardens but I wouldn't go back to that knee pain I had before the surgery for anything.

Chris in NH

[Chyna]

What about making them raised beds? then you could sit on the edge or have benches made up. I've seen them done in magazines and they sure don't look so bad. :) You'd lose some beds because of the structures themselves but from what I've read the weeding is much better and you save water. Also helps control the spread of certain varieties and in my case would control my need ot make new beds. :D

Just something for you to think about over the winter.

tanya:p

[ChrisNH53]

Actually that is in the long range plans. We used to have an above ground pool but once the kids got married and moved out I had that ugly thing taken down and the spot where it was is where I want to put raised beds. We have raised beds in another part of the yard but over the years the neighbors trtees have grown too much and they don't let enought sun in so they need to be moved. I'm just getting too creaky and old to bend and squat anymore!! It's just awful when the parts start to fail!!

Chris in NH

[Chyna]

Sadly I understand where you're coming from. My husband has a bad knee, 9 surgeries to repair/correct it and now he's just waiting to get old enough for a replacement. The only gardening he does is the veggies so alot of it is raised, I think next year we'll raise the pumpkin and tomato patch. Maybe that will take out some of the weeds moving in too. And keep my dogs out of there. I have chinese cresteds who love tomatos and the three adopted ones have started to teach my little Chyna to just help themselves. She is so polite she'll stand there and wait for you to pick it for her. They munched down on my strawberries too. Little pigs!:mad:


tanya:p

[ChrisNH53]

Hey ChynaElizabeth-To get really off the gardening topic here, I had an orthopeadic surgeon who was nursing my horrible knee along for many years because of the same thing-you're too young for a knee replacement (I just turned 53). But it got so bad this past year that I could barely walk. Then someone recommended a surgeon that does a lot of knee replacements and I saw him in February. He took one look at my x-rays and scheduled surgery. In his opinion there is no age too young for replacement when you are suffering like I was. The technology has changed a lot in the last few years so the knee replacements last many, many years. And I now have no pain! It is life changing. Still working on strengthening it so I'll be ready to garden next spring.

Chris in NH

[Chyna]

My husband has gone through two orthopedic dr already and on a third. To complicated things it is a worker's comp case and he started out with a poor attorney to handle the legal parts. They have taken so much of the cartridge out that there is none left and did some ligament replacement twice. The second time the screws started to come out and they have to remove them. It is a mess to say the least. We have seen the ads for a replacement that can happen in your 40's and he by chance is now 43. 60 and older is just so far off and he has a little girl who shouldn't have a daddy who's knee gets sore or hurts so they can't do things. Bad enough when you have a wife who'd like to do something that takes longer than an hour or so.

I'm not too impressed with our worker's comp in case you didn't catch that. Don't get injured in MT or your up the creek without a paddle.

tanya:p