As June Approaches

We've been in our new house for just about 6 months now, and the yard is looking up. Not a drop of rain since last October, but somehow the trees find moisture and leaf out. We have an old Spanish Olive that bloomed and had the sweetest smelling flowers. I've cut back the dead branches in hopes it will last a few more years. Annie wove a trellis (at right) out of cane stalks that will eventually have climbing plants to hide the garden tools, extra plant pots and buckets. The trash can catches water from the swamp cooler on the roof. If the water isn't changed every now and then, the minerals get so concentrated the cooling pads and pump get encrusted with calcium.

The flower boxes in front of the porch have been planted for quite a while now. One lone sunflower has blossomed and a few other flowers are starting to blossom as well. I finally finished painting the floor of the porch yesterday. I also put a ceiling fan up, which makes it quite a pleasant place to sit. The temperatures have been quite moderate, only in the low 90's in the afternoon. We still generally have a breeze in the pm as well, so as long as you're out of the sun, it's quite tolerable outside. We don't spend a lot of time indoors this time of year, unless there's a Red Sox game on.

Annie ordered a bunch of bare root fruit trees a month ago.

The one on the right is an apple tree. It has several kinds of apples grafted onto one trunk. In the middle is a fig that we bought 3 or 4 months ago. We thought it had died so cut it right back to the ground. Voila! It's coming up from the root. On the left is a fruit cocktail tree. Like the apple, it is several varieties on one trunk. I think it's peach, nectarine and apricot. You can see several different kinds of leave.

Here's the front entry. The street we live on is very quiet, making this a very peacefull place to sit.











Here's the view of our front yard from the porch. We picked all the lettuce in the greenhouse and it's now coming back from the root. We also have chard, tomatoes and beets in there. We've had extremely violent winds off and on this spring, gusting to 60 mph. I'm amazed the plastic hasn't ripped off the greenhouse. We have potatoes in the plastic pots. The beans, squash (winter and summer) onions, watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes and cantelope are also doing well.

Here's another shot of the flower beds. The yellow flowers are wild Mexican sunflower, I think.

If you subscribe to the blog, I think you get an email whenever we post something. I'm not sure if that's the case or not, so could someone let me know it that's happening.