just a bit of dirt....

Honeysuckle

Today´s afternoon was spent for gardening..It had 

been raining the past  few days,

 so I thought this would be the perfect time to 

have dirty hands and plant a couple of new 

shrubs...

 Here, I´d like to share with you the small backyard of our row house with  

all the plants we have...I have an apple tree, the conifer hedges, a tamarisk 

tree, a rose bush, honeysuckle and many shrubs which

 I honestly do not know what the names are.

I just knew them by colors of their flowers,  LOL!

I´ve been trying to shape this shrub as topiary , the trunk is getting

 thicker as it gets older.

 Mind you, these 4 branches of forsythia  that I cut a week ago have been 

developing roots. Imagine, I just stuck these into the earth, 

didn´t do anything and they simply thrive and grow and grow...

One of the forsythia branches that I stuck on earth..

Tulips

Buxus

Hibiscus

Ternatas

And so , I planted a camelia and a peony. The peony is called 

"Pfingstrosen"in german, because they would normally 

flower when the  Pentecost is nearing and that is sometime in June.

Camelia

As some of you may have remembered , we have constructed the 

flooring with tiles to replace  the wooden slabs that got rotten

 from the constant change of  weather... 

Now we are a happy with our decision to have the 

tiled floor as the backyard is now almost maintenance free...

My apple tree... hopefully this would bear many fruits this season.

Spring onions - these were my cooking leftovers that I planted today in a pot. In a few days , new growth will dramatically be seen soon.

The shrubs of the peonies & lilies overshadow the salad greens.

The salad greens in a raised bed.

potted bell pepper 

Ivy

When gardening, I seldom wear gloves...

I just need to feel the dirt in my hands and that makes me smile!

 Hope you enjoy the pics. 

 Happy weekend!

Tulips...more than just a pot of flowers

As it started last weekend, I welcomed March

 with a jolly feeling. My tulips started to flower  and thought that this might be a good omen for a  wonderful Spring.

Well, Spring flowers would be nice in reality if one has done  the pre planting many months  before . It was an experiment to plant the tulip bulbs in a container too close to each other last Fall. Put it outside the yard covered with dried leaves for protection against frost.

My purpose was, if the bulbs start growing, the stalks would grow tightly next to each other and they would resemble cluster of tulips gathered in a vase like freshly cut ones.

Of course, I fertilize once in awhile until 

the bulbs started popping-up !!!...and the leaves became thicker.

 A cracker container was used so that each of the bulbs can be transferred easily to another pot  in case  something goes wrong with their growing. 

I must say that the bulbs seemed comfortable in the container.

 So I let them be there  where they are. The leaves 

have grown thicker each day. 

The first bud opened and popped-out right on time, exactly 

on  the 1st of March.

Flowers are inspiring! Just by looking at them, they take

 away the stress  after a hard day´s work. More flowers  

opened  yesterday  and I expect to have  more this 

coming weekend.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog.

Hope you enjoyed these tulips, too!!!

The Happy Squash

Planted in a raised bed and getting plenty of my attention..

 this squash is enjoying life as the star in my container garden up in my terrace.

Its raised bed is made of  4 big concrete blocks that I got from

the hardware store.

I had to grow the vine vertically as I didn´t have enough terrace space.

Growing vertically, the vine started to climb on top of the conifer hedge...

Its flowers were so lovely that I took a shot having the blue sky as background

...and their leaves were so huge that one could have thought of being in a lilliput land...

I knew that the squash would grow on top of the conifer hedge, so I placed the vine in such a way that the fruit would manage to grow in the middle of the pine trunk ....that way, the fruit wouldn´t damage the hedge because of  the weight.

...and then there was this one fruit growing behind the satellite antenna... actually, the very 1st that grew so rapidly each day..

...when the plant started showing the first fruits, I cut the the tips of the vine from different directions so as to stop the plant from growing further. This way, the energy delivered by the feeds and water went directly to the fruit and enhanced more growth.

As the flowers were blooming, I cut some and use these for my culinary cooking. Below is an example of what I cooked out of the flowers.

If you would like to try my recipe for the stuffed squash flowers, here is the link: 

http://challengingartsandcrafts.blogspot.co.at/2013/08/stuffed-squash-flowers-recipe.html

....and because I was growing it in a raised bed, I decided that I would only grow 2 fruits.. the first squash behind the parabola antenna didn´t make it and  died-off after it had almost 3 kilos. For obvious reason, it didn´t like the stockings I used to support its weight during the growing process.

This is the squash that grew right on top of the hedge and weighs  around 

 9.20 Kgs/ 20.30 lbs.  Can´t wait to cook various casserole dishes, salads, cake  and make a portion into chutney out of this versatile veggie. I harvested this last Thursday and I should say my squash had been a "good omen" for

Friday, the 13th. 

* * * * * *

Thank you for reading this blog and wishing everyone an enjoyable

Sunday!

MERCY