I didn’t edit the background on the flower picture. That’s the way it came out! I had this happen once before when I took a picture of a sunflower and the background came out blue. I think it’s so cool. I just wish I knew what I did so I could replicate it whenever I want to. I used the same setting to take all these pictures, so it’s not something I changed on the camera.

I don’t know for sure what kind of flower it is, as my daughter planted a pack of “cutting flowers. This is just one of the bunch.

I love how different the stages of the Hibiscus flowers are.

The other night, the guys brought in all these cucumbers and 2 zucchinis.

And then last night, they brought in all these! I better get busy making pickles and freezing and dehydrating the zucchini.

This is the first year we’ve had haws on the Hawthorne tree. The leaves are dying out on the tree, but the haws are hanging in there. lol

Here are the squash plants with the green beans behind them. There are actually a couple of squash plants that aren’t in the picture. There is another green bean fence behind this one that you can’t tell in the picture.

We haven’t had any yellow squash yet. But they’re coming!

Now that you’ve seen my gardens, what’s in your gardens?

Here are a few websites I found interesting and helpful this week:

How to Deal with Japanese Beetles

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

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Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat.
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below.
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

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We have very spoiled chickens. I’ve shared pictures before of them at the front door waiting for food. They stand there looking in at us. I think they’re seeing if we’re eating anything good. lol They will even knock on the door by pecking it if we’re not paying any attention to them. It really surprises our guests. lol They will even eat out of our hands. Here’s Hannah feeding a hen bread.

Last week, I shared pictures of the cucumber blossoms. This week we have cucumbers!

Yum! Looks almost ready to eat! Now, I wonder who I’ll have to share it with? lol

Hope you enjoyed my little tour this week. How are your gardens growing?

Here are some links I found interesting and helpful:
Naturally Disinfecting the Chicken Coop
Grow it Yourself Hydroponic Gardening
Herbs To Know – Chicory

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.blogspot.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat.
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below.
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

I sent my 15 year old daughter out yesterday to take pictures for me. Here’s what she saw:

The Raspberries are giving us a few a day. And we’ve been eating them all out of hand. We actually get more raspberries in the fall. So hopefully, I’ll have enough to do something with.  We love just eating them straight, but it would be nice to put enough in the freezer to have a raspberry crisp or something for Thanksgiving dinner.

The Blackberries are coming in, too. I have enough in the fridge to make something now. The kids all want Blackberry Cobbler, so I guess I’ll make that first.

The Butterfly bushes are blooming!

The white one is so big and beautiful. This was pruned back a LOT in the spring, too.

The purple one is smaller in comparison, but is almost 5 feet tall.

The purple flowers are beautiful, too.

Finally, some action in the vegetable garden to report. lol The Cucumbers have blossoms!

From the reports I’m hearing, the squashes and tomatoes have blossoms, too. And we have beets the size of a pea. lol

I never tire of looking at the goats on the hill! There’s just something so peaceful about animals grazing on a hill.

Hope you enjoyed my little tour this week. How are your gardens growing?

Here are some links I found interesting and helpful:

Chicken Chart
Worm Composting
Dewberries– I don’t recall seeing any of these on our property, but I will keep my eye out for them

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.blogspot.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat.
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below.
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

The Glads are blooming this week!

These are in the a/c garden. They are all across the back of the garden. That’s the Iris’s in the front, they only bloom once, unfortunately. That is an almost finished trellis made out of branches in front of the a/c.

Hannah planted Purple Hyacinth under the trellis. They are growing, and will soon grow up the trellis and hid the a/c. Of course, we must finish the trelllis first. lol

Purple Hyacinth

Our Mimosa tree had a run in with some visiting kids who thought the branches were nice for sitting and swinging. We’re trying to prop them pack up in the hopes they will stay up and we won’t have to cut them.

The tree is blooming. I just love the fluffy pink blossoms.

Below is part of the Mimosa tree. It’s so big now, it won’t all fit in the picture. The grapes are to the left of the tree, and you can see the Rose, the Passion Flower and a glimpse of the yellow Day Lily’s in the Bible Garden on the right.

Speaking of grapes, we have a lot on the vine this year. And a trellis that really must be replaced in the fall when we prune the grapes.

See all the grapes? We are planning on making grape juice this year. That is, if the birds leave us some grapes. lol

And the Butterfly Bushes are getting ready to bloom! Always an exciting time around here. We just love these and all the butterflies they attract.

The Hostas in front of the house are blooming.

Hope you enjoyed my little tour this week. How are your gardens growing?

Here are some links I found interesting and helpful:

Introducing Herbs to Your Kids
How to Make Lemongrass Oil
Video – How to Prune Grapes
How to Make a Mini Rain Barrel
Harvesting and Cooking Garlic Scapes
Useful Weeds
Organic Gardening Tips
Amish Pest Control for “All Bugs”
Passion Flower

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

The Echinacea is starting to bloom. I love to take pictures of the beautiful flowers.

We transplanted two Mullein plants from beside the road to the herb garden. The other one suffered more chock than this one. But it’s making a comeback.

And they are starting to bloom!

In the vegetable garden, the cucumbers are growing well. Yes, those are catalogs and magazines as mulch. I ran out of cardboard and newspapers. Have to keep the weeds down somehow. lol

The green beans are doing great. I don’t know for sure what kind of green beans these are. I got them from my kids piano teacher about 6 years ago. They are the only beans she’s ever grown, the only beans her mother ever grew, and the only beans her grandmother ever grew. She said they’re like a half runner, but they’re not half runners. So I don’t know what they are, other than good! They freeze great, too.

The tomatoes are doing well, also. This is taller than it looks, the cardboard is not lying flat on the ground.

Something keeps eating my raspberries before I can pick them! I think it’s the chickens. Rotten chickens. Lucky for them, they give me eggs. But they better lay off my raspberries!

These are the black raspberries. A few are starting to ripen. yum…..

That’s a few highlights from my garden this week. How are your gardens doing?

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Homemade Gardeners Hand Scrub
Using Coffee Grounds in the Garden
How to Make Natural Mosquito Spray
Natural De-Skunking – Good to know!
Organic Gardening and Homesteading

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

Even with all the animal traffic, the herbs are starting to grow. So I’m happy about that. Now I just need to figure out a fence or something to keep the animals out when the plants get too tall for the netting.

We’ve done a lot of work in the vegetable garden this week. We got most of the tomato seedlings in the ground. This is my husband and two of the kids cutting holes in the cardboard to plant the seedlings.

It got dark while we were out there working, and the moon paid us a visit.

The grass and weeds are getting tall along the fence. Here’s Zach, my youngest cutting them down with scissors. Hey, it works, and keeps him busy. 🙂

We have raspberries almost ready! Actually, one was ready. It had an ant on it, and when I brushed the ant off, the perfectly ripe raspberry fell to the ground, and I couldn’t find it. I was sorry to not be able to eat it. I’m looking forward to these being ready.

These are Black Raspberries that are growing wild in our yard.  These are really yummy, too.

The girls got a lot of flowers planted this week. Plants as well as seeds. They spent the night with their older, married sister, who took them plant shopping. They came home with some flowers and had fun deciding where to plant them.

Hannah planting some Celosia seeds around the plant that I already had.

These are more Wild Roses growing in front of the house.

How are your gardens doing this week?

Here are some links I found interesting and helpful:

Keys to Redneck Gardening
Best Plants to Use on a Retaining Wall
Canning Jar Cloches to Protect Young Plants
Companion Planting
How to Harvest, Dry and Store Herbs

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
The Little Round Table
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

Looking to the left, I can see the front garden, with the glads, hostas, and the small cedar tree. Not seen in the picture are the Sedum and Celosia. The first bush you come to out in the yard is a small Butterfly Bush, this one purple, the next two smaller plants are Hardy Hibicus. One is pink, the other white. These bushes were planted out there a few years ago as part of our long term plan. There will be a long ramp going off this side of the porch, all the way out to the end of the house, then a sidewalk around the corner of the house to the driveway. Both sides of the ramp will be gardens, up to, and including these bushes.

Looking off to the right, you can see the other half of the front garden. Containing Hostas, glads, a small cedar tree, and a Holly tree on the end, were the garden wraps around the house to become the a/c garden (the garden around the air conditioner, lol ) There is a metal wash tub you can see by the Holly tree, with nothing planted in it yet! The blue you can see in the picture is the pool that isn’t set up yet. The two houses you can see are where our parents live, my in-laws live in the brown house, and my mother in the tan one across the street. Even though there doesn’t look like a road is there, it is. We have our own little compound here.  🙂 To the left of the ramp, will eventually be a garden that wraps around the front up to the Butterfly Bush.

So, that’s the view from my rocking chair. 🙂

This is my husband getting ready to plant the tree that Abby, 12, started from an acorn. She is very protective of her little tree, and did not want it to go outside.

The Daylilies in the Bible Garden are blooming. I love them!

The Rose is right next to the Daylilies. It’s huge!

You can see how big it is.

The grapes are doing well. So far, the birdies are leaving them alone. Hope they continue to do so!

In the herb garden behind the house, the Echinaea is starting to bloom. I look forward to these flowers every year. This year, I hope to learn how to harvest the roots to save for medicinal purposes.

A pile of clippings got left by the back stairs for too long, and the grass died. So, what else is one to do, but put in a new garden?! Abby, 12, help me get it ready and plant. We planted Lavendar,Cilantro, Basil, Oregano, and Parsley. We also planted Marigold around the outside of the garden on three sides. We used plant markers that I had cut from a plastic milk jug. My goal this year is to grow enough of the herbs that I use most often to last until next summer. 🙂

Here you can see the whole thing. The bush behind the garden, next to the stairs are Lilacs, we transplanted last spring. They didn’t bloom this year, but I’m hopeful for next year. 🙂 The stairs lead up to our back porch, and then right into my kitchen with my herbs. That makes this cook very happy.  🙂

We covered the garden with netting to keep the chickens out. They just love fresh dirt! The herb garden with the Echinacea is on the other side of the gravel sidewalk you can see at the bottom of the stairs. I’ll have to get a picture of both gardens together next week.

This is our main vegetable garden. Which we are still in the process of planting. That’s Hannah, 15, working hard while I’m taking pictures. I’m standing on the road at the end of our driveway taking this picture.

The green beans are planted on both sides of these fences. And 3 hills of cucumbers are planted amongst the cardboard. Yellow Squash and Zucchini are coming to the right of the cucumbers.

Hannah is busy planting Broccoli, her favorite vegetable. The creek is where the weeds are tall. And our Comfrey and Asparagus are on the other side of the creek. We are going to plant corn over there, too, very soon.

The Lambs Ear in the Bible Garden is starting to bloom!

Hope you enjoyed my little tour this week. See ya next week!

Here are some links I found helpful this week:

Build a PVC Cucumber Trellis – I really want to build one of these!
Garden Tips
Mullein & Herbal Learning Tips
How to Make a Pallet Garden – I really want to make one of these!

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Square Foot Gardening at $5 Dinner Mom
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers