Moonflower and garden update

I love my garden year round,

but in the spring I just can't keep my hands out of the dirt.

Everything is bright with fresh foliage and flowers.

And what isn't blooming or fruiting is full of summer promise.

Here's a short photo tour around my spring gardens.

First, a report on the moonflowers.  I have 4 plants in the ground, and growing.  They are heat lovers 

and grow slowly this time of the year.  Even though the bugs are chewing holes in the leaves, I think these 4 plants will see the moonlight of summer nights.

The most rewarding vegetable I grow is lettuce.

I have had great success this year with 12 different kinds.

This is my favorite new variety to grow and eat.

Isn't it gorgeous?  It is the Heirloom Dark Lolla Rossa.

It adds such color and texture to the salad bowl.

This is my front yard lettuce, chard and kale patch.

There's a volunteer tomato plant in that tomato cage that provided the tomatoes for BLTs for dinner one night last week.

The kales are Red Russian and Lacinato. 

I have lettuce growing in the front, back and on the south side of our house.

 I eat salad everyday this time of the year.  I love lettuce.  Son-in-law #2 says I am the only person he knows that asks for extra lettuce on my sandwiches.

This is buttercrunch lettuce, with snow peas in the back on the trellis.

This is the first year I have been able to successfully grow snow peas.

I'm excited to have them.  The ones in the store are always so sad looking--too old, too fat, and too limp.  I actually have pods ready for the wok.

Yes.  More lettuce in the old claw footed bathtub.  Nevada and Dark Lolla Rossa share tub space with chives and a tomato. 

I look out of my 8 window-pane back door to this beautiful sight.  Tomatoes! 

These 2 plants wintered over.  There are many tomatoes right outside my door already this spring.

Here are 2 pollinators on one boysenberry blossom.  There's a young green lynx spider and a honey bee working their magic. 

 The boysenberries usually begin to ripen the beginning of June.  

In the flower department, I am currently pleased with these.

They're Electron mix Sweet William that I started from seed.  It seems the ones at the nursery are usually a dwarf variety and I wanted longer stems for flower arrangements.  

I'm not a big fan of iris', but I do look forward to seeing these in the spring.

This clump of iris grows back in the chicken yard and are hardy enough to stand up to the girls. 

And here's our wire plant covered rural mail box.

The mail box is on a stand next to a path the letter carriers walk along.

If we have a substitute, they often can't see it, even if the red flag is up. Really, they wouldn't be very good at an Easter egg hunt.  I trained the wire plant up and out of the pot, weaving the stems into chicken wire I wrapped around the box.  It took 3 years for it to get this thick.  The other side of the box is beginning to fill in nicely, as well.  The pot sits on the front part of an old walk-behind tractor that belonged to my father-in-law. 

The mosaic pot in the picture was made by my daughter, Jennifer.  

I hope you are enjoying the blooming plants around you.  

The world sings in flowers!

t.t.f.n. ~ Carol