We love these cucumbers.  We plant them every year.  

 

This heirloom variety is Suyo Long.  They can grow up to 18 inches.  Not the vines, the cucumbers!!!

 

I love this picture, and I just noticed a third cucumber all the way to the left.  WOW!!!

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

 

 

Holy Smokes!!!  The sunflowers have gone wild!!!

 

They are really tall.  See the dill at the bottom of the picture?  It is 6 feet high.  And that support pole on the right hand sunflower is a 10 foot pole, in the ground about a foot.  So, 9 foot pole, and flower way above it.  

 

There are about 20 sunflowers in the garden, and they are all beautiful!!!

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

I was up in the squash garden this morning and I thought you’d like to see how much the Candy Roasters have grown in just the last week.  They are amazing.  

 

I love seeing them change every day.

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

The dill is still gorgeous, and just at the right stage for making pickles, so we made a small batch of refrigerator dill pickles.  It took about 2 hours to get all the stuff together and ready, but it was another rainy day, so we made the most of it.

 

Now the hard part:  we have to let them sit in the refrigerator for two weeks before opening.  Fortunately we have some that we made last summer.  

 

They are so good!!!

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

Don’t laugh too hard, but…these are weeds in my garden.  

 

Let’s be clear about the definition of a “weed.”  A weed is a plant growing out of place.  They are usually uninvited and unwelcome.  

 

Well, these Black-eyed Susies come up uninvited every year in the lower corner of the garden.  But since they are so pretty, and not really in the way, I welcome them.  They make me smile.  

 

So maybe they aren’t really weeds after all.  

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

 

 

Rosalie’s flower garden is bursting with Four O’clocks this year.  There are three different colors:  These dark pink ones, pale pink ones, and some white ones.  They stand about two feet tall, and are so pretty.

 

You will love this:  Its genus name is Mirabilis which in Latin means wonderful.  I love that.

 

And I love these flowers.

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

LOOK!!!  We have a few green striped Cushaw squashes growing.  The squashes are little now, but one year we got one that weighed 12 pounds!!!  It was fabulous.  I’m hoping that these grow that big.  I’ll let you know.

 

The vines are also quite long, reaching to 10 feet.  So they live up in the garden with the North Georgia Candy Roasters, where they have lots of room to sprawl.  

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

Several of our neighbors have hung flag buntings on their fences.  They look so nice for the Fourth of July.

 

There are also two on the gates at the entrance to the neighborhood, but I couldn’t get a picture of them, because the gates close at 7 pm, and we are always safe at home by then.  

 

I hope your Fourth of July is safe and happy.  

 

 

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!

 

 

 

I thought you’d also like to see Nancy’s Crocosmia.  The leaves look a lot like iris, but the flowers are more like freesia, in that they bloom from the top to the tip on long spikes.  Each spike is about 2 feet tall, and the flowers open up a few at a time.  

 

And they are this gorgeous RED!!!  Really eye-catching.  

 

The deer love them too, so Jim sprays that stinky deer repellent every few days.  So I can’t really tell if they smell good naturally, but I do know that they smell of putrescent egg solids now.

 

Good thing they are pretty.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

 

 

Our friends’ Hypericum is blooming.  Aren’t these flowers pretty?  Each one is about 2 1/2 inches across, and the bush is covered in them.  

 

Their plants are low growing bushes, and full of flowers and flower buds.  Of course the deer love it, as you can see examples of deer “nibblage.”  But each time they bite off the end of a branch, two more little branches grow back.  So this bush just keeps getting bushier.  

 

I’ve even seen it used in landscape plantings at interstate rest areas in Virginia and North Carolina.  

 

Hypericum is also called St. John’s Wort, and has been used since the times of the ancient Greeks.  Herbalists still employ extracts from St. John’s Wort to treat bruises, skin irritations, and other wounds.  It has long been thought to have soothing properties, making it useful in the treating of wounds.  

 

I wouldn’t suggest using it medicinally, unless you really know how to prepare and use the plant parts.  Which I don’t, but I do love seeing it in bloom.  I guess that’s part of their soothing property:  making us smile.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!