Today’s game day at Case da Lee, so have some pictures.

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I’m trying to push myself with these challenges, away from taking pictures that inspire the feeling and themes and trying to capture the feelings in a visual way. It’s interesting because I’ve far more use to spinning visuals with words. This week’s concept is “Annoyed”.

Annoyed to me is a state of mind. It’s being agitated by something that you can’t get rid of, something that keeps coming up, never really gets resolved, largely because it is also at times vital to lives other than yours. Lately it’s been really hot, like oppressively hot, here. It’s the kind of heat that you can almost wear. But it’s also vital for all the plants I love to grow (not to mention all the veggies I’ll love to eat in a few weeks when they ripen.)

To the non-gardening inclined this is a boring phase in the garden. But if you’re a gardener you know how exciting it can be to see your plants getting thicker, darker and bigger every day For both sides I’m kicking off with a shot of pea flowers, and the rest (including some shots of my gardening buddies) is under the cut.

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Plot #1: Peas and zucchini with carrots on the side

Those are the baby zucchini with their first set of “true” leaves.

The peas are in bloom, aren’t they cute?

The carrot box is going strong (and needs to be thinned).

Plot #2: Tomatoes, bell peppers & cucumbers

Bad news here, with a week of off and on rain slugs got in and ate the leaves of the bell peppers. Jason picked up a replacement this weekend, but only found one plant in decent shape. Also only one of the two cucumbers I’ve started sprouted. This leaves me with two spaces in this plot, so I guess I’ll be checking out local gardening sections looking for something interesting to stick in there.

Aww, poor bell peppers. R.I.P.

Upside Down Planter #1: Cherry Tomatoes

Looking a little yellow because of all the rain.

This week I’ll be weeding, replacing the two empties, planting the cucumber that did sprout and the second upside down planter with banana peppers. What will you be doing this week in your garden?

Just sit back and enjoy. This is the last week of school here, and as such I’m self forcing a deadline. There will be a lot of photo-posts this week. Feel free to click on the pictures for a bigger look.

The shade garden is all huge n’ stuff.

I finally got this little back section by the evergreen bushes cleaned up and looking nice. Remember how much I hate landscaping stone? This is why:

Last August my neighbor spend two days cleaning this little strip of his out (that’s where the hostas from the above picture came from. They are, by the way, significantly thicker and larger after only a few months and a winter over in my yard. This is mostly because almost all hostas like some to a lot of shade, and that strip of the neighbor’s get almost all sun.) He dug it completely out, got all new plants, laid down that black weed plastic crap and arranged the stone just so. And this spring? That area looks like this and he had to end up spending as much time pulling weeds as he did cutting his entire (small) yard.

So the veggie garden is doing a lot, all the plants are bigger, darker and thicker. Clearly they are all adoring our soil despite my guilt at not amending it a bunch with compost like I’d planned to this year. It is exciting to check the garden every few days, and my daughter had a blast making mounds out of loose soil and planting zucchini seeds in them. We spent part of the weekend mulching the tomato patch with newspaper, then a windy day came along and blew it all over the yard. But none of this makes for good pictures, so we also took a garden walk and took some pictures that do make for some good garden pron.

Our dwarf siberian irises

Our spiderwort, and a bonus ladybug

The dianthus my daughter talked me into buying this year. These are planted outside my bedroom window and they smell sooooo good!

A closer shot

Dianthus from across the street

Another variation of the same plant

Pansies, also from across the street

One of my favorite ways to garden

More under the cut.

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