We’ve been very fortunate with all the rains that we’ve had recently, my garden is looking very healthy.
Believe it or not, I still have some planting space in my little area. I made more planting bed for beans that my friend gave me. My neighbor finally came over to speak to me, she said that her husband wants to start a garden this year, a little too late I thought to myself, but she didn’t want him to, it seems like it’s a lot of work.
New beans that my friend gave me.
The rooster comb flowers.
Jr. Sunflowers that my second sister gave me. She said that these wouldn’t get as tall as the normal sunflowers.
My cherry tomatoes, Thai eggplants, chili peppers look very healthy.
The snow peas are trying to climb up the A Frame, they need a wee bit of help since they’re under the frame.
My herb garden.
I can’t eat these fast enough, so I start looking around to see a different way, and found two recipes that I really like.
Cathy at mmm-yoso!!! food blog has a nice recipe of watermelon treat that calls for mint. This would be great for summer treat, her recipe is simple, something that I could follow. First, chop the mint, chop the melon, add the thawed lime concentrate, then chill, and if there are leftovers, you can blend for a delightful beverage the next day.
Cambree also wrote a post on Refreshing Summertime Drinks, a recipe that calls for mint. Here is the Cooling minty green tea with lime recipe: 6 cups of water, 3 green tea bags, handful of fresh mint leaves, 1 whole lime sliced and juiced, 2 tbsp of agave nectar. Just boil the water, add the tea bag (let in steep for 5-10 minutes). Add the fresh mint leaves, lime juice, and agave syrup. Stir, let it cool and then refrigerate until cold.
My pickling cucumbers look real healthy, but sadly the milk paint got washed out by the many rains that we had recently.
I ended up moving these succulent plants from the pots, they are growing too fast and didn’t have enough room to spread around.
Max doesn’t get to visit my garden very often, and when he did this time, he tried to eat my flowers, bad dog!
The flowers that I enjoy the most and has a nice fragrance when I work in my garden are these wild flowers climbing along the back fence, I didn’t grow them and they come up year after year.
Nye Noona 
Nice garden Ginger!!! Your garden is looking beautiful and healthy!!! I really need to try that melon recipe! thanks for sharing!
I love the smell of honeysuckles!!!
Hi mozemoua, thanks, the hard work finally paid off. The honeysuckles smell real nice, I’m glad I didn’t weed it out in the springtime. 🙂
There’s a restaurant in Chapel Hill (Crook’s Corner) that makes honeysuckles’ ice cream. I hear they’re delicious, but have not try it yet. I remember plucking the flowers and sucking out the sweet juices as kid. Some are coming up in my garden as well and they do have very nice and sweet fragrance.
Your herbs are looking really nice, especially the cilantro…which will start to flower as the heat of June and July come around. I hope it will continue to rain steadily throughout the summer unlike last year. Enjoy your time out there:))
Honeysuckles remind me my childhood too. Lazy summer days spent plucking the little flowers filled with sweet nectar. Luckily we didn’t get stung by any bees!
PaNoy, as for the cilantro, I hope I will be able to eat it before it becomes flower, that’s lots of eating. I still have lots of seed that my dad gave me, so I plan to put new seeds out to replace the harvested ones.
It’s kind of nice having all this rain, but I’m sure not everyone is enjoying it, I hear complaint at mozemoua’s blog already, she can’t get her photography work done. 🙂
Wow Ginger your garden looks great! Sorry to hear about the milk paint not working out. But pretty soon the vines will be climbing all over the frame.
And your herb garden is so abundant. Btw, you can also just skip the green tea and make pure mint tea. It’s very cooling in the summer time heat.
And watch out for the succulents, those guys can really spread out. But they are such awesome plants… requires little water and even less attention. 😉
Hi Cambree, no wonder they are called hen and chicks, they spread out rapidly, I had a hard time removing them from the pots, but their new home has plenty of space for them to spread out.
To be honest, I didn’t have any childhood memory of the honeysuckles, I guess that’s one bad thing about being a city kid.
The mint tea sounds good, I think I’ll be drinking more tea this summer. 🙂
I am a fan of honeysuckle as well. I can’t never tell honeysuckle and jasmine flower apart. I like them both the same. My parents planted them on a huge pots and lined them on our drive way. My childhood memories of them would be coming home late at night during the summer months – the air would be filled with the fragrance of these flowers. Good time.
Dallas, the smell can be too strong sometimes, my second sister complaints that it gives her a headache, but I don’t notice, I kind of like the smell. I have 2 huge gardenia plants at my driveway and they’ve a nice fragrance when they’re in bloom.
looks very peaceful.
lady0fdarkness, thanks, it’s nice and quiet back there, 🙂 my house is sandwiched by elderly couples, very peaceful.
wow!!! very nice garden.. just like what i’ve seen on tv or magazine.. great job.
Thanks seeharhed, it was lots of work, maybe I watched too much HGTV, backyard make over back in the days. 🙂
hahahhahah I been watching alot of HGTV too.. I have all these ideas in my head, I just need to put it on the plan and start working on it. Give me 7 or 8 months, maybe I’ll show you guys some pictures. 🙂
seeharhed, since I started blogging, I’ve less time watching HGTV and the food network now, I kind of missed that. And best of luck with your back yard makeover, I found a lot of neat ideas from garden books that I borrowed from my local library, it’s free. I visit my library on a regular basis now.
wonderful garden, looks like something out of a magazine. your recipe with the watermelon and mint I will have to try out and don’t forget that your local bars will buy good mint for the summer months for Mohitos. yummy rumm, mint crushed, boiled sugar water, splash of soda water and ice. excellent summer time refreshers
peace n abundance
CheyAnne
Hi CheyAnne Sexton, thanks for stopping by. I borrowed many books from the library to get some ideas, and it seems to have come together nicely. It sounds to me that I can do a lot more with my mint than I realized, thanks, I’ll definitely give some of it a try.
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