These Beans Just Keep Rockin' My World!

These below, are my volunteer sunflowers. The birds have planted them for me. They are growing directly underneath my bird feeder. There's nothing better than volunteer flowers. I try to keep them weeded and they are happy as clams. The squirrels forage underneath them, and I frequently sneak up and startle two or even three squirrels out from the copse of sunflowers here. They're maybe 2 - 3 feet tall. No flower heads yet but my volunteer sunflowers last year stayed about that tall & bloomed all summer long - even throughout our move into this house (they were potted).



Below is my first Jalapeno. I bought this mild Jalapeno plant from Home Depot a month or so ago and planted it in my garden, in one of the Breeko block holes along the side. It seems to be very happy, leaves are dark green and it's got tons of flowers about to open on it. I'm excited, thinking about all the delicious fried cheese-stuffed jalapenos we'll be having because of this beauty.



Look at how big my Purple Russian tomatoes are getting! Still no flowers on them, but I started them from seed and they seem to be thriving. Happiness is tomato plants, let me assure you. The thought of these deep purple plum tomatoes and their rich wonderful flavor keeps me sighing in bliss every time I water or weed them. They smell DIVINE too! The next time you're near a tomato plant, gently rub a leaf and take a sniff. There's nothing like it.



Here's my Purple Basil. This was one of my Aero Garden treats from this winter. I conveniently ran out of fertilizer tablets around the time we finished this garden but the thought of murdering this beautiful basil broke my heart. So I brutally ripped it out of the hydroponic bucket it was growing it (losing a vast amount of its rootlets in the process) and plopped it down into the soil in my garden. It's growing now like there's no tomorrow. It was NEVER this happy inside. I'm thinking I need a small forest of this stuff. It's magnificent and a happy grower. I may be imagining it, but I see it smiling at me every day like it's thanking me for giving it real soil and sunshine and compost.

You're welcome, Beautiful!



And below - well, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Thursday night, 6/4/09, about 7:30 pm before I headed out to knit club, I pushed about 20 more Soleil Bush Bean seeds into a spot in my garden. I have enjoyed my 7 plants SO MUCH, they are so far my favorite in the whole garden. I have harvested handfulls of beans from these plants. My kids eat them raw, they pinch off a little bean on the way by and pop it into their mouths. Know how good that makes a Mom feel? WAY good! So since they've been so very productive and so happy-making for me to grow, I decided I needed to fill a remaining spot in my garden with them.

I pushed them an entire finger length into the soil, MUCH deeper than I planted my first ones (remember the egg cartons?) to see if they would grow sturdier stems and I sat back to wait. It took my 1st set of beans exactly 5 days to sprout. These popped their heads up Monday. That's a full day sooner than last time!

And look what a beautiful deep green shade the leaves are, too. This is just Tuesday evening, day 5, and they've already gotten this big.



The picture below is darker (stupid flash) but you can see the field of them if you look closely. This is day 5, they're already growing like there's no tomorrow! Originally they were planted in Miracle Grow potting soil I got from Big Lots near my house. They must really like the compost more. I'll keep my eyes on them & see how their color & performance compare to the original set.



And believe it or not, I do have knitting. Just not pictures to show. I'm about to start the feather lace part on my Icarus shawl as soon as I'm done posting this new blog. That's right, no more spines repeats, I'm on to lace pattern every row for the next sixty-something rows and then we're DONE. I'll make a special effort to post nothing but yarning pictures tomorrow. Right now if I don't get some knitting time in, I'm going to snap.