Spring garden

Well, it's summer now, but here are some "spring" pictures of my garden. It's doing great! I took these pictures 2 weeks ago and you should see it now. With a recent rain, everything has shot up another foot!

The following pictures are my raised veggie beds.... strawberries, Walla Walla sweet onions, tomatoes and lemon cucumbers. The strawberries didn't have many berries, but I think most of the plants are everbearing, so I will have more berries later in the summer.

The nasturtiums that I planted last summer, came back with a vengence, so I took most of them out! There are a few left in amonst the strawberries!

My two tomato plants have grown at least a foot since I took these pictures! Same with the lemon cucumbers. I'll take more pictures once the rain stops!

See the pointy things in the middle? Those are artichokes! I've never planted them before and have no idea what they should look like or if I'll get any fruit.

My flowers are all looking great and my yellow roses are opening up! I've netted my vegetables so the deer won't eat everything! I didn't net any flowers, and the deer do LOVE roses, so one of these days, I may go outside and have my roses all eaten. I have a bird bath closeby, so the deer may want to come and drink. I really should move the birdbath!

I planted some more pansies in a couple of planter pots that I got from my neighbor.

My fuschias should be starting to get flowers very soon.

The nasturtiums are taking over in the front planters also! I've pulled some out to give the petunias underneath a chance.

Neighbors one lone foxglove. My property in Washougal, WA used to be covered with hundreds of them!

Neighbor's cute array of garden goodies.

First strawberries.

Maddie says hi!

Besides enjoying my garden, I spent a few days a month ago, watching our old old wood fence being removed from behind the mobile homes on one side of the park, to make way for a new tall chain link fence. That old wood fence has probably been here for at least 30 years! and then......... they removed a bunch of big old growth fir trees that were too close to the homes and ruining any fence that was there.. also to make room for the new fence. That was fun to watch!

Here's the old fence. I'd already removed a bunch of the boards.

I'd removed about every other board, using my handy dandy battery screwdriver. It worked great, but many of the screws were so rusty, that my screwdriver would not budge them. I wanted to save the better boards, to use for building "something"! (not sure what)

Here's my first stack of boards. The neighbor came over and  helped me take many more off, using his impact screwdriver. Now I need one of those. It worked so  much better.

Then came the tree falling, a few days later.........

That huge tree was encroaching into the wall of this mobile home! 

Fence all gone! See the old stumps that are on my lot? Those trees were cut down years ago to make room for the old wood fence. I hope to have those removed one of these days, so I'll have more room for vegetables. 

Now we're just waiting for the new fence. I hear that the company has been  hired and they have the supplies, so it may happen hopefully in the next couple of weeks. It sure opened up my yard area and this entire side of the park has more sun now. A win win situation, but hated to see those beautiful old trees go.

FINAL NOTE: Whenever I go into town, or at least once a week, I usually go to town (it's about 9 miles from me so I run all my errands at once), and go to McDonald's, and then find a nice place to park on one of the hills overlooking the town. I ALWAYS have a stunning view! 

It's hard to tell, but I'm WAY up high on a hill!

Until next time... please everyone enjoy the start of Summer!

Marilyn

ALL CONTENT © PINK PAPER COTTAGE.

PLEASE DO NOT COPY MY PHOTOS AND IMAGES INTO YOUR OWN POSTS WITHOUT FIRST LINKING TO THIS BLOG AND MY NAME.

What do I do on a Gray Day?

Today is day 5 of gray, cloudy and rainy days here. This is unusual, because even though I live close to the Oregon coast, I'm 9 miles inland, so there are sun breaks on most days.

I've been bored the last few days! No motivation or desire to do much. All I want to do is eat! 

So today, I decided enough is enough! I've only consumed a protein shake and a few spoonfuls of baked beans from last night's dinner! 

So I picked up my camera did a photo shoot with my kitty. He's like a puppy dog, and will do about anything I ask.

Put a little makeup on (lipstick even!) and jewelry, and my new southwestern jacket I bought 2 months ago and have never worn, and took some selfies ( after I had cut my hair!) Yes boredom makes you cut your hair.

And decided to FINALLY get out my sewing machine and hem my king quilt to fit my double bed. Have been putting it off for months.

Had bought this picture last winter so I could use blue in my bedroom for a change.

........and guess what! After all the prep to hem it, I found out I didn't need to hem it! It fit perfectly! Long on the sides more like a bedspread, but that's ok with me.

I dusted off my nightstands, and added some yellow daffodils (fake of course) that I bought a few weeks ago.

I really like it. It's a nice change. 

This all took about 3 hours.....and I didn't eat a thing!

They say, when you get bored, just clean something. I say just pick up your camera!

Happy Tuesday!

Marilyn

(Posted from my phone)

So much color!

The COLOR is coming on strong in my little "yard", what there is of it! It's almost all gravel, so I have lots of pots and some raised beds.

My one raised bed is now all strawberries. Last year, half of it was nasturtiums, but they took over the entire bed! So this year, I bought a few more strawberries to plant, plus had some the neighbors gave me, and the rest (that are already blooming) came up from last year.

I'm about done planting all of my pots.. I just have a few more plants left.

I am going to use my other raised bed for some veggies. I already planted some Walla Walla Sweet Onions I bought from the local nursury. I also bought two yellow cherry tomato plants, and some sugar snap pea seeds. I have room for one more raised bed, so may put one more in this summer.

My neighbor gave me a long cedar post to use for some hanging baskets. I had no way to dig the hole myself (ya think?) so he offered to do it for me. He and his wife had three hangars they gave me! That was so nice of them. Then of course, I had to go buy some hanging baskets.

I only bought two baskets as they were so spendy! My finances are pretty tight this year so flowers are at the bottom of my "bucket list". I found an old hanging basket in a pile at the other neighbor's house (she said I could have any I want) so cleaned it up, patched a hole in it, and planted some pansies in it.

It's this white basket. It'll do. See the blueberry bush behind it? It's FULL of blossoms!

I'm LOVING all the color in my own yard! I bought a few annuals and some seeds (which I haven't planted yet). 

This is a rhododendron that a different neighbor gave me last year. She had dug it up and it was in pieces. this one piece survived and I hope it'll branch out again.

My lilac "tree" is doing well. It was in bad shape last year when I moved here. I cut away all the dead branches, pruned it and weeded around the bottom. It's very fragrant which I love!

A few of my Irises are going to bloom. These are the ones I brought from Madras. The leaves do not look too healthy. Not sure why.

This is the cluster of pots that I see from my front porch, as I come from my car to walk up the steps. I love it. I stuck some solar lights in the pots, that I found in my shed. They are a few years old, but working pretty good.

I've also been in the process of hand weeding all of my gravel! Very tedious and physically taxing job. I hate spraying if I can help it. After 3 days of yard work last weekend, I was pretty pooped out for a few days............

This yellow rhododendron is so gorgeous! It was one I planted last year and it survived the winter, though we did have some 20 degree weather. I never dreamed there would be 20 degree temperatures at the coast here in Oregon! Pretty unheard of for the most part. Funny looking bug inside!

We've had some really nice "spring" weather, but it has clouded up today and there will be a few days of rain. That's OK. Gives me an excuse to stay in the house and read, which I love doing.

TAKE CARE ALL......... AND ENJOY THE SPRING!

Marilyn

ALL CONTENT © PINK PAPER COTTAGE.

PLEASE DO NOT COPY MY PHOTOS AND IMAGES INTO YOUR OWN POSTS WITHOUT FIRST LINKING TO THIS BLOG AND MY NAME.