Before and After

I should have posted pictures of the garden before, but I was writing the post late, and it was dark and my pictures ended up looking creepy rather than freakishly large.  

When we first bought there was no garden here, but evidence that our PO had done a little planting (the neighbors said a couple tomatoes and annual flowers). I made a long skinny garden, roughly 2x8 there last year.  It is lined with the Purlington bricks that are from the old street out front. The bricks actually have a neat history.  They are from the street we live on, when, about forty or fifty years ago, the city replaced the bricks with pavement.  They also replaced the sidewalk at that time.  If you look in yards down our block, you will almost certainly see some of these bricks.  Our PO saved a whole pile of broken sidewalk pieces in our back yard too.  Far less cool than the bricks.

This year I went crazy with the tiller and expanded the garden to it's current size, which is about 5x20.  Here is the garden on May 1st.  
Here is the garden today. Note that you can't even see the 4ft high currant bush at the other end of the garden. 

A view from the side:

Here is my tomato cage supported by bungee cords.  These are all heirloom tomatoes I planted from the Friends School Plant Sale. I would give you specifics on this monster, but it devoured its tag and I don't remember which order I planted them in.

I do, however, know what these are.  These are Black Cherry Tomatoes, though by the size of them they should really be called Black Golf Ball Tomatoes. This is my first tomato to begin showing color.  Things seem to be ripening later this year.  This weekend is my nephew's birthday, and I remember trying to get his sister and him to eat the tomatoes last year at this time and they refused.  

This is a picture of my rogue tomatoes.  The ones that mysteriously came up from seed.  They are uncaged and haven't been touched; they are as big as the heirlooms.  They are sweet 100's.

Finally, my coneflowers.  I am really enjoying these guys.  They cheer me up every time I pass them.  

Is our garden on steroids?

I want to preface this by saying the garden is surely NOT on steroids, or anything else for that matter.  I put some compost in, tilled it up this spring, water it sporadically, and generally neglect it.  The dog, since discovering rabbits frequent it despite the fence (they get in below the neighbor's fence) now considers it his personal hunting estate, hiding under the tomatoes and belly crawling toward the carrots.  This is really the extent of care (or neglect) the garden has received.  

Yet, mysterious things have been happening in the bungle-garden.  For one, ground cherries, tomatoes and snapdragons are coming up.  Which wouldn't be weird, since I planted all of these things, but is weird since I planted them LAST YEAR.  What is going on?  Was it the tilling?  These aren't little tomatoes, either.  Some of these plants are attempting to take over the garden.  They're huge.  They are growing from seed (which up in Minnesota isn't supposed to happen unless you start indoors) without cages. There has been at least ten of these garden crashers this year.  I have let a few live if they are respecting the plants I spent money on. Others have met a much sadder fate (me yanking them out with a dumbfounded look on my face).  

Okay, so ghosts from summer past is the first weird thing.  The second also involves tomatoes, these planted by me this year.  Heirloom tomatoes from the Friend's School Plant Sale.  They are giants.  They have taken my tomato cages that I inherited from the previous owner, laughed at their poor little wired frames, and tipped them over from their sheer girth.  I have had to resort to using bungee cords in my garden to keep the cages upright. Bungee cords!  Our neighbor's garden is on the other side of the fence (chain link) from ours.  They planted the same weekend we did.  Their tomatoes are just barely cresting over the tops of their cages.  

So I ask this, as a novice gardener, WTF is up with our garden?  Anyone?  Again, this garden is completely organic.  No fertilizers, pesticides, nuclear reactions, or performance enhancing drugs.  Just good old sun, water when I feel like it and occasional weeding.  And rabbit eating and dog trampling thrown in for good measure.  

Soon we will be buried in tomatoes.  We will have to eat our way out of the back door. 

What could be more fun than

Backing the car up into your backyard because you can? I mean when you have big loads, like dirt for the yard, a wicker couch for the porch you grabbed off the curb, my birthday present (a wine barrel turned rain barrel!!!!!) or Kevin's birthday present:
I mean look at that thing. There was no way I could carry it through the garage. That would be at least four additional steps I would have to take. Plus, it's just fun to drive in your yard. Why own a house if you can't abuse the privilege? Who's with me?

P.S. I also dented the trim Kevin just installed when bringing this into the house. I say it adds character, though I think he might be less than thrilled.

As promised, a yard post

Our yard, like the rest of the house, hasn't really been taken care of in...oh...TEN YEARS. There are giant weeds, who believe it is their right to inhabit our yard. There was a patch of daylilies that had decided it should own most of the vegetable garden, and three overgrown evergreens in the front. There was also a strange patch that had cement chunks and more weeds, daylilies, and vines.

There are a lot of good features of the yard too. Our PO grew a giant rhubarb patch on the side of the yard, which makes a great conversation piece. There is a currant bush that I used when making some pretty good scones. The trees in front, recently planted, are just what I wuld have planted. One is a gorgeous maple that I can't wait to see change in the fall. The other is a cute little flowering tree that looks a lot like an apple but hasn't produced any fruit. Just pretty little white fragrant flowers in the spring. The next door neighbors have a tree that flowered at the same time, so I plan to ask them what it is. Also, I have yet to be without cutting flowers in bloom. We have had fresh bouquets all summer. We have had Lily of the Valley, Peonies, Lilacs (the neighbors), Daylilies, Snap Dragons and Asters (I planted these). I had a bridal shower for my sister and was able to create some pretty stunning bouquets for it.

We've done some things this summer as well. There were a few areas that were terrible to mow, like by the neighbor's fence. So I planted some hostas and took advantage of the city's free wood chip piles. Which, as you will see is a common theme to my gardening. I also transplanted some daylilies from our massive bunch on the side of the house over to the side of our garage were there was a patch of hard-to-mow grass. I built a little brick retaining wall from some random bricks around the house. Yes, we have random bricks.

Finally, I planted two native gardens in the front. This is a picture of one. They are both mirror images of eachother. So far they seem to be thriving.