Barefoot Kitchen Witch - In the Garden

High Atop a Tomato Stake

Morning Stroll

Weekend mornings.  Early.  Cups of coffee in hand, Bill and I head outside before the kids are up to take a leisurely walk around the yard.  To check out the growing things.

Like the peas.  These won't be around for long.  And we'll have no idea how many the plants give us, because Alex and Julia will pick the little pea pods and eat them before Bill and I even see them.  Most of them.

But here are a few - proof that they existed.

I love the pea blossoms...

 

Nearby, in our little garden next to the driveway, the garlic is sending out scapes, or flower stems, which I'll be harvesting tomorrow, probably, and using in a variation on scallion pancakes.  Cutting the scapes is also supposed to increase the bulb size of the garlic, too, so it's a completely win-win plan.

From there, it was into the back yard to check out the various squashes, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, and assorted greens.  And to admire the feathery asparagus.

Harvest time is past, and we allow the asparagus to grow tall and flower.

 

Now it's around to the front of the house...

This rose bush is HUGE this year.  We bought it ten or eleven years ago - before we bought this house and moved in here - from a guy in our neighborhood who had gorgeous flowering plants all over his yard - he nad entire green hands, never mind a green thumb.  Anyway, every August he had a plant sale - he'd pot up tons of plants, put them all out in his driveway and over the grassy areas of his yard, and people would come and shop.  Like us.  We bought a lot from those plant sales, including this rose. 

Moving along...we walk through the boat garden.  Last year Bill took over and added a bunch more perennials, like these lupines...

And this...which I don't remember the name of...

 

I bought this pink daisy a couple weeks ago.

Here's a view of most of the garden.  The irises are winding down, but there's plenty of other color to take over.

That's my cup of coffee there on one of the stepping stones.

I love early mornings.

Chives Up Close - With Some Bugs and Spiders

In Which My Son Serves Breakfast to a Spider On This Dewdrop Laden Morning

Foggy this morning.  My husband, son and I were all outside this morning, before the sun burned through, checking out all the vegetables and (in my case) admiring all the tiny water droplets that adorned the fernier greens.

 

There were also little patches of dew-laden webs scattered on the lawn and tucked against the fence or the edge of a garden. 

I love things like this.  Love to look closely at the dewdrops strung like jewels along the nearly invisible strands of web. 

It's magical.

Anyway, in one such web I found its architect and builder - a little brown spider tucked toward the back of the web, out of the way, out of sight....