Nine years ago today...

Tim and I were walking down the aisle. Well, sort of. We were walking down the aisle in the Orlando courthouse. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I giggled through the vows standing under the white arbor with fake flowers. Ahhh, good times. It was perfect. Neither one of us are very traditional and didn't want a big wedding. It's been a good nine years. It's funny because I think of our next nine years together and then realize that Connor will be 17. That is a scary thought!! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Tim. I love you and would marry you all over again.

There is a lot going on in the garden. Most of it is good, but some of it has me concerned and will have me doing some reading and research this afternoon. First the good. We had an inch of rain overnight last night so that made for a very happy garden this morning. I was going to have to do some watering this morning if it hadn't rained. It's almost noon here in August and it's only 65 degrees out. It is so nice out right now with a breeze blowing and I wish I could open the windows up but because of Tim's allergies, we have to keep it all closed up. At least it's nice and dry inside. I'm getting off track. Garden news.

I am so happy with my coleus that I planted out front in my shade garden. They have tripled in size and are so pretty. In fact, all of my flowers are doing really well in the shade garden this year.


Our green peppers are really starting to come in. We've picked three or four of them so far and they are amazing. We used one as a pizza topping last Friday. So good. The plants are full of them ready to be picked still. I'm not a real big fan of green peppers so I'm thinking I might let a few stay until they turn red.


We have a head of broccoli ready to be picked too. I was worried about our broccoli because we had to pick a small little head a while back because they were starting to open up. Thanks to our mild weather all four plants have multiple heads growing again.


I don't know how this happened, but somehow we have two cucumbers that trained themselves to come out the back of the trellis and hang making it so much easier to pick. So far we've eaten all the cucumbers that we've picked. I don't think we are going to get any pickles made this year.

Now for the bad. Well, not necessarily bad. I will have to do some research to determine what's going on.

The potatoes. Both patches have completely flopped over. Is this normal? Should we have staked them up somehow? And man, they take forever. My patience is wearing thin. Tim pulled one of the plants last week to see if we had any potatoes yet and there were a couple really super tiny ones that were not even big enough to eat. We planted them back down. I did see one larger one peeking out of the dirt the other day and quickly covered it up. Hopefully it will be ok. I'm just not sure about the whole flopping over thing.

This little critter was on one of the blossoms of the mystery squash in the back gardens. I tried to look it up but couldn't find conclusive results of what it is. I wondered if it was a potato beetle, but there aren't any on the potatoes that I've been able to see.

I'm pretty sure now that this is a pumpkin plant that is taking over the back patio. And when I say taking over, I mean it has taken over half of the patio and has wrapped around the sage plant there in the pot. The leaves appear to have powdery mildew on them now. Not sure if that will affect the pumpkins or not. It's covered with blossoms and I keep looking for little pumpkins growing but nothing yet. Tim and I were dreaming about pumpkin pies and pumpkin muffins the other day while we were out inspecting it.

One of the possibly pumpkin flowers. I didn't even notice the bugs when I took this picture. I saw them after I uploaded it. It appears to be more of the same kind of bug that is on the squash in the other yard. I really need to figure out if these are good bugs or bad bugs. Oh, and speaking of bad bugs. I haven't really seen many more of the Japanese beetles. Whew. I think we missed a major pain in the butt.

I hope everyone is having a fantastic day. Thanks for stopping by my garden.