Catching Up

Holy cow, is it really true that I have neglected this blog since the end of July? For shame!

To be honest, I haven't been the most dedicated gardener as of late. I've been busy with other things, not to mention we'd had a lot of rain until the other day. So it was hard to make time to tend to things the way I like to.

However, I'd like to announce that we are officially looking for our country veggie farm homestead with my mom. We want something with at least a couple acres, and a house that will allow us (C. and I) and my mom our privacy and ability to carry on our lives without getting in the way of the other's. All within a certain budget, of course. It's a rather tall order, but I feel that there must be something out there for us, if we are patient and diligent. Last night we had our first viewing of a house, and unfortunately, it was a real clunker. The setting was lovely, but the property hasn't been well-taken care of, enough to really turn us all off. Crossed off the list, what's next?

My mom is still thinking about trying to make her current home (the house I grew up in) work for our situation, but we'll see. It's going to be a long process, but hopefully successful in the end. Wish us luck!

In the meantime, the vegetable garden at our house is doing well. The squash is really just going crazy with a capital "c", as is the watermelon. The black beauty eggplant, which we only just now found out is late season, is finally producing fruit! (I planted it way too early, back in late April, if you recall.) The tomatoes are mostly looking rough-ish, but I think so far we have escaped Late Blight. Other stuff, maybe, but I don't think anything too serious. The plants are producing lots of fruit but things are still very slow to ripen, especially the regular tomatoes. The cherry varieties are coming in piecemeal; we've been able to make small batches of salsa here and there along with the peppers, which have been coming along fine for the most part.

The New Hampshire woodland garden, I am afraid, is a weedy mess at the moment. The other shade garden at the back of the house is flourishing and choking out most of the weeds. I don't really need to do anything with it, in fact!

The front garden is looking a little better than it had been. I was able to pull out the dead and dried-up stuff, which helped considerably. And now, things like stonecrop are really starting to fill out and get pretty. The purple coneflower keeps up, and the snapdragons and the centauria return again and again as long as I keep on top of the deadheading.

I'm not sure when I will have more time to play catch up, but I hope sometime before the end of the month! By then, it'll be time to start planning for next year. Our biggest plan includes expanding the veggie gardens in the back quite a lot... though who knows, by then we could be making much bigger plans!