Happiness is a Garden!

After two days of drenching rain, the clouds started to break apart yesterday afternoon

and the equines headed out into the front pasture.

The horses seem to have accepted the donkeys into their herd,

but the donkeys are still a little insecure and stay close by each other at all times.

The rain gave me a chance to complete some "re-purposing" projects that I had in mind.

For the front porch...

an old Irwin's Dairy "milk box" repurposed as a planter.

(These are perfect as they come with drainage holes at the corners.)

Do you remember the days when our dairy products were delivered to our homes...

the milkman would come early in the morning, leaving several glass quart bottles of milk

in a milk box just like this.  

I love container gardening and will plant just about any object that will hold soil.

For extra planting space in my vegetable garden...

a couple galvanized wash tubs are holding celery and nasturtiums...

and Swiss chard (planted around a dahlia).

I pounded holes for drainage in the bottom of each with a hammer and a large nail.

All of the garden boxes are filled now.

And as you can see from our garden chalkboard,

(repurposed from an old corn drying tray painted with chalkboard paint)

we are harvesting spinach, kale, asparagus, Swiss chard and rhubarb.

"Le Jardin Potager" is a French phrase which means kitchen garden.

And as with all things French, style is as important as function.

And so a potager is a vegetable garden that is also planted with flowers

and other ornamentals.

From the looks of these broccoli plants, it won't be long before they will be harvested as well.

Our strawberry plants have bloomed.

Berries to follow shortly!

The rest of the boxes hold...

carrots (red, purple and orange)

parsnips,

beets, radishes, turnips, rutabagas,

cauliflower, cabbage, bok choy, kholrabi, purple tomatillos, eggplant,

yellow onions, red onions, leeks,

lettuce, spinach, kale (purple and green),

rhubarb, horseradish, and many herbs,

cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash,

acorn, spaghetti and butternut squash,

many varieties of hot and sweet peppers,

heirloom tomatoes,

sugar peas, sweet potatoes,

green beans, corn, and pumpkins in the largest and lowest box...

and new this year...ground cherries.
We bought ground cherries at the farmer's market last summer and made
ground cherry/orange jam....delicious!
Ground cherries are in the tomatillo family.... a sweeter, smaller, yellow cousin.

I've also been doing a little gardening in miniature...

making a few improvements to my fairy garden.

adding a new gourd house for my teeny gnome,

(I guess you could say he's out of his gourd!)

and a tiny blue stream to run under the foot bridge.

Oh, how I love this time of year!

From sun up til sun down there is so much to do...

and so much that I love to do!