Each day I notice more and more flowers in our yard! You see, I’ve always had a thing for flowers. When David and I moved into our house and began maintaining (and adding to) the gardens, we consciously decided to remove many ornamentals, like the Canna lilies who engulfed our sprinklers and hid snails armies. I joke with David about how he wouldn’t let me plant flowers; he felt stronger about it than I did. I understand and agree with the reasoning that we have such little space and want to grow as much food as possible. When we began discussing what we’d do with the property, with no debate, the rose garden stayed. We put a few annuals in our herb bed and after building our raised tomato bed, we dug a bed dedicated to flowers and perrenials.
The dedicated flower bed doesn’t hold much and I’ve been thinking about what to do with it. We planted bulbs too late, and most of them haven’t bloomed. Three of the five sagos look great and I just decided it’s time to take the other two out. The asparagus fern was given to me by my sister, and it was half dead when we got it. It’s now probably our healthiest looking plant in the bed. There are other plants, not pictured, which were all experiments and the plan is to move the perennials in here around a bit later this year.
For now, I transplanted a few cosmos in here and they seem to like their new spot.
In our yard, the succulents do really well! Most of them are cuttings from friends or neighbors, and a few of them are from David’s aunt.
This is the succulent on our porch that we’ve been waiting for. Many of them have been flowering recently and it’s been so interesting to see all the shapes and colors.
I’ve been more enthralled with watching our vegetables blossom, bringing with them the promise of food.
These flowers bring David the promise of food, and are ones that I avoid like the plague. It’s cilantro, or will be coriander. The flowers seem to always be covered in flies and just rubbing on the plant makes the slightest breeze reek of cilantro.
Off to the backyard gardens, where flowers are everywhere!
The potted flower that I cut back this spring is getting buds! I can’t wait to see it covered in pink flowers again, and am so glad that the chance I took on it has paid off so far.
In the backyard we have many types of squashes and melons, and many of them are flowering! In the squash bed, the only one flowering right now is the Kazakh melon, but the others are getting close!
I love looking into these flowers. I haven’t noticed a female one yet, and I’m wondering how different the female melons are. I’m keeping watch!
This week the sugar baby and buttercup have been taking off. The first female pattypan flowered today. We currently have three baby yellow crookneck squash on the way!
There are about five zucchinis growing! I had originally planning on growing Sunburst yellow zucchini alongside of the Safari, but they were backordered. I have the seeds now, and David and I were just talking about planting some if/when we do a second planting of zucchini this summer.
I’m already in love with the Safari zucchini. I can’t wait to see them pickled and in jars. Or grilled with fresh basil and tomato. Or in zucchini bread.
We haven’t had space to grow squash before. I haven’t grown it myself in about 15 years and I’m excited about the harvest from our one plant. I’m hoping we have the perfect amount to keep up with. In fact, that’s how we’ve planned our plants- enough to can and eat but not be over inundated at once.
Our acorn squash plants already have about five or six fruits coming.
We have it crawling up and over a tomato cage. I love how it’s strong tendrils are gripping the wire. David and I were talking this evening about pruning back the plants a little, so they don’t take over the garden. I think I made him nervous by suggesting that I did not water the plant to grow as large as possible and wanted to… gasp.. cut it.
Our cucumbers are starting to take off. There are lots of male and female flowers and they are crawling through their beds. We haven’t set up climbing structures for them. We just talked about it and will hopefully find time in the next couple of weeks to do that. The end of the school year is always tough to find time, but I think we have a rather speedy solution.
We’ve been planning our pickles and we’re keeping a close watch.
The beans have started to grow but are still tiny. I planted the ones in our school garden a bit sooner, and I’ve been munching on fresh green beans throughout the day. 
The Dragon’s Tounge beans are flowering and growing. We’ll be eating some within the next couple of weeks!
I really thought that the variety we had was pole beans, but here’s how they look:
Apparently they are bush beans!
The dill was just planted here, and has already begun to flower. We pinched it back and are hoping it will bush out a little. We need the dill for our cucumbers. The two cukes here are both a little leaf pickling variety. These are the ones that should get another pole and a trellis to climb soon.
Both David and I will be busy this weekend, but hope to find some time to get plant supports in, and transplant the Malali watermelon. This should be our last weekend in a while before we have a larger harvest. Right now we have radishes and lettuce ready to harvest. We just pickled more nasturtium capers tonight. And tried them for the first time- they are like capers with a kick!
Life In Our Little LA Garden 