Dear Friends...

Dear Friends,

What can I say? It seems I've hit the writer's block wall, I just didn't have any desire to sit here and blog.

Blogging has been a wonderful way for me to share the passion and joy in my garden. Maybe, that's why my lack of blogging reflected my lack of gardening. Getting ready for my trip to Germany I began to ignore the garden and once I returned, it only got worse.

My husband Don did a monumental job of keeping the garden beds watered while I was gone. It figures that the hottest, driest spell of the summer was during those two weeks. Since I've been home I've rarely had to turn on the sprinklers although today would be a good day to do so.

Tuesday a strange feeling came over me. I was so sick and tired of the mass of weeds along my driveway that I decided to pull a few of them out. Two hours later I had filled many bucket loads but the garden didn't look any different. Yesterday I went on the attack and spent 6 hours weeding and hauling bucket after bucket load to the woods. Note, I use large tree planting pots when I weed as they are very light and if I stop working and it rains the water runs out of the holes in the bottom.

This morning I woke up with the urge to take some photos and share them with you but Don took my camera to work so that will have to wait. I've discovered some new delights in the garden, the secret of Lunaria and most amazingly, gourds!

I can hear you now, "she must be out of her gourd" but I just find this so cool. Last year when it was time to decorate for Christmas, I threw the decorative autumn gourds on my compost heap.
In June I noticed some strange foliage in my garden in three different locations. I couldn't figure out what it was but decided not to weed them out. This week I've discovered that I've got gourds growing in my garden. They look like little white pumpkins, I think they're called 'Baby Boo' and I'm so excited about them! To top it all off, my birdhouse gourds are growing like crazy and I've got three big gourds plus tons of babies coming along.

Hopefully I'll get some photos posted here tomorrow. Thanks for sticking with me through this spell and thanks for all the comments. My mom is back in Florida and doing well (although getting soaked with Fran right now). Last night was my first Board of Education meeting (Hi Gail!) today my youngest daughter returns from band camp, and this weekend my older daughter heads back to college in Pennsylvania.

Time to get my fingernails dirty again,
Melanie