I have already sowed my Fall/Winter garden...aka Summer Part Dos in East Texas. I cut my sweet baby romaine lettuce today for lunch...and it was so good with cherry tomatoes, sweet onion, red pepper and some EVOO.

Living in a forest has it's ups and downs. The Up Side..we have no grass to cut! Rather...Hubs has no grass to cut. After cutting 5 acres of grass for 30 years, I told him I was retiring from that job...if we had grass in Texas, he would have to cut it. He pretty much made sure we did not have any grass!!!  We basically just have weeds that need cutting. He waits for a nice rain and then cuts...it helps cut down on the dust, especially when you have sand for soil.


The Down Side, there is very little sun around our house. I call it chasing the sun. The funny thing is, we only have sun on the North side of our house which happens to be where the driveway meets the garage pad. SO, when I had 0 pepper production well into 2 months or beautiful pepper plants, I dug them up and potted them in fabric pots and relocated them to the driveway. I had to do the same with the eggplant and the artichokes. All of which really want and need a lot of sun to produce fruit.

I'm finally getting my first eggplant. Between the chasing the sun and the flea beetles, it's been a long haul. I finally ordered some organic flea powder that did the job when we lived in Maryland and is working just as well here.

I must of planted my King of The Garden Limas over 3 months ago!!! FINALLY!!! My first lima! They've done a super bang up job just growing....now hopefully I'll get some beans.

When I planted the seeds I didn't realize they were climbers....I almost always plant bush beans. But not this time! I asked Hubs to put up 2 T-posts and I ran garden twine back and forth. If they put out in bean the way they've put out in foliage I'll be one happy gardener!

Next Spring we'll be able to start cutting and eating our asparagus!!! We love this stuff!

I planted my baby broccoli starts and constructed a hoop to keep the cabbage moth from eating them up. I bought a bolt of fabric netting at Walmart for less than $1/yard. So, for under $20 I got a bolt of fabric for a row cover. My only problem was I have a trail of cutter ants that are transporting across the garden at night (smugglers I'm sure)...instead of going around my fabric they chewed a path right through it...SO, I had to squish things in a bit to allow road frontage for the ants to travel. Hey, I think it's worth the effort....they've left my garden alone! Beats eminent domain!

More netting for bugs. I've had 0 success growing chard here. It comes up and looks like it's going to grow and then over night it disappears! Again...chasing the sun with pots (free from a local rancher!). I've been pretty happy with the production I can get from containers. I'm just having to adjust to the lack of space for any type of "mass" production...that's why I say...

"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread!"

The Okra has done beautifully....but again....bloom already!!! Today it finally looks like it's got buds...just in time for me to leave on a week long trip back to Maryland to Nana sit little Eu! That's how it goes...always.

If I hadn't seeded a patch of Zinnias I don't think we'd of had 1 pollinator. I hope it's not a sign...I hope it's just a result of living in a forest. I've had to hand pollinate almost every squash, every tomato, every melon, every everything. I'm afraid though that I've heard others around the country complaining about the same thing. Folks if we kill off our honeybees we kill off our species. 

​But....Our times are in His Hands. 

My earliest memories of gardening are from my childhood. My parents had a garden at our childhood home. I don't really remember helping Dad in it but I remember rhubarb...that's about it...rhubarb. Both of my grandparents had big gardens. They grew all of their food except meat. I remember the best Lima Beans & Corn, the best berries, the best tomatoes, the most beautiful roses. The best life had to offer.

​PopPop Heath grew the very best watermelons in his lower Delaware sandy soil. He'd take me out to the garden pick a watermelon and then proceeded to cut open a big juicy watermelon and tell me that we were only going to eat the best part...the heart. So we did! Then he buried the rest. At their home, after a delicious dinner, PopPop would say he was going to "bury his garbage"...I now know that he was creating a compost pile...to him it was just a part of daily life...collect your kitchen waste and then bury it. I'm sure he amended his sandy soil with that very same compost. I think of him every time I "bury my garbage"...which somedays, living on a plant based diet...is quite often. I sometimes use compost trenches, sometimes I toss in a bin and just keep piling it in...hoping it's going to break down with the help of a few worms...and I have a worm farm in the garage. The worm farm has been working it's magic for about a year and I'm ready to sift the soil and remove as many of my red wigglers as possible. One sad fact here....we have no worms in this sandy soil. None! 

I remember my first garden back in Maryland. We weren't even finished building our home and I hand turned the sod to plant a garden that was only tended every few days or once a week, depending on how often I was able to go out to the building site. Our ground in Maryland was a clay loam...more loam than clay, but we always had 6-8" of top soil. Always!

Coming to Texas was a completely different ballgame! Texas literally kicked my life long garden butt this year! 

I had several factors stacked up against me.

1. Sand...everywhere I look it's a sea of sand...but no beach! Some areas Sugar Sand...others a little loam.
2. Shade...one important factor buying this place was there was no grass to cut (weeds...yes...grass...no..lots of shade)
3. Heat + Sand=thirsty plants
4. BUGS! OMGOSH I HAVE NEVER seen so many bugs. Fire Ants!!!!! Grasshoppers as big as my thumb...no joke!