Property and garden photos

Garden of Eden

Killing ivy on trees

Well it's been a busy week. My sister and her husband came to visit and helped me work in the yard. Butch of course is still a little whirlwind and just keeps on improving things around here. First he started to stop the ivy and poison ivy growing on many of our trees. The trees look funny but eventually the ivies will die and the tree will be very thankful. You can see just  few of where he has removed the ivy near the bottom. Previously ivy went from top to bottom!  That bank was also filled with 5-8 foot weeds! Looks great now!  Then he went into what my aunt used to call the "Garden of Eden."  He's been cleaning that up too - also all overgrown. He's not killing everything but hopefully with what he's done, I will have a least a little chance to manage this garden. 

While he was working on this, my sister and I were removing other weeds in the front of the house and cutting the roses way back; removing errant trees, etc.  As always my sister is helping identify what is a plant we should keep and what we should get rid of.. What a job!  Also found a lot of poison ivy .. might have touched a little.. just now starting to see rash developing.. ugh!! Before I started you couldn't even see the ground cover, now it's very obvious.

Just so you don't think we worked everyday, we did take my sister and her husband to Abingdon to see a play and then to Heartwood to see SW Virginia artisans' work - fabrics, jewelry, art work, ceramics, wood carvings, furniture, etc. Some beautiful things. And for Jon's birthday we did no work - went to see the Settler's Museum - a very nice place with some info about the groups that founded this area in 1700's, a one room school house, and a farm with house, barn and out buildings with many of the period furnishings and household and farm implements. What a life. Boy do we ever take for granted how good we have things. And we had cake and chocolate ice cream. Also had company for dinner to see them both Monday and Tuesday nights. Fun was had by all.

While no one else looking I also did my first batch of pickles - bread and butter ones this time. The garden has rebounded somewhat from all our storms. Hoping it continues.

Zucchini rebounding

Cucumber

Yellow squash starting again

Tomatoes ripening