A Beautiful View

A few pictures around my garden and yard. Here’s a lovely picture 

of Vinca plants that were given to me by one of my kids’ friends,

they really add a nice pop of pretty around the mailbox area.

Thanks again, Izzy for the beautiful gift! 

In another area of my yard, we’ll find some late season growth 

of some other summer favorites.  

Here we have Thai Purple Eggplant. 

This is my

first time growing this variety, I usually grow Black Beauty 

or Slim Jim Variety. Love the taste of both of these varieties,

 however, as an impatient gardener, I prefer growing Slim 

Jim simply because harvest time is a lot faster and longer than 

Black Beauty. Since this is my first time growing Thai Purple, I 

can’t really give an honest review of this variety, yet. 

It was such a struggle just to keep the plants alive---I started a 

numerous amount of seeds indoors 8 weeks before frost, under

 a heating lamp and eventually started hardening them off 

(the process of moving plants outside for portions of the day 

to familiarize plants with outdoor temperatures and weather).

 Everything was working out greatly for three weeks and by 

this time, I was starting to leave the plants outside for overnight,

 and then----it happens. An unusual cold front comes through 

and damaged several plants. It took lots of time and effort to save 

what was left---it probably took two months.As you can see there’s

a flower on the plant, so fruit is not far behind.

This last picture has to be my favorite of the three pictured. 

Yeah, homie that’s a watermelon and I’m so excited! 

This is my first year growing the larger variety of 

watermelon…..oh no, that’s a lie! I almost forgot, I did grow

 the Moon and Stars variety last year, along with my

 usual planting of a smaller variety called Sugar Baby

(they usually weigh between 8 to 10 pounds). 

Moon and Stars grew very well last year, however, I never

 got to bring any to the table because they became a 

feast for the animal kingdom. Never found out what was 

eating the melons, but hey----it must have been delicious,

 just too bad my family and I didn’t get a chance to taste 

the sweetness of the Moon and Stars melon, but I hope to  

experience a few slices of Orange Tendersweet this year.