Leaf Cutter Bee in the Zinnias

This is such a cool thing that I discovered last summer in the zinnia flowers!

Based right at the intersection of the leaf and the stem I found this leafy papery shape, like a cocoon of some type. The first thing that popped into my mind was leafcutter bee. No idea where I might have heard that before but possibly when my son was little we read about them. So I looked it up and that’s what it is. So cool!!! I am so very interested in all the workings of the insects in the garden. They all have a purpose here and I’m so happy when I get to see these little miracles in action right in the backyard. 

Now it makes sense why I have been seeing holes cut out of some of the leaves around here. Fun to know! These bees are very beneficial to the garden and they are friendly. From what I’ve read, they don’t sting like other bees. I wish that they would have chosen a safer spot in the garden to make their nest because I needed to now make a mental note not to pick any of these flowers. In order to provide a safe place for them to nest, I decided that I am going to make some nesting boxes for them and that way I can watch them closely and also learn more about them. In my search for more information about these cool bees I ran into a video posted online by OwlTv

Leafcutter bee video by WildOwl Tv

Seeing this video makes me even more excited to build some boxes for them so that they are more protected!

Looking Back at My First Garden - 20 Years Ago

I was looking through some old photos today on my computer and found this picture of my very first garden where I am standing knee deep in the flowers. I look so serious here. I believe the picture was taken in 2003, when we first moved to Nevada. I love visiting old photographs like this. I was beyond excited to have a place that I could create a garden for my family. I was eager to learn everything that I could. It was a tiny garden but I made it amazing and packed as much as I could into the small space that I had to work with. It was at the back side of a hill with open space and no homes behind us and no fencing. I remember it being the perfect little place for me to let my creativity explore.

My favorite thing to grow at that time was tomatoes and made some great canned salsa that year. Sunflowers and zinnia were my favorite flowers. I also started becoming very interested in taking pictures of the flowers in my garden and also enjoyed the beneficial insects that visited. 

Macro photography was a lot of fun and this allowed me to also teach my children about them and share the excitement about the garden.

Here are a few pictures that I took during my first few years as a new gardener.

I had a box with lots of extra tiles, so I sprinkled them loosely on the ground to add a splash of color and add interest. There is one pink spider flower right in the middle of the zinnia to the left.

One of the first things that I grew were zinnias and I remember them being so amazing! If you are new to gardening and want an easy to grow flower, I suggest zinnias. They bloom for a very long time. They are still one of my favorites today and my garden is not complete without them. The ones that are pictured here are California Giants. Now several years forward, my favorites now include Oklahoma Salmon and also the Benary varieties like the Giant wine and also the Carmine Pink. Over the years I have noticed that I am more fond of pink flowers than I ever was before.

I grew these cute sunflowers and created a pretty bouquet standing out in the garden. These cuties are called Teddy Bear Sunflowers. I grew some here in the summer of 2022 but they were not near as stunning as you see pictured here. I think that I could try again next summer and hope they might do better.

Luna Love 💗

I never imagined that my love would develop so strongly for a dog after the things that I’ve experienced, but this beautiful girl is changing my whole world. I have had some trust issues when it comes to large dogs, due to bad past experiences. 

When I was 2 years old, I was on a camping trip in the mountains with my family and I put my arms around our friends dog to give it a hug and it bit my ear off, to where it was only hanging from a tiny piece of skin. My mom said that the doctors were unsure that they would be able to sew it back together because of how badly it was torn, but they did it. This was a very traumatic experience as a small child, but it didn’t surface as a serious issue until my adult life when I was bit a second time by a dog. After that, there was something that occurred inside my body and I was not able to sleep for almost 4 days. This was a difficult time in my life and very scary and I could not figure out what was happening to me and why I could not sleep. I soon discovered that it was a result of my trauma.

It’s changed everything for me in my life today. It’s been 18 years since the second bite and I still cannot sleep without herbal teas and medicines. The one thing that Ive learned through it all, is to be compassionate with myself. There are times when I get down about what I struggle with, but Ive learned to be gentle with myself and accept myself the way I am.

The most important thing is that I’ve learned is to learn to trust again because it is allowing me to heal in many ways. For several years I wouldn’t go near other dogs and was especially fearful of large ones. I avoided them and was upset with myself for having this fear.  I gradually got closer to dogs in 2016 and learned to trust a little more, but I still had an issue with it. 

Just 7 months ago Luna came into our lives. She is mainly meant for my friend, who is in a wheelchair and is in need of a support dog, but she has gradually been helping me to trust again and has been a great support to me as well.

The first week I met her, I was intimidated by her size and I would try and work through that fear by purposely sitting next to her on the couch and I could feel my body shaking and this bothered me a lot. My friend told me that she would never harm me and that she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body and to trust. Everyday it has gotten better and we have bonded now. I can get close to her and put my arms around her and I know she will not hurt me. I feel so connected to her now and she is my best friend. I take her on hikes and we explore trails together. She continues to help me work through my fears and I help her work through hers❤️she came from a tough background as well so I feel like together we are good for each other. 

These pictures were taken when her dad was in the hospital recently and I stayed with her for a week caring for her. I was with her in the garden in the early mornings before leaving for work and it was beautiful being with her and having my morning coffee while visiting all of the flowers and listening to the birds. These moments are precious to me and I’m so happy that I can also provide her with comfort and care when she needs it.

 

New Rose Garden Completion

A rose garden is not something that Ive even thought that I’d be creating, so it completely surprised me and I am so love with them now. 

I’ve always been a grower of all flowers, just not roses. It never occurred to me that I’d love them so much! When I told my mom that I wanted to grow roses during my birthday, she reminded me that my grandfather use to have a big rose garden and she told me that I was going to love them. Now every time I am in the garden I remember what she said and she is right!

This entire yard has seen a huge transformation, starting back in 2022 when I planted the first perennial garden in the front. During this time I also worked on the backyard as much as I could in my free time, but it was so overwhelming and heavily weeded and big, so I decided to only focus my energies on the front part of the yard and getting it established first. 

Then my plan was to next get the back garden boxes put together and work on that part of the garden the following spring of 2023. That is when I moved the dirt and got all the beds along the fence set up for growing. I did not have much interested in putting anything in the current rose garden area at all, but grew one zucchini plant there last year along with some cosmos and a sunflower but that part of the yard was of very little interest and had no plans. 

 It wasn’t until my birthday in the spring of 2024 that I had the idea of making a rose garden. It’s always been a thing for me, every birthday I love visiting the nursery and picking up new spring plants. Even though I grow almost everything from seed, I still love the feel of being in a nursery and it makes me happy! Sometimes I buy small things at to fill in the gaps or just when I feel like it. But this year, my kids asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said Roses!! Not the ones that you put in a vase and throw away!! I wanted to build a rose garden so I could enjoy roses for a long time and many years to come. Also an added benefit was to make the yard more visually appealing around the aluminum wheelchair ramp that accesses the back yard. It might actually turn out to be perfect. So I went to work, shopping and I bought a few varieties at my local hardware store and also ordered one special rose that I loved from the greenhouse garden center to pick up around Mother’s Day, just in time to plant for spring. Here is one I picked up (pictured above) and is in the front seat of my car. Such an exciting day!!

I wanted some different types of roses too, so I also bought some bare root English roses online from David Austin,(pictured here) no idea what to expect. They looked scary and I was just hoping for the best and that I could keep them alive. I’ve never grown a rose bush before and not the slightest idea of how to take care of them, but I’m excited now to learn!  

I bought 6 at the hardware store and so far 3 of those turned out to be nothing like the label, but I love them anyways. Same is true for 2 of my 5 David Austin’s but they are still lovely and enjoying every minute of them!! They are all very wonderful and I cannot believe I’ve waited this long to experience the joy of having roses. The smell just takes me away to another world and the colors are stunning! 

Watch the video to see what this spot looked like in spring of 2023 before the tree was removed.  

Growing Celery - Summer 2023

 This was my first time growing celery and from what I’ve read, people have mentioned it’s a hard crop to grow. I felt slightly intimidated by this but I tried it anyways and surprisingly I didn’t find it too difficult, I just found that they took awhile to grow. They turned out beautiful. I may have planted too many, but I always do that, not knowing what will survive and what won’t I always plant more than I think I might need. Every single one survived so I had a ton of celery. I think that they were a little dry and lacking in water content but that was the biggest compliant. Other than that, they were wonderful. If planting them again I will only plant maybe 6 plants as I planted every seed that germinated so I had close to 12 plants which was too much! 

I don’t really use celery for cooking too much. I mainly grew them because I wanted to use them for juicing, but I don’t even own a juicer and didn't get around to buying one yet! 😊 

This is what I used my celery for. Some refreshing infused flavored water just like you find at the spa. 

I bought this beautiful large glass pitcher so that I can enjoy making this at home. 

You can use any combination of fresh ingredients that you like and fill with water and add ice as desired. Infuse for at least thirty minutes to let flavors emerge. I left mine overnight but you should not leave longer than that and should be enjoyed right away.  

As always most of the food that I grow here goes to my friend but there are many crops that I grow that he won’t eat so it balances out and we both get the things we love and share what we grow quite a bit.

I make sure to always grow his favorite things, so we can both have fresh food we enjoy. There are not many vegetables that I won’t eat. I pretty much will eat everything that I grow. I’m not too picky and love anything fresh from the garden! For some fresh cucumber, lemon and celery infused yummy water this is all you will need. 

 

A large glass pitcher and filtered water

2-3 slices cucumber, long and thin strips

A half stalk of celery, cut in half lengthwise

1 large slice of lemon

You can always adjust the amounts according to your taste 🍋🥒🥒

Bachelor Buttons

 I love Bachelor Buttons because they are so easy to grow. This year they all completely self seeded from last years flowers so it made things a little easier for me, I just left the ones that I wanted to grow in the ground and pulled the ones that I didn’t. There was something fun to this as it added a little sense of surprise because I wasn’t sure which color they’d be. I had about 5 different colors last year, with blue being my favorite! 

I love the natural meadow look that this flower provides and makes the rest of the garden flower pop. It is very attractive to Butterflies, and the bees just adore them. This is so important to have flowers that attract the pollinators. I believe the more variety flowers,the better! This is great for attracting more beneficial insects to the garden as well, which is important for natural pest control. I don’t believe in using chemicals in my garden so I heavily rely on nature to do this magical work for me! 

  

In order to keep this flower blooming and looking tidy, you will need to deadhead frequently, otherwise it will go to seed fairly quickly like you see in the photos above.

My First Potato Harvest and what I’ve Learned

Growing potatoes was such an exciting part of my gardening learning experience this summer! I knew very little about growing them so I was very intimidated by the thought of it, but I tried it anyways and so happy that I did! 

I have learned a few important things, so I’d like to share this with you and what I’ve learned. I knew nothing about growing them so I relied heavily on the resources online and through talking to a few family members who have grown them for some knowledge. 

Some of the first articles on growing potatoes mentioned that you should hill them. I had no reason to question this, so the first thing I did was bought several bags of soil so that I had a steady supply, then I realized that there was no way that I would be able to continue hilling up soil around the bases and I was running out of room in my flower bed so that is when I started to question it and looked around online for more information on the topic and why I needs to do it in the first place.

I also looked into other ways to cover the bases and some people said straw and wood chips and then I started to run into more Information about why you don’t want to add straw because it would kill your crops and it just seemed like it was getting too complicated, but I know that when you do anything you are going to always run into people who do things differently or have their own opinions.

That is when I found Luke from MiGardener on YouTube and he talked about some common misconceptions on growing potatoes, and he went over the hilling myth and I was so relieved that I could just stop doing this and relax. I did not know that potatoes actually grow deep so there is no way that they would start popping up out of the dirt, lol! It’s silly to think about now and how much stress this caused me to feel. 

Im so thankful for that information because it changed everything for me. I was able to finally enjoy the process of growing potatoes and for a change and it made sense.

Another issue that I ran into was that some of the leaves on part of the crop was starting to turn rusty and spotty and this did not seem like a good thing to me and found that it could possibly be potato blight or another disease. This made me sad because my entire crop could fail. I thought about how real potato farmers must feel and what they go through when this happens because it’s on such a large scale and is their livelihood and they depend on it for survival. I suddenly had so much compassion for people who do this as a way of life. 

I did as much  as I could to avoid top watering of the leaves and prevent the spread of whatever it was, and also started to remove some of the leaves and disposing of them. I read articles that said that you should burn the leaves and then I questioned if removing the leaves was bad and actually I found that removing them could be better for the formation of the tubers and sends the energy down underground. Another thing that I noticed was that after some of the first blossoms I saw some cut marks on them and they would drop off, but I didn’t worry too much about that since I read that removing the blossoms could potentially create a positive thing for the tuber development.

It’s just amazing at the information that is available out there and this has been such a huge help in my journey in gardening. I do a lot by feel and intuition but also it makes me happy that others are available to share what knowledge they have as well. Overall I am so happy with my crop of potatoes this year and how easy it was once I had better knowledge. I will definitely be growing again next year! I was able to weigh my harvest on a scale and it came to just under 25 pounds!

Here is a look at my harvest day and how it went