Garden update

There hasn't been to much going on in the garden.  Wait... well, let's see:

I really pruned quite a bit of the nectarine tree, but look what popped up a few weeks ago.  A flower!  I'm still trying to figure out what that means since we've only had 1 fruit from this tree.  Haha!

Aphids!!! So many of them!  There seems to be more of them this year than I can remember.  And they are big, brown, and nasty too! BLAHH!!!

I think I read somewhere about dumping water that has been soaked with banana peels on the plants to get rid of aphids. So I've been trying that.   Let's see what happens.

In the meantime, Charlie has been growing basil - thanks to his teacher.  The kids planted their seeds a couple of weeks ago and so far, they have named it and have been reading to it.  This morning, Charlie came into the bedroom and said, "Jellie Bean has mushrooms!".  Oh boy:

I'm trying to keep this big tomato plant organized.  It was the same one from last season!  I wonder if that means I have to fertilize it??!

Just waiting for these to ripen:

I am getting little baby/cherry tomatoes from this new plant though.  Yay!

And crazy enough, a potato plant has sprouted in the garden!  I asked the gardener when he was here what he thought the plant might be, and he said potato.  Sure enough, it is! And for the life of me, I couldn't think why because I didn't plant one there!  But here it is - you can see a little brown potato just above the surface of the dirt:

And then, come to think of it, I had turned half a potato upside down and was using it to catch pill bugs/rollie-pollies for Graham's science class.  And that potato was in the ground for so long that it finall sprouted. LOL!!!

Just a few more baby bell peppers.  It's amazing how they turn red after a while.  So really, a red pepper is a green pepper that has been sitting around - perhaps getting angry, hence the red color. Ha! Okay, I'm being silly.  He he...

I think I've already posted about these poppies.  So far they are still doing well.  And I know when they need watering because the flowers/stems will just flop over.  Easy enough!

My fuchsias are finally flowering again!  Perhaps it does like this corner of the garden a little bit better.  The color of the leaves are still a bit off though.  Hmmm....

The purple flowers from the citronella plant are so pretty.  Hope it deters the mosquitoes this summer!

The roses are doing really well this year:

These pink roses above are the ones that we had previously brought over from the "Phoenix house".  Then, these red ones were planted by the previous owner:

And I especially love these roses - they start our as yellow and fade into a white color:

Makes me happy! :-)

And these poppies... they are just native to the area I suppose.  I don't water this part of the garden but yet, year after year, these poppies pop up where I do not have the weed tarp:

At least the bees are happy:

The orange trees finally blossomed with flowers a few weeks ago and now we are noticing baby oranges!  I hope these come to fruition.  I'm guessing I can use the word "fruition" here, right??! 

So it looks like there are quite a few things going on after all.  Ha ha!