The Progessing Slowly Patch o'Land

Spearmint that a friend of mine gave me last fall.

Abraham Lincoln is believe to have said, "The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land." Now, I am not trying to earn money from my land, but I would like to get to a point of supplementing my pantry with it. This year it seems to be slow growing. Kairah and I are working on figuring out why, but in the mean time here is a quick update on our garden.

This is the only shade plant I have so far. It has doubled in size over the last few months. My plan is to put it with two others in my macrome hanging basket.
I think it would look great next to my bench on the patio.

Ahhhh, my coveted chocolate mint plant from last year. She is so beautiful and luscious. I have another one in the butterfly garden that I will let flower whenever it feels like it. However, this one will not be flowering anytime soon because I have plans for her delicious leaves. Chocolate mint coffee syrup, anyone?

I have absolutly no clue as to what this flower is. My daughters dug these plants up and put them in pots as we were putting in our sprinkler system. I have no idea what possessed them to pot these random plants, but I am so glad they did.
This flower is stunning!

Here is my plumeria plant I brought back from Hawaii last spring. Maybe this year I will get a flower. I was quite worried that I had killed it over the winter because it was extremely neglected. I wonder if it will ever get bigger?

This is our fairy garden. I hope the girls work and play in it all summer long. I placed it under a tree and it seems, at least to me, the perfect place to play.

Here are the first of the blooms in my butterfly gardent. I absolutely love lantana. It reminds me of my grandmother. She had big bushes of these in her front yard.

This is the sweet mint I planted a little over a month ago. It seems to have quadrupled in size. I love how quickly mint grows and I am glad I put this in its own box to contain it. I cannot wait to finish building my butterfly garden area. Mint tea, anyone?

I believe this is thyme. I found this little guy as I was tending to some sad little cucumber plants and mulching my neglected garden.
I must have planted one near this area last year and it seeded.

This is a cucumber plant that has already sprouted.
Charlie planted these seeds just a week ago.

One of my squash plants. I cannot tell you if it is summer squash or zuchini. Remember, I am not the most organized gardener, which honestly can be refreshing.

This, my friends, is my lazy bucket. I put it out every spring and most likely will remain a permanent fixture if I continue to garden throughout the year. I have found that if I have the tools readily available I am more likley to do some gardening, even if it is only 10 minutes in the morning before I walk out the door.

In here I keep tools, gloves, fertilizer (I scored some worm poo at the farmers market last week - woot woot!), a spoon, towel, irrigation line hole maker thingy, mallet, alcohol in a spray bottle (to clean my tools) and a rag. I will add things as needed like a couple more spray bottles. One with neem oil for the buggies and one with aspirin water for the mold. I keep that bucket on top for my weeds. I just pull and dump over the fence.