Summer Garden Gathering : 7

purple corn tassels-- the corn is so high!

The pumpkin seed that we planted with Mrs. Morgan is up and growing!

one of the growing squash plants that we planted from seed and transplanted

harvesting some ripe tomatoes

slide-show with descriptions:

Memphis Gardens

Yes, that chair and sofa are covered in moss!

flower "beds"!

a sunflower at The Dixon's cutting garden

On a recent trip to Memphis, Tennessee, I visited the Memphis Botanic Garden and The Dixon Gallery and Gardens. Both were fabulous places with wonderful plants (even if I was dripping with sweat after walking around them)!

The Memphis Botanic Garden is building a children's garden called "My Big Backyard." There is a PDF map of the plans here and information about the grand opening of the garden on August 1st, 2009, here. It promises to be whimsical and inspire new ways of interacting with plants! My photos from the MBG are in the slide show below.



I was not able to tour all of The Dixon gardens because I took so much time looking at the wonderful civil war exhibit inside the galleries. What I saw, however, was beautiful. Visitors are admitted to the galleries and gardens for free on Saturdays from 10 am to noon. Here are the photos I took there.



Have you visited a garden recently?

Summer Garden Gathering : 6

The Casey gardeners took a field trip to Fresh Way Produce at 6900 Old Canton Road in Ridgeland, Mississippi, on July 8, 2009. The Cockrell family owns and operates this market and has been in the produce business for over 40 years.

You can take a "virtual field trip" by viewing the photos from the market and reading their descriptions. If you click on the link, it will take you to a slide show on Flickr. By clicking anywhere on the photo, a description window will open. Let me know if you have trouble with this!

Everyone left the market with a new appreciation for the hard work of farmers, running a business, and yummy, fresh produce to eat! We learned about a Mississippi invention, local produce, and a teacher who now makes pickles for the market!

Below is the slide show of the field trip, but you can't see the photo descriptions unless you go directly to the Flickr set in the "virtual field trip" link above.

Summer Garden Gathering : 5

Our first tomato was ripe enough to harvest! This was a tomato plant that came up on its own from seeds left in the bed last year.

The milkweed pots were still bursting. The feathery seeds looked like white fire flames. The sweet potato vine is thriving in its home underneath the shade. I love the contrast of the bright green leaves with the dark green of the grass.

The dried beans that we planted last Wednesday were coming up in the small pots and in the bed with the corn! You can see the seeds hanging onto the sprout and the roots reaching out of the bottom of the pot. The zinnia seeds and lettuce leaf basil that we planted in small pots last week had also sprouted. The pumpkin seed still showed no signs of germination.

The purple flower belongs to the same beans that we planted and had sprouted above. Who could have imagined such beauty from a bean flower? I picked some flowers for a small arrangement in a plastic cup left over from germinating the squash seeds. The lettuce was withstanding the lack of rain, and a new tomato plant was blooming and bearing fruit.

There were so many things to see on July 1st including corn that continued to grow, a red pepper, a tiny spider and its web on the dill plant, and three more squash plants that a mystery person or persons planted since last week! Two families enjoyed watering and noticing all of the changes in the garden. Plus, we looked forward to eating a tomato and some beans fresh from the Casey garden with our suppers! See you next week.

The slide-show from today. . .