my view from the pot

our bathroom has the best view of the house for peaking out on all of our summer bounty.  several times a day i find myself peaking out of the blinds.  i can't help myself. 

here's my view from this morning, shortly after rolling out of bed. 

here let me pull up the blinds for a better peak...

all those vines you see trellising their way to the sky (seriously, will they ever stop?!) is this year's container garden experiment.  we have to do almost all of our sun loving plants in containers since the sunny side of our postage stamp property is the driveway.  i decided i wanted to do sugar pumpkins and winter squash this year so i bought the seeds went ahead with planting some seedlings.  i told myself as i bought the seeds, and then again as i planted them in the seedling pots, that i would figure out just what in the world i would be doing with these crazy vined plants.  after they desperately needed transplanting to a permanent spot i did a little research and decided to do a trellis experiment.  i read that smaller vine fruits do well being trellised.  once the fruit begins to get heavy i will make slings for the fruit to prevent damage to the plant.  so far, so good :)  now i'm just hoping that all of that growing energy goes into pumpkin production so i don't end up having to trellis them up onto the roof or something!

looking straight down from the window is our small back patio area and the garden bed pat made for me.  the box container is where the carrots were and the beets still are.  the round metal container is the bush beans the the reamains of a few sugar snap pea plants that really need to be taken down.  way over in the back right corner behind the fence is a little peak into a long wood box that was the home of my spinach before it bolted.  looking straight ahead is my perennial flower and herb bed and beyond that are my potted zucchini, peppers, a few bush pickling cucumbers, and an eggplant.  just barely in the shot, back where the morning sun is blasting away already,  is one of my tomatoes (in the hideous orange bucket).

looking over just beyond the trellis system is one of my newest addtions, a blueberry bush that is awaiting a bigger container.  next to that is a peak at another tomato in a slightly nicer pot than the orange buckets the rest of them are in.  out of sight in front of the trellis is another blueberry bush, a few more peppers, and a buch of herbs along the front of the pumpkin box.  i'll show those another day :)

there's the rest of the tomatoes and a zucchini haphazardly strewn around the driveway (along with the riding toys and the evidence of pat's painting the garage... which happens to come in handy for reaching the top of my vines).  after planting 9 tomatoes i realized we're probably going to lose use of part of the driveway for the cars, but that's cool :)  now that we've settled that, it's probably time to go organize the plants out there a bit. 

and then looking to right from the window is the back of the patio where it meets a small enclosed porch.  there's one of our rain barrels that pat made (on the cheap- a garbage can that he cut a hole in the top for the gutter and at the bottom for a spicket).  just barley peaking in from the right is my grandma's 30+ year old peonies that i temporarily have in a pot awaiting transfer to our front yard project.  peaking over the top of the fece next to the barrel is my grape vine- probably my next project for back here, making some sort of trellis system for it.  and way there in the back is another make-shift rain barrel for the garage gutters.

everytime i'm out there, with the bees and butterflies buzzing around, i can't help but to smile thinking that despite how tiny it may be, it is now a place for them to visit often.  they no longer have to pass this house by.

hi there pumpkin, nice of you to join us this summer :)