Driving home.

I drove home from Arkansas to Louisiana yesterday.  It was a long slog of a trip with an hour and a half traffic snarl as I got within 25 miles of home.  Already tired, hot, uncomfortable and almost home, the entire interstate 12 decided to come to a standstill. Why?  I have no idea.
A quick turnoff to take an alternate route seemed like a good idea to me. As well as hundreds of other motorists.
So the long slog got longer.

Both my veggie garden and flower garden have suffered greatly during the drought.  I have irrigation turned on, but a quick check last night showed much damage.  For some reason, nothing replaces rain.

My book remains in the number one spot on Amazon.  Yippee!!
Have a look. You just might need it.

And pondlady.com has a wonderful new post by a concrete artist.  Have a look at that as well.

More from near New Orleans as packing continues for the move at the end of the year.

Incipients

Is incipients a word? Well, it is now because I have just used it.  My recently planted veggies are budding and flowering. And that means we have incipient food coming from the plants.

We always know that spring is really here when our veggies are up, green and budding.  We know that there will be fresh tomatoes, green beans, squash, okra, cucumbers and eggplants soon.  And when the beans are finished, I yank them out and put them in the compost heap.  The empty spot gets filled with more eggplants cuz they are a staple in a vegan's diet. At least this vegan.

I love the flowers on veggies. Most are yellow because that is the most common flower color, but the eggplant flowers are light purple just like the veggie itself. I am growing green ones, white ones, fingerlings, but the flowers are still that light purple.

Our New Orleans weather has been absolutely glorious. It's been a long spring, warmer than usual, but we take what we can get in this subtropical climate.

Green Beans

Tomatoes

Eggplants

You can buy my Pond how-to book here

It is consistently in the top ten best sellers in Landscaping.  Yippee.

It's on sale now for a buck.  Get it before the price goes back up.

And for pond info visit us at pondlady.com  You will find knowledgeable folks there who are glad to answer your questions.

Thank you for stopping by this morning.

Finishing the Spring Garden

I have been out in the mildly hot New Orleans spring getting the veggie garden mulched and the irrigation hoses installed.   It has not been done before today because I am a lazy gardener.  And on some days, a very old one.  So instead of laboring over a keyboard inside the house, I have been laboring over raised beds outside. Outside is much more fun and probably more profitable.
Some of the flower garden plants are starting to show off.  They are prone to do that this time of year. It's as if they say, "Hey, you liked the first flower.  Whaddya think of the next 6 or 15?"  Just driving down the streets of our little city of Slidell, La is interesting with all the wildflowers. Wild ageratum makes long blue swatches along the dry roadsides. The sides of the road that are wetter have pickerel rush, the sedges, cannas about to bloom and of course, Louisiana iris by the hundreds.  And it's only just begun. We do suffer a long spell of not much in the heat of summer, but by fall, we are back in full bloom with a whole new set of flowers and colors.  There is not a day in our part of the world when we cannot garden.
Just a taste of what's out there:

Guara

Iris Little Rock Skies

Thanks for the visit this morning.

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