Lots of changes. You must be the envy of your neighborhood. I like the way you did your cement blocks. I never would have thought of that.

You have created a backyard paradise. Once again, I am green!

Jo

It is all beautiful, you have done a great job.

It is so beautiful, Chandra, and I love everything you've done. I know that you and your family must love being out in the yard as much as the weather allows.

The heat is so bad this year. I thought that after last year, it couldn't possibly feel "that bad" this year, but it does. The sun and wind and heat are hard on the plants. Maybe we'll catch a break and have some rain fall once or twice a month this summer. Is that too much to ask for?

The untold story is that you had a beautiful yard and garden, and then a big storm demolished it last year, and then you rebuilt it and made it even more beautiful. That means you've worked twice as hard to have that yard and garden!

You've done a great job with it all.

Dawn

Thank you all. I have lot of before and after pics. I will upload them to picas later. It would be nice to look back after few years, decades!!!

Dawn, Thank you. Indeed it has been easy and become a routine work, gardening become a natural gym for me in the early morning and later evening. Yes, backyard become our main living room, as we all love living outdoor from cooking, eating and relaxing providing weather permits. Porch with wooden pergola has mists, fan and sunscreen but nothing will work in this heat :-( I hate summer from mid June to late August. I praying for repeat of the 2007 wet summer! -Chandra

Chandra, Once gardening is part of your daily routine like that, summer becomes even more miserable than it used to be.

I guess we'll have to hope that maybe 2013 will be wet and cooler than average like 2007 was, or even 2004. I'm not saying I am giving up on 2012, but I don't think any amount of wishing, hoping, praying or positive thinking is going to turn the weather around and bring us cooler, wetter weather in the next few weeks. Maybe autumn weather will arrive early and we will be able to have great fall gardens.

My garden doesn't look too stressed yet, although it definitely looks worse every day than the day before. I'm about to the point where I don't care if it looks horrible as long as I am harvesting something fresh to eat. I used to really spend a lot of time out there, carefully removing every "ugly" leaf from every plant. Ha! Imagine trying to do that this year! I'd have bare stems.

The deer are getting hungry and are circling my garden. Without a tall fence, my garden would be deer chow by now. This morning I had a close encounter with a hungry deer, who came with about 20' of me and did not want to leave, so I retreated indoors until it left. You can tell when the weather is too hot and the deer are cranky and hungry. During normal times, if I walk out the door and a deer sees me, it turns and runs away. Right now? They stand their ground and stare at me. It sure is going to be a long summer.

I was outside around 9 p.m. last night closing up all the buildings and closing gates and such, and the weather was just about bearable by then. Unfortunately, the daylight was fading.

Dawn

i want to be like yall!!! we've been in our house just over a year and im just starting to garden and im so clueless some days :(

Cowgirl - Being clueless never stopped me. LOL

If you're a newbie...then you still have plenty of excuses for blunders, lol...so GO FOR IT!
In no time, you'll learn what works and what doesn't ... and then you'll start over the next year :~)

Sharon