Bloom Where You Are Planted

This morning, we were fortunate enough in Dallas to get a combination of no rain (finally) and cooler weather. So I headed out to the garden to do a little cleaning, before we leave for Europe. Since I had the brillant idea this year to grow a small garden in our backyard, I have been trying to figure out how to actually get enough vegetables for Nick and I too eat. We have also overcome a few obstacles, such as our dog Kobe getting into the garden three times and eating tomatoes and peppers. Somehow the plants have managed to recover, but I'm just starting to get fruit from those two plants. Here are a few pictures of my garden:


The first picture was went I planted the garden in April, the second picture is in May and the third picture is today. I had to pull up all the lettuce, because summer is not a good lettuce season. It's a good thing because this little innocent looking zucchini plant in the back....

turned into this massive giant....

The other issue I'm having is my cucumber plant. While I can't seem to get ANY tomatoes to grow, I have more cucumbers than I know what to do with. I have been frantically searching the internet to come up with recipes to use with cucumbers.

This is just one weeks worth of cucumbers. So today I will be headed to the store to buy some supplies to make cucumber salad, cheese stuffed cucumbers and cool sesame cucumbers. I also cut my first batch of zinnias from my zinnia bed. I received zinnia seeds from my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bobby, from a place in Fredricksburg called Wildseed Farms. So I planted them this year in my front bed and they have done beautifully. The joy of these flowers is you can cut the flowers and the continue to grow more blooms all seasons. They really brighten up our kitchen table.