Author: Pam

New England native, Florida resident. Blogging about boating, beach-combing, gardening, camping, and knitting. Work for Zazzle as a designer since 2008.

My Blue, Endless Summer Hydrangea is Blooming!

blue hydrangeas
My Endless Summer

My blue hydrangea bush is blooming and I want to share my pictures.

I went away on a little vacation a couple of weeks ago and when I returned, I found that my gardens were producing some flowers! And my Endless Summer, blue hydrangea had little flowers.

I’m always eager to see the color of the hydrangea flowers, and I had only grown them for one year previously, so I hoped they would be that same pretty blue. And they are! The bloom in my picture here is so lovely. I will be using it for some new stationery at my BlueHyd store.

In the mean time, I am taking the best photos and making posters to sell at the Zazzle store. I’ve enlarged the images so they will look fine as large size prints.  Just need to get them made.

How To Remove Unwanted Background Clutter From Your Pictures

blue and white bearded iris
Original Iris Picture

Image Compare: Top right – garden hose, now removed in image below.

blue iris growing in the garden
Iris #2

Can you see a difference in these pictures? There is unwanted clutter in the first one.  The photo at the top has a garden hose on the right side of the photo, but I have removed the hose using the “clone stamp” and the results is seen in the bottom photo.

After photographing this flower I wanted to use the best pictures to make products for my online shop, but if I used this good photo of the flowers, there is a piece of an unsightly garden hose in the background.

Fortunately I have learned how to remove unwanted stuff from my photos. With a little patience, I can usually get it to look okay. If you are interested in how I removed the garden hose from my photo, read a page I wrote at Wizzley to explain ♥ how to use the clone stamp in a free graphics program called paint(dot)net.

And if you want to ♥ remove the entire background, for a transparent image, I can tell you how to do that too.  I have to do that for many of the designs I make and sell in my stores.

My Latests Posts

Yes, Blooms This Year! Bearded Iris in Blue and White

This is the first time I have seen flowers on my blue and white bearded iris. It was planted about 2 years ago by me. Last summer there were lots of leaves, but no blooms. Seeing the stalk shoot up from those tall, flat leaves and end up with four buds, was very exciting for me! And it’s a beauty…

blue and white bearded iris
Iris in the Garden

Bearded iris are a perennial plant which I don’t know much about. I think they will multiply on their own as I’ve seen big gardens full of iris. I got a few pictures of this first flower, but the rain has kept me indoors and the other bud has opened as well.

I used this photo to show how to remove something from a photo using a graphic program. That piece of garden hose to the right in the photo is what I wanted gone. Read that post here.

Ugly, But Free, A Raised Bed Garden Made of Cinder (Concrete) Blocks

raised garden bed
Simple Raised Bed of Cinder-Blocks

Oh how I’d love to have the land in that picture I used! It’s not my yard. I don’t have a big sunny parcel of land. Because of that, it makes growing vegetables, in our short, New England growing season, tough to do. The sun is scarce in my yard, which is surrounded by tall pines and hardwood trees. My yard is also small. I’m always on the lookout for solutions to these problems so I can grow more crops.

This idea of making a raised bed from cinder-blocks is not mine. I saw it in the “Organic Gardening” book.  It looks ugly, but it was free to build because I already had the blocks.

When I came across an article in the magazine which showed five types of alternative raised beds, the concrete block one jumped out at me.  I could do this!

dsc07551
Shade is a problem when it comes to vegetable gardening in a small yard

The thought of having another sunny spot to grow vegetables stuck in my mind as winter carried on.  I would have to lug the blocks up a hill to my front yard because that was the sunny spot.  While I waited for the mud to dry up in spring, I watched the path of the sun to decide the best location for my new patch of dirt.

Once the garden loam was delivered, I enlisted my teenage son to help me move the blocks – those suckers are heavy! I used the wheelbarrow to fill the space with dirt and some compost, and then planted the rest a tomato and zucchini in there.  It’s not a huge garden, but it did give me some extra growing space.

dsc05427This was an experiment for me, and I’m not raised bed savvy.  It was a quick fix for lack of garden space and I did get vegetables to grow there.  Since then I have learned a bit more about raised bed gardening and am beginning a new raised bed garden (made of wood this time) in my Florida home.

An even easier idea is to buy fabric bags and use them as raised beds.  They work well for many types of vegetables.

I’ve Learned How To Grow Good Lettuce

growing lettuce
Lettuce in a Pot

I have tried many times to grow my own lettuce without success. Sometimes it would grow and look nice but it was too bitter to eat. This year I scattered seeds randomly in containers and in the ground (among the strawberry plants) and I am harvesting it!

I’ve learned that lettuce can be eaten when it’s fairly small. I cut off the larger leaves, rinse them and eat. New leaves grow to take their place almost immediately.

Lettuce likes cool weather, so I’ll try to get it planted sooner next spring. I can grow it in my little greenhouse on the deck, or next to the house. In fact I plan to plant some parsley early too.

Another trick I’ve discovered is to plant it in a pot like the one here. Then the lettuce can be moved out of the full sun on hot days. I set mine between two tall Tansy plants (weeds, really) that are shading it nicely.   I also don’t have enough room to grow everything I’d like to in the ground.

I think I’ve planted buttercrunch in the strawberries (below) – I read somewhere to do that for shading. It’s growing and I am eating it! I’m so happy to finally be able to grow good, tasty, lettuce.

strawberry plants and lettuce
Little Lettuce Leaves Among Strawberries

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Gardening: Now it’s Moving Fast

backyard vegetable garden
Planted!

As I walk around the yard getting photos of what’s growing, I realize how fast things are changing.

The potatoes planted in the fabric pot are now huge. The zucchini and cucumber seedlings (they are in this photo) are now twice the size they were.  Many of the tomatoes now have little yellow flowers. And all the strawberries are loaded with unripened fruit.

That is how it’s suppose to be. Everything has to hurry up and grow – Fall is not far away! Really, the growing season in New England is so short. It’s been difficult for me to adjust to this fact after gardening year round in Florida.

But having a garden blog means updating could literally take place every day – with new photos! Sorry, can’t handle that schedule. As I get ready to write about something I photographed last week, I realize I’m already behind. Continue reading “Gardening: Now it’s Moving Fast”