Meanwhile... In My Garden

Our big project this week was preparing poles for our Blue Lake Pole Beans to grow up.  We found a bamboo patch on a vacant lot near the highway and gathered a LOT of bamboo.

  My husband got creative and built a "structure" for the tomatoes too!

Fruit or Vegetable?

Botanically speaking, if it has seeds it is a fruit!  By this definition, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash are all fruit.  Vegetables come from the leaves (lettuce and collards, etc.), the stems (celery), the roots (carrots, and parsnips and beets) or from flowers (broccoli).

What Grows in the Garden

A garden is created when land is set apart for cultivating flowers, herbs, vegetables, or small fruits.                              But first it happens in the mind and heart of the gardener.  Gardens come in all shapes and sizes and serve a diverse set of purposes. 
I have learned my love of gardening from my mom and my grandmother.  Both of them raised orchids and other tropical plants and trees in South Florida.  Our yard had an orange tree, grapefruit tree, avocado tree, kumquat tree, tangerine tree, sea-grape tree and a key lime tree.  All on less than an acre!  I remember picking Lantana flowers at Grandmother's house and pretending they were bridal bouquets.  I never see Lantana without thinking about her.                                          

Claude Monet -- Inspired by the Beauty of The Garden

Claude Oscar Monet was an impressionist.  He was born in 1856, exactly 200 years before me! in Paris, France.  It is interesting to think that he was a radical in his day.  Today his work is extremely widespread in circulation and copies are available on all kinds of products and price ranges.  Jigsaw Puzzles, Umbrellas, t shirts etc. you name it, you can find a Monet version!!

What does it mean?

cul·ti·vate

   
[kuhl-tuh-veyt] 

–verb (used with object), -vat·ed, -vat·ing.

1.

to prepare and work on (land) in order to raise crops; till.

2.

to use a cultivator  on.

3.

to promote or improve the growth of (a plant, crop, etc.) bylabor and attention.

bot·a·ny

   [bot-n-ee] 

–noun, plural -nies.

1.

the science of plants; the branch of biology that deals withplant life.

2.

the plant life of a region: the botany of alaska.

3.

the biology of a plant or plant group: the botany ofdeciduous trees.

plant

   [plant, plahnt] 

–noun

1.

any member of the kingdom Plantae, comprising multicellularorganisms that typically produce their own food frominorganic matter by the process of photosynthesis and thathave more or less rigid cell walls containing cellulose,including vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, and hornworts:some classification schemes may include fungi, algae,bacteria, blue-green algae, and certain single-celledeukaryotes that have plantlike qualities, as rigid cell walls orphotosynthesis.

2.

an herb or other small vegetable growth, in contrast with atree or a shrub.

3.

a seedling or a growing slip, especially one ready for transplanting.

–verb (used with object)

12.

to put or set in the ground for growth, as seeds, youngtrees, etc.

13.

to furnish or stock (land) with plants: to plant a section withcorn.

14.

to establish or implant  (ideas, principles, doctrines, etc.): toplant a love for learning in growing children.