All right…the time has finally come. I am posting pictures of the garden regardless of how painful or embarrassing it might be. Who knows…maybe it will motivate me to get something going back there.
The garden does not look good. It’s massively overgrown now and looks like we’ve left it for the crazies to take over. So pathetic – our neighbors behind us must hate us by now.
Our wonderful friend Steffi actually spent a bit of time out there before Stefan’s birthday party and started cleaning out the strawberry bed. She also picked a few pounds of strawberries for us which we promptly stuffed in the freezer (after shoving a bunch of them in our faces of course) to figure out what to do with later.
Yeah, it still looks terrible in there.
This is the bed on the other side – most of what you see there is mint. It’s thriving like no other which is expected of mint…now we just have to figure out where we ultimately want it thriving.
The raspberries are also doing well and absolutely delicious again this year. Now I just need to get out there and pick them. You see all that funny pollen looking stuff sticking up around the plants? That is the infamous brennesel that I so love here in Germany. It’s as close as they have to poison ivy & oak (which they thankfully don’t have) but instead of your body looking like you’ve got some crazy disease or third-degree burns, you might get some little red bumps and you feel like you’re being stuck by 1000 needles wherever the stuff has landed on your skin. I can tell you, it’s not pleasant…and it can go on for quite a while. I once grabbed some of it while weeding and was about ready to cut off my hand when the pain was still throbbing through my fingers a few hours later.
The lavender plant in the back is still thriving. I’m fairly convinced this is why we don’t have lice on our roses in the back. We planted a few bunches of it near the other roses in the courtyard and front of the house and are hoping for the best. The stuff is going to have to grow a bit faster and better to really combat those things but maybe in a year or two we won’t need to spray those little buggers anymore.
And this is our beautiful bay leaf shrub. It is doing so well and I was a little worried over the winter because it was just SO dormant. But it’s back and looking better than ever…now I just need to read about harvesting from it since those leaves are ridiculously expensive over here!
Anyone wanna come garden with me for a few hours? 🙂
