Fruits of Our (Non)Labor

First, a confession. I have ceded the care of our lawn to our neighbor, the Experienced Lawncare Professional. Mowing the lawn was never my favorite activity anyway, and there is plenty of other work to do. Plus, he's much better at it and feels some responsibility for it, as he did it for previous owners.

He has also helped with advice for other plants, particularly for the one above. That vine by the shed wasn't doing much when we moved in last year (when that picture was taken), and we had no idea what it was. It had only grown slightly over the winter. But, after we
returned from Bangladesh and were paying ELP for his services, he casually mentioned, "Your grapevine could use some help."

Huh?
The grapevine has exploded this year, especially with stakes on which to climb. It's amazing how things will grow once you know how to take care of them. Soon, we will be able to sample this:

And related backyard food news, we finally got started on the vegetable garden:

Nothing fancy, just tomatoes, various hot peppers, acorn squash, and the obligatory zucchini. We didn't plant until late June, so we're not expecting miracles.

And in the herb garden:
Clockwise from bottom left: oregano, thyme, parsley, cilantro, Buddha, mint. Everything is doing surprisingly well. After two failed attempts at planting basil, we're now just growing that inside. We've been putting it all to good use, along with the insane amount of rosemary growing in the side yard. But it's tough to find something to do with all that thyme.

A Long Awaited Update

There are those who have told us we need to update this. Well, the few who were still reading.

I admit it had been quite a while. Not that we (a royal we) haven't been doing yardwork, but we haven't been doing much new.

Until recently!

To update to last post, I finally went nuts one week and took out that ugly bush by the front step. And in its place...



After much deliberation, we decided on another hydrangea. We're nothing if not consistent. This one will probably take a while to do much, but I'm hoping for at least a few blooms next year.
You can also see in this picture that the old hydrangea isn't doing so well. It got a too tall for its own good and started drooping. Plus, it's been a bad year for hydrangea all over; most of the ones in the neighborhood are looking dry and droopy. It does mean I will have to trim it back quite a bit in the fall, I'm told it's fine to do this with reckless abandon.

Speaking of hydrangeas...remember that scraggy bush in our tree lawn/devil strip that I complained about? It came back from the dead this spring, and a few weeks ago revealed it's true identity:


Ok, it can stay. This now makes four hydrangeas in our yard.