Garden Update

Here is a brief update on what's going on in the Cooks' backyard:

Tomato mania is about to commence! Lee has planted 4 or 5 different types of tomatoes and even went to a tomato-growing seminar at Descanso Gardens....he means business this year. I'm looking forward to eating the smaller, grape-sized tomatoes. Incidentally, this bad boy turned red this week and was eating last night in homemade calzones. 

While Lee has focused on tomatoes this season, I have focused my energy on sunflowers. This is the start of what I hope will be a beautiful sunflower garden. I bought 6 different varieties of sunflowers from a seed catalog and planted them a couple of weeks ago. I'm hoping the end result with allow us to have some pretty sunflowers in the house and (more importantly) block the horrible glare from our neighbor's white fence, once the flowers grow to 4-6 feet.

On a sad note, my gardenias are looking bad. They've been in this full-sun spot for over 2 years and survived 2 hot SoCal summers. I don't know why this one is struggling so early. He's yellow, he's brown....I don't know what to make of it. I'd like them to survive but I'm already imagining lavender in its' place. No offense, gardenia.

So while I'm babying my poor gardenias, this giant bouganvilla that gets no attention is absolutely thriving. If you look behind Nate, you'll see that this plant isn't even in the ground -- it's busting out of a plastic pot; it's too big for us to transplant now. I think all of the early Spring rain made this thing go crazy. Seriously, we never water it. In fact, the thorns are so horrible and have scratched me so many times while I've trimmed it, that I say bad things to this bouganvilla. It's obviously not getting the hint. Or it's growing just to spite me. 

Lastly, here is a picture of our garden mascot. He's suppose to be protecting our garden and yard. But he's not doing a very good job. Notice the bird poop on his left wing. Fellow birds are mocking him, poor guy.