My little garden

I have a small container garden on my deck.  When it was cooler I had two lettuce plants that grew very well and gave me lots of crisp lettuce for veggie burgers.  They of course are bolting now that it's 100+ degrees outside and I'm just leaving them to see what it looks like when they flower.  I also managed to grow some turnip greens for my husband.  Again, not a hot weather crop so they are gone now.  

I had decent luck with bell peppers and cucumbers this year.  I really only grew the cucumbers for my dog.  He likes to pick them himself. Yes, I'm serious.  I'll include some photos of him and his beloved cucumbers next time.  

A few peppers and green beans

On this day, everything was chopped and frozen for future use.  I have a few recipes I use the bell peppers in and it's nice not to have to worry about whether or not I have a fresh one.  The hot peppers I didn't grow on purpose.  Apparently one of my supposed bell pepper plants was actually a Hungarian wax pepper.  When I saw it growing I thought it was a banana pepper so my husband crunched into it.  Needless to say, he only ate one bite.  Those are also chopped separately and I'll use them sparingly for recipes that call for a jalapeño. 

There's a couple extra yellow bell peppers in this photo chopped up that I got from the grocery store on clearance.  

Zinnia in my pollinator garden

Last fall I dug up a large flower bed near the deck and transplanted most of the flowers to a shady spot in the back of our yard.  It's actually a small fenced area where we have our pet cemetery where they are buried and more recently, their ashes sprinkled.  I decided to turn the deck flower bed into a wildflower garden for pollinators.  It's doing pretty good for the first year growing from seed.  Since the majority of the plants are perennial I'm hopeful they will be back for many years to come.