Giant Pumpkins and Pumpkin Patches

We watched one of those shows on giant pumpkins festivals in upstate New York. It was fun to see all the gardeners babysitting their pumpkins. I wish I would have planted some in May. They'd be big by now.  Here's some tips for growing giant pumpkins for yourself HERE.

Giant Pumpkins are a fun thing to grow!  

But, alas, we were doing lillies and fruit trees and veggies. Next year I'm going to find a place to do a pumpkin patch. There is one area behind my house that has nothing growing. It's a perfect spot. Here are some good varieties to buy in seeds....from No Dig Vegetable Garden's site.

• Cabbage: Northern Giant Cabbage (100 lbs.)
• Carrot: Japanese Imperial Long Carrot (12+ inches long)
• Cucumber: Mammoth Zeppelin Cucumber (16 pounds)
• Gourd: Giant Long Gourd (120 Inches)
• Pumpkin: Atlantic Giant Pumpkin (400 to over 1000 pounds)
• Tomato: Old Colossus Heirloom Tomato (2+ pounds)
• Watermelon: Carolina Cross (Giant) Watermelon (200 pounds)

Meg loved the pumpkin patch at Gardner Village last October....

In the meantime, I'll just have to enjoy all these other pumpkin patches. They are sprouting all around us. My grandkids love to go pick their Halloween pumpkin out from the patch.

Josie was a cute little dinosaur....so cute! 

Hangin' with my homies at the pumpkin patch....

I love those little kiddos....I love Halloween too...it's my favorite holiday! 

They like to sit on a tractor or two and go through the hay maze too. What fun it is in the fall in Utah. I love all the back to school stuff, apple picking and scarecrows in cornfields, the fall colors and the leaves changing too. And I love pumpkin patches in the fields.

Flower Gardening

Gardener Wannabe....

We are lazy garden weeders.  I just want my gardens and yard to look good and I want to have fresh veggies, flowers and fruits...... and beautiful things everywhere....but I don't want to worry about it! 
I don't ask for much do I?

I WISH my garden grew this great....I'm not a green thumb though. But I do try. I snapped this picture in Park City last weekend. I loved these flower bins on Main Street at the Arts Festival. 

Here was my backyard terraces last year when we first planted the top and bottom layers of  the 3 terraces. I had lillies and mugo pines on the bottom terrace, and junipers and concord grape vines on the top terrace. And our veggies are in the middle terrace with the apple tree just to the left. 

Love this new floral welcome mat I got for the backyard deck. Isn't it cute?  It's a Martha Stewart mat from Lowes. 

So I try and try to add a few flower plants each week to my garden, hoping that I'll have blooms going on all summer long, and hopefully into the fall. And that the weeds won't ALWAYS take over.

We added flowers under the deck for he first time . These are hydrangeas in 3 colors, blue, purple and pink... and I added some impatiens too. It's kinda wild under the deck!

The hydrangeas should do well in all the shade that is there...

You've GOT to love a field of Lavender, don't you? Plant a few of these SOMEWHERE in your flower garden. But be aware, they will grow into a giant ball and take up space. This picture is from Doll in the Looking Glass. I love lavender fields. In another life I will have a big field to plant beautiful stuff in.  In this life I only have one mound of lavender. And it's getting really HUGE! Gotta cut that sucker back very soon! 

My backyard bottom terrace...with my lillies just coming up. 

I tried starting a few plants early in the season with my 2nd grade class....I don't know if is any better than just buying plants in May at the nursery and Home Depot. Mine aren't any larger because of doing this early planting.  But it IS FUN TO DO WITH KIDS!  

Gotta love some pretty purple annuals.

I loved this lilly. I paid a lot for it from the LILLY MAN at the Salt Lake Farmer's Market, and now I know why. It is gorgeous! 

The basic yellow are so easy to plant and they sure do give a lovely color spot! The best part is by next year I'll be able to split the plants and take those bulbs and spread them around. Have you ever seen a yard completely full of lilly bulbs? I have, and it is FANTASTIC! 

I found this spinning floral and butterfly spinner flag at Hobby Lobby in the garden clearance. It was $2.00! 

My mugo pines and lilly garden.  I alternated 2 lillies and a mugo pine all across last year. So this year they are just coming up. Hopefully they will grow into green mounds over the next year. 

In front of each mugo pine I places some annuals in different colors. It's been so HOT though that they didn't spread out as much as I'd have liked. 

This is my "green thumb" neighbor's yard that I aspire to.  Hers always looks much better than mine. ( jealous sighs....).

My berries are such a bright spot I think of them as beautiful buds too! 

Red is my favorite color. I love this flower bed full of red. In California I had a rose garden full of shades of red. But in Utah, I have lots of bulbs instead. But I do miss all those "Double Delight" rose bushes I had....sniff, sniff...

Gotta love a beautiful sunset after a day of weedin' in the flower garden. I took this picture at a Neil Diamond concert a week ago in our city. He's old but his music is still a crowd pleaser. Just like a flower garden is.  

Park City Kimball Arts Festival 2012

I love to peruse artistic festivals and shops for things for the yard and garden. There are always beautiful things made from iron, glass and stone, that would make a lovely addition to my backyard. And it needs all the help it can get!

Handmade pottery. So pretty and unique. 

So I drag the hubs every year to the Park City Kimball Arts Festival every year on the first weekend in August. It's a fun, food, and art filled extravaganza. We love it.

Glass blown fish....they were really beautiful. 

I loved the floral arrangements along the paths of Main Street in Park City. 

 There are very talented artisans from all over the country that come to share their wares. And I love looking at all the florals along the path of Main Street. There are also lots of bronze statues everywhere and rock gardens.

This moose picture was painted on a slab of rock....

I wanted one of these glass globes. 

I know for a fact that hundreds of artisans apply to be a part of the show. But they are very picky in whom they choose to let be a part of the Kimball Arts Festival. There are high-end priced crafts that cost thousands of dollars, all the way down to $10.00 items. There is something for everybody.

Beautiful pottery....so interesting. The inside is light blue...too bad my photog skills don't match the skills of these artists. 

I thought this loom was pretty cool....you can ask questions of any of the artisans there too. Many have created art for 30 years or more. 

Now these would look cool in anybody's garden....and you'd never have to water them!! They reminded me of our old California landscape where we had a few palm trees. Miss those palms! This is one way to get a palm tree in Utah! Or a fake cactus! 

Kimball Arts Festival in Park City...stunning art! How would one of these look in your yard? 

Well, I would LOVE one of these. It would look good anywhere, and it would bloom ALL YEAR! 

Glass Flowers....so beautiful! 

Glass and pottery vases and art.  

My favorites were the glass globes of every style and color. I loved looking at them all. They had tiny ones and giant ones. 

Another bronze statue. I've been to a foundry to see how these are made...it is a very long and creative process. 

I loved the ambiance of the restaurants along the path on Main Street in Park City. The blue lights were so pretty as the night wore on.  After dark everybody went to the bars and restaurants to socialize. Here is the 2nd floor, umbrella filled,  patio deck of one of them. 

Blown glass fish...These were some of my favorite things at the Park City Arts Festival. 

I snapped a picture of the artisan here, with his wares...lots of beautiful bracelets. 

This was an interesting piece of glass art. 

Bronze statue in the music courtyard where we stopped to listen to the band playing bluegrass music. 

What a cool, carved, chess set! And I loved all the handmade jewelry there too. 

We will go every year to the Kimball Arts Fesitval in Park City. There is so much to see! 

Loved this goldfish...I wanted it so bad!! 

I couldn't believe the talent of the artisan who did these beautiful bronzes.  They were stunning. 

These would look pretty hanging on my garden fence. 

There were many paintings, but the artisans don't like photographs taken of them....they say people can copy and blow up the photographs and sell them. So I snapped one of the windows of the art museums that line the path in Park City on Main Street.  It's an artsy place any time of year. 

There were even some purveyors of cheese and jams...this guy makes goat cheese and had samples to taste! 

I should have bought some for my son, Jeff, who is into anything "goat" right now. :D That's an inside family joke. 

They always have good food and good music bands playing too. It's such fun. We will be up at Park City for two weekends in a row this year. The hubs is dragging ME to the Tour of Utah bike race. Fun, right? Yeah. Men in bike shorts. That's not too hard to take! Bada bing, bada boom!