weekend in the city

oh my goodness...the weather here was AMAZING this weekend! this afternoon paul and i went on a field trip to allen gardens to look at all of the beautiful flowers and plants. it was my very first visit and it did not disappoint!

looking up at the beautiful glass roof from inside the main greenhouse


there were beautiful tropical flowers tucked into every corner of the greenhouses






i especially loved the cactus & succulent greenhouse



there was even a cute doggy hanging out inside

this place was so much fun and (surprisingly) absolutely free! highly recommended if you haven't been before.

more of my pictures from today are over at flickr...

when gardening goes wrong

our first foray into vegetable gardening this summer has been mostly successful. we had a lovely crop of zucchini (in fact, we ate one tonight!), many cherry tomatoes, and oodles of mint/basil/chives. our cucumbers...meh. kinda small and misshapen. the sweetpeas? not so much. but nothing.... NOTHING... compares to our carrots.

(WARNING: if grossly mutant vegetables ick you out, you may want to move along...)


people, we have about 30 of these things planted in our garden and so far the 4 or so we've pulled have all looked like this! the only reasons i can come up with are: 1) we planted them too close together and 2) our soil is pretty much pure clay and it hardens like crazy when it dries out.

i can just imagine those poor wittle carrots trying to bust down into the soil and basically being confronted with concrete-like conditions. they didn't have a chance.

anyone wanna join us for sugar-glazed frankencarrots???