Okay friends I finally got my pictures downloaded. I went out and took a few more this morning to go with the ones I had. I really hope you enjoy them. If you have been following along you will see some pretty drastic changes in some of the plants.

It is both fun and amazing to me to watch the plants grow, mature and then produce, whether they are producing vegetables or flowers.

This is the bloom off of one of my Rose Bushes I just got.

I couldn't help but to mess with the picture of my Rose a bit. I often like these altered pictures.

The Radish are coming up very well. I planted them close and a lot of them since the seeds were old and I didn't know for sure if they were any good. So now we are waiting for the second set of leaves to show up so we can thin them out and give them room to grow.

I don't often show pictures of this Loofah bed. It has really stumped me as to why it's not growing as fast as the other bed. We have finally determined that it must be the sun. The other bed gets the morning to noon sun and this one just gets some late afternoon sun. We will work with that theory next year and see if that is what the issue was. The seeds for both beds came out of the same package.

This is our new Green Bean patch. We have really been shocked at the difference in the plants. The two beds we planted first said they were Blue Lake Green Beans as did this one, however, they look nothing alike. It will be interesting to see if the bean production is the same.

I started these Basil plants from seed and boy do they ever take a long time to get going. My theory on these is that it may be a light/soil situation as I have grown them in flower pots before and they grew a lot faster than these are in the garden beds.

We will soon be picking Cucumbers and starting to make pickles. I am shocked at how small some of the plants are and already producing. Normally the plants are much larger than these.

If you have never read about the  health  benefits of eating Cucumbers it is amazing information to have. I look it up again and post a blog on it. There are so many things that Cucumbers doing for our bodies that are just amazing!

There are little Cucumbers like this scattered all through the three beds that we have this year.

This bed of Cucumbers has already started their climbing. I just love this idea as it will keep me off the ground looking for them, I will be able to walk up to/or under the arch and pick the Cucumbers as they are ready.

I took this picture to show you how far they are getting up the arch. It won't be long and they will be over the tops.

I was happy this picture turned out so clear. Here you can see the bloom that will eventually become a cucumber and you can also see that this branch has already stretched his little "arm" our and wrapped around the arch to support itself.

This came out a bit fuzzy but hopefully you can see this tiny baby cucumber just starting to grow.

This is a picture of the Loofah bed that gets the morning sun. As you can see there is a huge difference in the size of these plants and the ones that are only getting afternoon sun.

The wind was blowing on the plants today making it a bit hard to get a good picture. The little green "blob" you see in the middle of the picture is the start of a Green Bell Pepper.

While "they" say we should not still be getting Asparagus, we are! Once they were salted and then water very heavy every night they just started going crazy and have not stopped coming up yet.

This is what the Asparagus will look like if you don't pick it. It will grow out like this, then produce seeds, drop them and they will start as plants. This is how these beds get so large. I was concerned that a lot of my seeds were falling into the yard so I picked off of the seed pods and brought then in the house. Slowly they are drying out and I'm removing the seeds so I can take them back out and put them in the bed. We are really looking at growing this patch as big as we can.

The Tomatoes just continue to get bigger and bigger with no signs of turning red yet. We have been getting Cherry Tomatoes already but these monsters just don't seem to be done growing.

This is another one of the large Tomatoes. It appears that all the tomatoes on these plants will end up being huge like this. I sure hope the plants can support them, we have done everything we can to help the plants with the weight they are causing on the branches.

Here are a few of the tomatoes in the middle of the plants. They are not as big as the others............yet.

I know many people do not like Marigolds but I just love them. I have these in and around the garden beds as the aroma of them keep bugs and rabbits and deer away from your garden. We live out in the country and we have no problems with animals getting into our beds.

This is my Mr.Magoo Tomato. LOL. I just love to look at him everyday. It really does look like the profile of Mr. Magoo to me.

This photo is showing 4 of the Rose Bushes I got at Wal Mart the other day for a $1.25 each.

The two plants on the left are more of the Rose Bushes I got and the plant on the left is a Hibicus that I got on sale at Ace Hardware for $3. These plant sales are driving me bananas, I'm starting to have to really think about where to put them.

This is a bloom off of one of the new Rose Bushes also. Very pretty indeed and they smell so wonderful.

This is a plant our daughter picked out to help attract the Hummingbirds. I've seen these in lots of color variations but this might just be the prettiest one I've ever seen.

Those are all the pictures I have for now. I'll try to get out this evening and get pictures of the Blackberry and Grape Bushes so you can see them. While this summer, in our area, has been so dry that we have to water everyday for the most part the plants are doing very well. Some of them show signs of suffering a bit, a few dry leaves here or there but for as dry and hot as it has been here we are pleased with how they have been doing.

If you have never had a garden or think that you don't have room for one I really suggest that you look into raised bed gardens. They are so easy to maintain, they take up a 4ft x 4ft area and can really kick some produce out. Even if you have never had a garden before it is a fun thing to have and do and honestly, it really relieves a lot of my stress to go out and work in my garden. Whether I'm working with the flowers or the vegatable I learn something new everyday at these miracle plants God made for us.

Have a great day!