Another happy Saturday to all! Natalie is taking a well-deserved break from hosting duty this week, so it’s just you and me.

It’s official! All the shade clothes have been taken down and put away for the year. Until next summer, shade clothes!

I showed my co-worker this photo of my front garden the other day when we were in the office. “This looks like you,” my co-worker remarked. It’s strange and funny at the same time. I’ve never been told that before.

It’s looks like me? A chaotic mess of greenery? Hmm…

“I’m just trying to cover the rocks,” I said. I’ve probably wrote this many times before on this blog but I do not like these rocks. I wanted to do chip drop – a service where an arborist would drop a bunch of wood chips for much less money than what I paid for the rocks. There will probably be problems that will arise with mulching the front yard but I doubt it will cause a rise in temperature.

This is what the front garden looks like at night. This is when the solar-powered lights come to life to light up the entire garden. I installed these last winter because I was trying to keep the winter veggies warm but to my disappointment, these don’t emit much heat. It turned out, incandescent lights emit heat, not these tungsten lights.

One of these days, I will cover the front garden in either greenery or mulch.

Last weekend, I finally gave in and bought some propagation cups for the strawberries. It finally arrived early this week. What so special about these is the ability to clip each one to the side of the container, so I don’t have to worry about them falling and it even have little forks to hold the strawberries in place. I bought 20 of these cups and probably used 10 for this tower alone. It’s madness how many strawberry runner these plants create. I started out the year with 5 plants in this tower and now, I have at least one plant in each pocket. It’s madness, I tell ya!

Of the 3 seasons I’ve been planting in this tower, this is probably the fullest I’ve seen it. Every pocket has at least one plant. I will have to be very creative as to where to place these new strawberry plants. Maybe I’ll plant some beneath each fruit trees and let them sprawl to create a living mulch situation for the trees.

You are probably wondering what’s that next to the tower. That’s my one beast of Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) plant. Yes, that’s one plant. I accidentally created a monster when I fed it some of my homemade compost in July. It became very sad after I fed it and I was so afraid I might had done a horrible thing but then, after a good rainstorm, it was like it’s been pumped with adrenaline and it took off. Do you know how many pumpkins are in this patch?

There were 13 pumpkins before my mom harvested 2 of them. So there are now 11. They are about 2 to 3 pounds each and are very versatile in cooking as they can be eaten like sweet potatoes. The remaining pumpkins will most likely be storage pumpkins – save to enjoy during the winter. To be honest, I enjoy them more in the winter than in the summer. These pumpkins are meant to eaten on a cold day.

Finally, next week is my birthday week. I hope it will be a great birthday this year. Crossing my fingers. 🤞Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week ahead.