I have a picket fence garden. I love my picket fence garden. It's quaint. It's cute. It screams cottage, and I love pretty much anything that screams cottage. It also happens to be home to my Princess Diana clematis entwined birdhouse, and I love my Princess Diana clematis entwined birdhouse more than a person should love anything that's made out of a chunk of wood. I also have a greenhouse garden. I love my greenhouse garden. It's my newest garden, and this year it really came into its own. Right next to my greenhouse garden you can see part of my vegetable garden. I actually don't love my vegetable garden at the moment because a good portion of the plants are smack in the middle of a strike. Apparently they are protesting a hostile work environment, ( a massive grass invasion and fertilizer neglect), and while we've attempted several sit down negotiations, so far neither of us is willing to budge and do what is required of us to get our relationship back on the road to productivity. And by neither of us, I mean me. But enough about my sad squash and pumpkins. I really want to talk to you about my very favorite garden of all. The raised bed herb garden. I love my raised bed herb garden beyond all reason. Raised bed gardens are easy to take care of. They are easy to irrigate. They are also extremely easy to weed, not that I have any recent, first hand experience on that front. Things have gone a bit downhill since the wedding a month ago. Very far down a very big hill. It all still looks pretty good from a distance....but up close it would definitely not pass the garden club smell test. The herb garden has a few herbs....rosemary, parsley, several mints, thyme, dill and sage, as well as some onions and jalapenos, but the vast majority of the plants are annuals, and the vast majority of the annuals are zinnias. Did I ever tell you the final zinnia count? Out of the eleven hundred and ten zinnia seeds I planted, eight hundred and sixty eight made it into the garden. Yes, I counted. Several times. Not all of them germinated in the greenhouse, and then quite a few more just shriveled up and died for no apparent reason before they made it in the ground, which actually didn't hurt my feelings even a little bit because it was all I could do to find eight hundred and sixty eight spots to plant my zinnias let alone eleven hundred and ten. Oh, and then there are a few of these poor little fellas out there, too. I still count them among the living, but I'm beginning to think a mercy killing just might be in order. Our low tonight is supposed to be thirty five, so I'm all of a sudden feeling a bit sentimental about my zinnias and all their garden friends. It won't be long before I wake up one morning to find they've gone to the great zinnia farm in the sky and that will just be sad. Most of the perennials I've planted in the raised beds have not been able to survive our harsh winters above ground, but a few have not only survived...they've gone completely over the edge of sanity. The Monarda. Is. Out. Of. Control. I originally planted four different colors, but the only survivors were the fuchsia/magenta-ish fellas you see here. Over the years, they've gone from a four inch pot to reach out and grab you size, and every year they expand by leaps and bounds. They truly need to be dealt with sometime soon, as they have blocked off all the paths that surround them, but I have a hard time messing with a plant that has that much vim and vigor. You can see them off to the right in the photo below. They now take up almost all of their 4x8 foot beds. All this to say, raised gardens are the cat's meow, and if you have ever tossed around the idea of a raised garden bed or two, or ten, I say take the plunge. You won't be sorry. So, speaking of gardens, Country Living just announced the finalists in its Blue Ribbon Blogger Awards, and it just so happens that a blog y'all might be familiar with is a finalist in the garden category. Rumor has it that the author of this particular blog is pretty darn excited and honored and humbled at this turn of events, and has been seen walking around in a bit of a daze since this information came into her possession. Country Living just happens to be the one and only magazine she subscribes to, and she currently has the most recent three issues sitting on her coffee table. There's also a slight possibility that during the short period of time that she let her subscription lapse several years ago, she may or may not have stolen borrowed two issues from the waiting area of her local Department of Motor Vehicles. A panel of judges will be picking the winner in each category, but in the meantime, Country Living is holding a Reader's Choice contest on their website. The Reader's Choice voting is already underway, and will continue until September 15th. Readers can vote once a day. The problem is, the author of the aforementioned blog is a bit uncomfortable asking her readers to pay a visit to the Country Living page to vote for her blog. She's not totally sure just exactly what her problem is, but for whatever reason, it is just a bit awkward for her. After talking it over with her BFF, who very sweetly (or not) said, "Oh, get over yourself. This is cool!", she decided to post the link to the voting page in case any of her readers feel like popping on over and placing a vote. She has also decided to refer to herself in the third person for this portion of her blog post, because she feels that it somehow eases the awkwardness she is feeling just a teensy little bit, but she hopes that by doing so, she does not cause any form of confusion for her readers. She herself is very easily confused, so she is always a bit sensitive to others who occasionally find themselves in that same boat. In addition, she has visited the voting page several times during the writing of this post, just to make sure that her blog is indeed one of the finalists. She is a bit worried that she might discover that she dreamed the finalist part and that would take the awkward thing to a whole new level once she hit the publish button on her blogger dashboard. She would also like to thank the readers who nominated her blog for the Blue Ribbon Awards. She knows of two readers who did so, and thinks that it's just about the nicest thing ever. Have a truly delightful Labor Day weekend!