but this went on my back porch so I’m posting it here ;) Although I’m not a huge fan of Molson Canadian I really liked this metal sign. I’m not positive but to me the scenery in the background looks like Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.

Photo taken 09-08-12.1 month ago

This is the aloe that I bought in 2011 and first posted about here. I forgot to take a pic when I repotted it in 2011 so I’m posting one now. This one grows pretty quickly and you can see from this photo that it’s close to needing repotting again!

Photo taken 09-08-12.

BTW, this is the only plant I have that’s been named- my good 43er friend A_butterfly_kiss has the same type of aloe so we both named ours after each other ;)1 month ago

posting for this goal, it’s time to start the 2013 version! So I’m going to mark this one as completed and just add the few more entries I have for it later :)2 months ago

I picked this one up on clearance at my local grocery store for a few dollars. I’ve seen hibiscus plants around so I thought that it would survive here, but…

Photo taken 07-25-12.4 months ago

My other indoor herb for the year was this rosemary plant. I really don’t use that much of it, mainly because I don’t like eating the whole needles and mincing up the leaves is kind of a pain ;) But once in a while I’ll get ambitious and add some to a red pasta sauce.

This photo was taken 07-25-12, but the plant looks just about the same now in January. I’ll have to see if I can nurse it through the winter and start a couple new plants from cuttings next summer. 4 months ago

I didn’t grow any annual herbs outside this year, but I did pick up a few basil plants to put it a pot on the windowsill near the kitchen, where they grew well for months :)

Photo taken 06-14-12.4 months ago

I planted two of these raspberries last year, which I first wrote about in this thread.

When I took this photo on 06-14-12 the one near the back fence looked like it made it through the winter ok. That’s not surprising; raspberries are pretty cold-tolerant. But… 4 months ago

One that my daughter made from a kit in 2009. My ex had it, but she lives in an apartment without a yard so she gave it to me. I placed it just to the right of the spearmint I just posted about.

That should be a good location for it because it’s right next to the patio where we eat outside in the summer :)

Photo taken 06-14-12.4 months ago

I have one mint growing in the back corner of my yard, but it’s some semi-wild thing that isn’t the best tasting. Spearmint is my favorite of the mints so I picked this one up and planted it in the backyard next to this hollyhock, where I had marigolds last year. That puts it in the “danger zone” from my daughter playing basketball, but the mints are pretty damn tough. Plus it smells great when she bruises it up a little ;)

It’s also fairly confined in that area, which is good because the mints are known for spreading aggressively.

Photo taken 06-14-12. Now that the holidays are over maybe I can get back on track with this neglected goal ;)4 months ago

For some reason this was the only tomato plant I put in this year- I think I planned on going back to the garden center for more, but I never got around to it :P

I’ve mentioned before that I actually don’t like tomatoes, I just plant them for other people. One of the things I really can’t stand about fresh tomatoes is the “goo” that surrounds the seeds, so I thought I’d try this out and maybe I could stomach them. Unfortunately, with our very dry year the tomato was another thing that didn’t do well- I only harvested a few and gave those all away before I got the chance to try any.

Photo taken 6-9-12.5 months ago

There are several different species of larkspur that grow naturally in Colorado. I think that this one may be Early Larkspur (Delphinium nuttallianum). However, this plant is a volunteer that showed up in one of the gravelled sections of my front yard this year so it could be a domesticated rather than native species.

Photo taken 6-9-12.5 months ago

I planted this perennial in my “semi-native” plot in the front yard last year. As I expected, the second one didn’t live through the winter. But this one looked healthy when I took this photo on 6-9-12. Now I just have to wait to see how large it will grow- I’m not sure if it’s a low-growing variety or if it was just that the tough conditions where I collected it up in the mountains kept the plants dwarved. 5 months ago

A very unsuccessful planting this year. Even though I put in four of these squash, between the damn earwigs chewing them up (they seem to love young summer squash plants) and the extremely dry summer we had, I harvested no squash this year :(

Photo taken 6-9-12, and you can see how badly the earwigs have already chewed up this plant.5 months ago

I’ve always wanted to have a tree or two that produces edible nuts but our options here in Denver are pretty limited without doing more supplemental watering than I want to. And I read that the one nut-bearing tree that’s native to the area (the Piñon Pine) can take up to 25 years to produce its first crop! I’m getting a little old to be that patient ;) But then I read about hazelnut trees. Not only do they start producing within a few years, but they only grow around 15’/ 5 meters high so they would be perfect in my small yard. You need to have two for cross pollination, but I could find room for two trees that small. Plus I love hazelnuts!

I didn’t realize that it was going to be so difficult to actually get these plants, though. I ordered one (to start) from Gurneys in March and I think that they shipped it about a month later. I never received it (I think that the box was stolen off my front porch, which also happened a couple times around Christmas, and which I think the assholes deserve to be tasered for!). I notified Gurneys and they reshipped, but that one didn’t show up either! So it was nearly June before I finally received my little hazelnut tree and got it planted. I put it a few feet out from the privacy fence on the south side of my back yard.

Photo taken 06-09-12.5 months ago

I put this plant in near the end of the season last year (entry here) so I didn’t really get to enjoy its flowers then. I was glad to see it growing so healthy when I took this photo on 06-09-12.

Like the red currant that I posted about earlier, I had to give this plant the protection of a wire cage so my daughter didn’t wipe it out while shooting baskets.5 months ago

A perennial that I planted in my “semi-native” bed last year. This one tends to bloom later in the summer so it was not even producing buds yet when I took this photo on 5-28-12.

It also didn’t like our hot, dry summer very much- I only got a few blooms on it this year and I’m not sure if I took any more photos of it.5 months ago

This is a plant that I got from the mountains last year and put into my “semi-native” bed in the front yard- you can read last year’s entry here.

The second aster that I planted last year didn’t survive the winter, but this one did and had a few pretty blooms when I took this photo on 5-28-12. 5 months ago

This is a bush in the northeast corner of my back yard that I inherited when I bought the house. It really needs some TLC to get rid of the dead and old canes, but even as neglected as it’s been it still has masses of beautiful and delightfully-scented flowers every spring :)

Photo taken 4-22-12. I wonder if I’ll make it to summer on this goal before winter is over? :P6 months ago

I planted this bush last year and posted about it here.

This plant survived its first winter (which isn’t surprising, currants are very hardy) and was leafing out well when I took this photo on 04-14-12.

The tomato cage is to protect the plant from my daughter’s errant basketball shots ;)7 months ago

I have a whopping two daffodil plants that I inherited with the house, one of which is this one along the fence in the back yard. It gets totally ignored all year and is covered with weeds in the summer but it still keeps coming up and blooming each spring! I should probably move it but I’m afraid that all that attention would kill it ;)

Photo taken 04-08-129 months ago

With snow in the forecast for the next day, I made sure that I got some seeds of sugar snap peas, leaf lettuce, and radishes into the ground while I could still work the soil.

This is in my front yard, which I posted about here in last year’s goal.

Photo taken 04-02-1210 months ago

Yeah, I’m really behind on this goal!

I have two crabapple trees in my back yard- you can see this one in the photo posted here. This is the larger tree and has darker pink blossoms.

With our warm spring the trees were just loaded with blossoms this year. Most of the year these trees are nothing spectacular, but while they’re blooming the sight and smell are wonderful :)

Photo taken 04-01-1210 months ago

I was surprised this spring to see some violets flourishing in my backyard (about at the right edge of the photo here) because I only noticed a few last spring- probably due to the very dry winter we had in 2010-2011.

I should transplant some of these to the north side of the house & see how they do there. It’s amazing that they’ve even survived at the base of this west-facing brick wall. Hot and dry isn’t exactly the environment that violets are known for.

Photo taken 03-31-12.10 months ago

I think that this is the dark pink peony that was getting overgrown by the light pink one. I transplanted the roots last fall but I couldn’t tell exactly what roots I got because the two plants were intertwined.

I’ll probably have to wait until it blooms (next year, hopefully) to determine what this is but I was happy to see it lived- peonies don’t like to be moved.

Photo taken 03-27-1211 months ago

This was planted last fall, as I wrote here. I loved the three varieties that I harvested last summer so I planted the same ones (although somehow I again lost track of which is which :( ). This photo was taken on 03-27-12 as the shoots were just coming up. The mesh over the top was because I had some critter eating the new shoots last spring. I didn’t have any problems with that this year so I’m hoping for an even-better harvest :)

If so, I’d be glad to send you some again, TD!11 months ago

This is the first plant that I put in the ground after I bought my house early in 2010. I wrote about it here.

This is another photo taken on March 27th. I tend to wander around the yard and take photos of everything once in a while, especially in the spring :)11 months ago

When I took this photo on March 27th the big peony in the southeast corner of my house (posted about under this entry last year) was shooting up like crazy. I’m always surprised that peonies do so well here, with our dry weather and short growing season. But this one seems to be very healthy and I see many of them around. 11 months ago

I planted this one last year and wrote about it here. It was just emerging from the mulch when I took this photo on 03-27-12, but since it was alreasy past blooming when I bought it, I’m looking forward to seeing the blossoms for the first time this year! 11 months ago

This actually isn’t the traditional Irish shamrock (which is a clover species), but I’ve seen them sold as shamrocks for years. The leaves are bigger and brighter than the clover. I picked this one up for a table decoration for St. Patrick’s Day. I repotted it and added the cool little glow-in-the-dark decoration to it.

And believe it or not, this plant is still alive 2.5 months later :)

Photo taken 03-19-1211 months ago