Garden Update and New Addition to the Yard

What a fabulous weekend!  The weather completely cooperated, and it actually felt like summer is supposed to feel - toasty, relaxed and lazy!

Thursday last week started giving indications we were in for a nice run of sun.  Low lying fog made for a great shot from my office, but notsogreat of a commute in via ferry - the boats were running late all day.

Thursday night brought the first bean harvest from the garden, which immediately went into the steamer for devouring, and wow, were they tastey!

Here's how the tomatoes look, as of Saturday:

The corn is about 3-4 feet tall - hoping to get a harvest by September.

The pumpkin vines are enjoying their climb!

And there's one gourd that may actually make it to Jack O Lantern status in October!

While waiting for my ferry home Friday night, caught the cormorants sun bathing on Vashon...

And while the crocosmia has pretty much died out, thereby diminishing a favored food source for the hummingbirds frequenting the yard, they're still busy - here's one perched high up a tree over the house.

DH made good progress on Friday night, installing the cross beam for the new arbor swing he built.  This made for less to do Saturday.  Good thinking.

Saturday turned out to be a great day for working in the yard ~ this picture feels sunny even without the sun obviously present!

DH got right to it on Saturday, with the goal of my being able to enjoy the finished product by day's end :)

By late afternoon, mission accomplished!

Before the big "reveal", here's a shot of what this corner looked like in April.

With ivy infested hedge and ratty rhody removed, the space looks infinitely better now, is user friendly and after I finished up the landscaping portion on Sunday, it got quite a bit of use!

Thus endeth my ongoing de-ivying project for the North boundary of the yard :)  Front and back are now cleaned out, beauty barked and 100% better looking than when we started a couple months ago!  And I seriously have the BEST DH EVAH!!

Sunday turned out to be even warmer than Saturday, and we deemed it a "putter" day.  NO PROJECTS!  We both cheated a little, in that I needed to finish up around the arbor, and DH washed the car and took it in for an oil change, BUT, after 1pm, we were in full putter mode.  I spent the rest of the afternoon reading, first in the front arbor swing, while DH took his bike to the front yard for a thorough cleaning and re-greasing of parts.  Then I moved to the backyard and the new swing to read and I have no idea what DH did, 'cept I know there were no major projects involved ~ he successfully puttered :)

In trying to decide what to do next, we're contemplating removing the 5 red square foot garden beds that were the experiment of last year.  The strawberry bed will stay put for now, but the others have been emptied of compost (which went into the new garden) and are now simply beds for weeds.  That should keep us busy until we figure out which part of the backyard rennovation to do next.

Looks like we're in for another hot summer day today, and no complaints from my corner!  Gonna enjoy it as much as possible, cuz 'round here, we never know how long the sun and warm are going to stick around!