You might have noticed that we're, once again, waaaaaaaaaaaay behind on our blog, sorta! We sorta are, because well, this isn't really being published on June 19th, BUT, we have been keeping up with what we want to say, according to when it happened, so we sorta aren't, too.

Meanwhile, we haven't been proofing and publishing, a'cuz it's gardening season and a'cuz Mommy has on again-off again insomnia. That means she can't do some chores at night or she'd wake up everybody else; then she gets too tired to do anything; then she gets back on schedule, but has to catch up on all the chores; and then, finally, she gets to the point that she can help us type…just to get insomnia again, and everything starts all over! Since Spaulding is her caregiver, he's on the same schedule. No one gets upset, although Mommy and Spaulding get frustrated. We just wait for nights like these, when she skips chores to help us with our Teddy Bear Journal.

This entry has been taking a while, because everyone has been out helping with the garden, so we have pictures to show. Of course, all our pictures need to be sorted through, fixed up to be the right size for the blog and for developing, uploaded before adding them into our entry, and then the Garden Gals need to s'plain what they are. We’ll let them s'plain everything now.

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Hi! It's been a long time since all five Garden Gals have added anything to the Teddy Bear Journal, so we want to remind you who we are.

Mommy (Grandma to Dee and Tine) is in the back, then our beautiful petunias (which aren't Garden Gals), then Valentine (our Head Garden Gal, since she's a bunny) and Lady, and then Tine and Dee. The two bears in the front are Yankee and Doodle, who help protect our garden while we're inside, but aren't even gals, once more Garden Gals. (This is an older picture, so doesn't include Dandy, their sister, yet.)

We're gonna tell about the three groups of plants – flowers, produce, and herbs – in our garden separately.

Flowers

This is our first year for Foxglove. (Check out the links included for each flower for extra fun.) We had six Foxgloves – five were this color and one was white. We like the way the colors are – purplely pink and white on the outside, and white with dots of purple on the inside – but bees like them even more then we do! We like watching their furry bums as they go in for the Foxglove nectar, but we give them plenty of space to do their work!

Remember this huge coffee cup that Teddy and Val sat in together, when the Garden Guys were helping us?

That was taken when our Campanula Carpatica was still coming out for the summer. Yeah, what a name for such a small flower, huh? She's a variety of bellflowers, so we've named her Campy, and she's just starting to flower! We also slipped a couple other small flowers in there from seeds we started indoors. One's still growing, and that tall one in the back was found inside one of our seed starter pellets, when we were pulling the duds apart for more soil. We don't know what it is, but it was growing in with our flowers.

Here's a better look at the mystery plant. (Since we're behind, we will give away the ending of this one – it kept getting bigger and bigger, and sure looked like corn. We had to cut it off for fear its roots would strangle Campy! We'll never know what it was. Sorry.)

First, we want to show you where this flower lives in our garden. On the left is our children's round picnic table that we use as a plant stand. Can you see Jerzy (previously known as New Gnome) and Woodland Gnome guarding everything? We're still arranging the garden, so they haven't decided which part they will guard yet. The flowers are the tall ones on the right of the trellis. They have three names: Monarda (this variety is called "Jacob Cline"), Bee Balm, or Oswego Tea.

Here's a closer look next to our Tumbler Tomatoes. Jacob is just beginning to bloom, so you can see two red flowers towards the back of him. He's called Bee Balm, because bees really like him, 'cept, we learned a bit too late, that they can't smell him, so we should have a Phlox growing next to him to attract the bees to the flowers. We do have a Phlox next to him, but we didn't know he was growing sooooooo tall, and he shaded the Phlox too much for it to grow well this year.

Jacob is to the left of our Butterfly Bush. Can you see the purple flowers to the right?

We've already had butterflies visiting our Butterfly Bush, but haven't caught any on the camera yet. Here's a close up of some flowering heads. Can you see why it's called "Summer Lilac," too?

This type is also called an Orange Eye Butterfly Bush. Can you tell why?

Here's a really cool close-up that Daddy took! Betcha can tell why it's called orange eye now! Doesn't this look like a modern painting or gift wrapping paper? We like this close-up a whole bunch!

Produce

This may look like another picture of Jacob, and it is, but it also shows our garden from a different angle. We're facing our peppers – Sweet Giant Marconi Hybrid.

Here's a closer look where you can see peppers starting to grow. To the left is our lavender hedge. Lavender is a tough call – is it flower, herb, or produce? In our garden, it's all three! Obviously, flower and an herb, but the family chefs (the Garden Guys) like to sprinkle it on personal pizzas, and grill them. Yummy! (You can also see Jerzy Gnome and Woodland Gnome better in this picture.)

See how thin the stems are? That's why we tied them up to stakes using pipe cleaners.

Here's our Tumbler Tomato, again. We soweded seeds in early spring to grow her, and two plants grew. (The other is in with the big tomato bushes.) She's going to have cherry tomatoes, but is called "Tumbler," a'cuz she tumbles over the sides of hanging planters. Of course, squirrels (not Sammy Squirrel's family, they live down at our park) 'round here like our tomatoes, so we cover her in fruit tree netting, so they can't eat them. We have to keep letting out more netting as she grows bigger. Not sure what we'll do, when she outgrows the netting. We just fight neighborhood squirrels constantly.

We have many plants under fruit tree netting, just in case the squirrels grow fond of other veggies. In the center is our cucumber bush. We grew this from seed, too, and went for a bush, because the vines grew Powdery Mildew last year. The bush is supposed to be resistant to it. To the right of the bush is a'posed to be ornamental peppers. (We haven’t figured out a good system for keeping track of what each seedling is, when we grow a bunch early. The little cups for each seedling are too small to put labels on, We drew a map to tell us which is which, but we didn't know which was the first one, by the time we put it in front of a window, so the map wasn't much help.) As you can tell, it's a member of the cabbage family. That means it will be either a Walking Stick cabbage, or an F1 Hybrid cabbage that is a'posed to grow to be 25 pounds. Of course, the little grill it's growing in isn't big enough for a 25 pound anything, so we're just waiting to find out what it does. Behind those two plants are our tomatoes growing in HUGE containers, or in big containers in our Radio Flyer Red Wagon.

We're not sure if you can see the cucumber beginning to grow, so we took this picture. Once a cuke starts to grow, it doesn't take long before its time for picking. These are our first cukes of the year!

Spaulding and Teddy brought us some unusual produce. We knew we never planted it this year. It sure smelled familiar!

After closer inspection, we remembered! We soweded garlic cloves in with the rose bush, last September! (We read that garlic made good companions for roses last year. This year, we found out it was a good companion to keep bunnies from eating the roses. Eat roses? Silly! Garlic tastestest much better! Valentine loves garlic to eat! Roses a'cuz they're pretty and smell great! Where do Peoples get there info? Not from a bunny, that's for sure!!!)

Herbs

This shelf is right above the Garden Chefs' grill, so we added some of our favorite herbs for easy reach!

To the left is our colander collection. Mommy (Grandma) gave us two smaller ones last spring, just cuz she knew we'd like them! The big colander has Small-leafed, globed basil that our Garden Guys bought for us, when they went to the Rittenhouse Flower Market last month. The one in front of it to the left is growing Thyme from seeds we soweded! The one on the right has the last of our Summer Savory seeds growing in it.

That's Sage and Herb guarding our Greek Oregano. The Oregano is growing in an olive oil can, but we put it in an aluminum pan, so it wouldn't soak our Mother's Day present – the garden clock. (It also protects it from getting wet during storms, too.) There's another olive oil can next to it that was a'posed to grow something too, but squirrels got to it and dug it up. Sage told us that the squirrel was too big, so they got a'scared, and didn't try to shoo it away. We're glad. We thought it might mistake them for nuts, but don't tell them!

There's more to our garden, but we're not done planting, sowing or arranging yet. When we get done, we'll show some more. Hopefully, plants will be big enough to bloom or fruit by then, so you can see them!

Ummmm, we'd let our Garden Guys finish this entry, but they're making hotdogs on the grill. We love hotdogs, soooo, ummmm, gotta go. Over and out from the Garden Gals!