Garden Walk | This Garden Reminds Me Why I Love America

Hello, my dear gardeners. The heat of the summer is here. Right now, it's morning in my garden, and I'm quickly doing jobs here and there, watering my plants. And for the middle of the day, I'm going inside the house because the heat is so big right now. So it's going to continue over the weekend here in Connecticut, and then we are moving into the rain weather and cool days. So today is just walk around the garden because I was able to do little things here and there, just keeping things alive, especially on my back porch, watering my plants yesterday three times, morning, afternoon, and evening to keep them hydrated. So let me show you what's happening here. And there is a mystery plant revealed at the back patio, and I'm going to show you what it is. Originally, it was supposed to be basil, but it's not. Look at this. I remember I bought two obelisks from Hobby Lobby. They look good in this color. I was thinking to spray them in a grayish color, but look at this, black, together with my black netting, the rabbit protection. It looks good. And I have little peas here, so they're going to climb up. And since this area is so small, it's always good to go vertical, right? So I have one obelisk here. Hopefully my peas will climb all the way up. And then I have this here. It's keeping my gooseberries a little bit out of the way because they were leaning towards here and they have thorns. So they're staying in that area. And look, thyme is blooming. This thyme is exposed to sun more, and it's blooming more than this one. I don't think this blooms at all because there is a shady conditions here because of our use here. So sun rarely goes on this side. But here, you see the difference is enough in sun to make this thyme bloom and that thyme not. Interesting. And my strawberries, they finished giving us a nice fruit and now they are traveling. And this guy wants to get himself here, but I'm not going to let him do this. I will return him back into the raised bed. Well, it's a little bit of a project here, so I will do it later. This guy has to go back before it touches the ground and sets roots. This way I will have more strawberries here. And what do we have here in this vegetable bed? Well, my rhubarb. Last rhubarb stalks I collected, hmm, maybe several days ago. And that would be it for my rhubarb. Now I'm going to fertilize this guy and let him settle into preparing himself for the winter because I want this rhubarb to be living many years here. So I don't want to exhaust this plant. And he is mighty happy here, growing big, anchoring itself into the ground. So this is super good. My balls. Remember I made those cement balls? This one is doing well here. My husband tripped on it, though. And this one is being swallowed by my sweet potato wine. So let's put it a little bit further here, although, yeah, like this. You were asking me what I am doing about Japanese beetles. And look at this. This looks like Japanese beetles' job. I do nothing about it. I don't have a lot of them. And they don't do a lot of damage to my plants. Like this is a little bit, well, let's see how this is going to develop here, but nothing really big. So Japanese beetles are not, they are not a problem in my garden. All right, so here, these two I introduced here. My sofa is here. Look at this. This is verbena, the tall verbena. And what happened to this verbena? It self-seeded itself. This one, you see how I let it grow here on the corner? I like this tall presence here because this space is so small. So going vertically is a good choice here. So this verbena self-seeded itself here with a lot of little seedlings. I divided them, planted in two batches together with sweet potato wine. And I think it's working here. Verbena bunariensis, the tall verbena. It's a little bit too tall here. It's not supposed to be so tall, but there is morning shade and verbena stretching to the sun. Well, the good thing is that verbena is not falling down from the wind. It has very stiff stems. So if you need this airy, beautiful presence, look into tall verbenas. I love to grow them in the garden because they're such good plants. So it's self-seeded itself along my stones here. I weed it all out. And this, believe it or not, this verbena survived our winter because in our area, verbena really doesn't survive well. It happily self-seed. This guy survived here, but look how small it is in comparison to these big ones. Well, that's one plant. And these are several of them, yeah, like five or eight of them. Interesting. But anyway, I like this tall presence here. Looks good, right? It's a nice place for us to relax here. So let me show you what is the mystery plant, which is supposed to be a basil, on my back patio. La la la. And the mystery plant is cornflower. Yes. I do have cornflower in my flower seeds container. So instead of putting a basil, I put cornflower seeds and I watered it in the morning. And it's already dry-ish. It gets afternoon shade. It likes to bask on the sun. So maybe what I will do, I will move it for the afternoon. I will move it further down the steps for it to get that sun. So soon we are going to have beautiful blue flowers here. Forget about basil. Here we go. All right. And floss flower. Remember how I moved this pot from the back there because it fell? Well, the stems didn't straighten themselves up, but they kind of started to grow up, which is normal. And finally my cornflower starting to age. This is such a long lasting bloom. I'm very impressed with tall floss flower. First time growing it. And the time which this floss flower spend raising these blooms and keeping them in this beautiful lavender color is amazing. I'm very impressed. So I'm going to collect seeds. Not now. Now I'm going to deadhead them and cut all the branches down away to keep it all nice and pretty. So look at this performance. Excellent. And the last thing, what I'm working on right now, cement projects. Let me show you. Our apple tree is getting heavy with apples. Here we go. So we are going to celebrate the 4th of July with good friends of ours. And I am making for them a pot. Remember I made like two pots with the same design here. Well, I kind of put a tape over the name because for privacy. But basically what I'm doing, I put their last name and garden, the same design how I did my basil pot on the back patio, I did it for them. So I bought two basil pots, one for us, one for them. And it's a little bit too early to plant basil in the pot since pot is just freshly made. So I'm going just to put this basil in and it will be a lovely gift to go and visit, right? There you go. Cool. So, oh, the basil smells so good. And this one is my latest play with cement. It looks quirky. But you know what? I looked at this how I did it and it reminds me the needles of hedgehogs. So what do you want to do? I want to do little planters in the shape of hedgehogs. Not sure how I would be able to do it, but I think I will. But before that, I have to be able to finish the girl on a swing statue. Look at this, not the statue. I imagine it to be a water fountain since water fountains are so popular in my garden. I'm telling you, I just have one and I can't wait to create more. I just need time, you know? So here, my girl on a swing. I decided to make girl first and then to build a swing. She's going to swing over the water and there will be some sort of a grotto and she's going to swing on this swing, which is just a necklace, right? So this is the girl. She, I made it out of cement and she doesn't look like a girl. She looks like a little old lady. So I made this girl from clay, which I baked in the oven and then I covered her with cement. But what happened to my lovely little girl? Her face got covered with rough cement and she turned into an old lady. So I don't know what to do with her. Either to redo her or I was looking what other people are doing on the internet with their cement statues and they use the sandpaper. So I might use the sandpaper and polish my girl's face for her to look like a girl. And this is a little swing I made out of cement too. I didn't apply a cement acidifier on her yet. So this is something like this. She's going to be somewhere here. She's going to have maybe some features on the face. I'm not sure yet. We will see how that works. And she's going to swing over the water and there will be a water fountain under her feet. Maybe more than second layer would be some flowers. Not sure, but the girl, I have to get the girl first and I have to get it right. And she looks like an old lady right now. Well, we will see. I will keep you posted. So these are my latest developments in the garden. As you can see, this fun is real fun. I'm endlessly mesmerized by cement and what it can do. Imagine the hedgehog planter. Look at this. It does look like a hedgehog needles, right? Love it. I just need for the temperature to go a little bit cooler in the garden. This way I can be outside and do all sorts of exciting things. I will keep you posted. And by the way, everyone have the most happy 4th of July celebrating America's 250 anniversary. Ooh, I hear. What was that? Anyway, I love America. As you know, I was born in Ukraine and Ukrainians have a lot of determination and grit. If I wouldn't have that perseverance of my ancestors, I wouldn't be able to do this YouTube channel because I would feel like I have to work and I have to, living in Ukraine, I would have to make money, work as everybody do. And I wouldn't have this adventurous spirit as bombastic Americans do. I call Americans bombastic because I love Americans. Probably not many people say it, but it's true. Americans have that free spirit where they dream things and they do things. Just like me, I dreamed to have the garden and kind of share the garden with everyone and have a YouTube channel and I'm doing it here. I don't think I would be able to do it in Ukraine, but here, I had, because of Americans, I had enough of courage to dream. So happy anniversary, America. And all of you, my dear gardeners, have a lovely time with your family and friends. I will see you in our next video, and oh, happy gardening.