Finally got some garden photos to share. We have been picking string beans (3 kinds), white zucchini, and cucumbers (2 kinds) like crazy. Corn is close and finally getting ripe tomatoes.
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@CatLady Your garden looks so vibrant! Quite a harvest! Love the coneflowers and sunflowers! The bees must love them as well.
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Thanks, @Mariethm, I have to give my husband the credit! He has taken to gardening in a big way since his “latest” retirement!
LOL I weed, edge, water…and pick, prep, and cook! 
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That’s quite the haul of vegies and flowers (particularly the cone flowers…they deserve a better name and probably have one). My wife’s a Master Gardner with Loudoun County here in VA, but our efforts this year have not been great. Flowers were fine, but veggies not so much. Heirloom tomato plants from a friend did not do well; too big and top split and the deer we have took the good ones (yes, fencing might help). Shishito peppers were great for a third year, though two plants resulted way to many, need to cut to one. Wife got green bell pepper variety that (was supposed to be sweet yellow, I think); I dislike greens…probably from my mom forcing my brother and I to eat stuffed greens when kids; I just dislike the flavor of greens! She tried to grow string beans, but either the variety or the placement was bad, I think we got four total bean pods off the two plants! Even the flower pots on the arbor in back didn’t do well this year. Perhaps its been all the rain we’ve gotten thru the summer…will try again next year!
Your’s look great though, congrats!
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We’re both amazed (relieved?) that the garden is doing as well as it is. Weather in the high 90s slowed everything down for a while, especially the tomatoes. Our neighbor has started keeping bee hives and the presence of extra pollinators has helped, too. 
ETA 8/30: We are now being inundated with cucumbers!
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Cukes are good, but the ones to watch for are squash! We lived in Belleville, IL, for 3 years and the story was that “in season, you better lock your car; if you don’t, you’ll come back to it an one seat will be full of squash!” We had a raised bed with four plants, we’d go out one day and there’d be little 2” squash growin’, go out the next day and the darn thing would be 2+ feet long and there’d be 6 of them! Four plants, what WERE we thinkin’!
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Here is a good article on the benefits of gardening. As all of you already know, it’s definitely exercise!
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And gardening reliably drops my BG!
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It’s getting to be time to prep the garden for the winter. I usually put about 1 bag of manure on for 16 sq feet and also I tried putting down some barley grass last year. And I use a manual roto tiller to aerate everything.
What do others do to get their garden ready for the next spring? How do you work around perennials?
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We have so much to do to put our garden plot to bed for the winter! This year we need to add sand again. We’re still slowly fixing our clay-like soil, and we do love the root veggies! And dehydrated manure. And about 6 5-gallon buckets of old coffee grounds and egg shells from this summer. Our dirt tends to be less acidic, and the worms love the coffee grounds. There’s some debate over whether or not egg shells really add much calcium, but it can’t hurt. We’ve used winter rye as a cover crop in the past, but not sure we’ll have time this year.
We won’t be planting our garlic until the spring, because I like tinkering with the layout every year, and I’m thinking of planting them and onions the whole perimeter for better pest control. The corners already have chives and leeks, so those will stay.
Not sure what to do with the perennial herbs, they didn’t come back last year, and like I said, the tinkering…
For the life of me, I can’t remember where the tulips and daffodils were this year, so I’ll probably end up digging them up when I turn the dirt over.
So much to do!
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This is me <20 years ago (pre-D diagnosis), in my happy place. Not exactly the Garden (more like a bar next to a bowling alley), but fun nevertheless. Or is that not what you mean by ‘garden’? 
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Those were also some of the most fond times of my youth also. The only instrument I ever played was “vocals”, but I was lead in 3 or 4 bands into my early 30’s, including oversees in the Army. Hint: We used to “play for beer” in Germany…no payment required, just keep the beer coming. lol. Those were the gold ol’ days!
I did learn Banjo later in life, but I haven’t picked that up for the past 5 years, so I’ve probably forgotten most of what I learned there also.
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I do miss beer. It makes you play better, or at least it makes you think so (and it certainly makes the audience think so)!
Anyway, didn’t mean to derail this thread. I’m just jealous that I don’t have a green thumb. Some of those garden photos are fabulous.
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There’s a fine line as you probably experienced…you can have “just enough” to make you play and sing to your optimal (and take those risks you usually wouldn’t), and then there’s too much which makes you suck. lol. Fortunately, I never drank a lot…just enough to “loosen me up”, and my band mates could handle their drink well and didn’t miss a bit with the instruments.
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Precisely - with the exception of the audience. The more beer the better for them (and for the bar owner)! 
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Beer garden, plant garden, whatever makes you smile!
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Lol! I was referring to Madison Square Garden, but happily accept the amendment to the much more apropos ‘beer garden‘.
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Lol. New meds make my head not work too good at times.
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Now I know why your name @Strat111. You still have that Stratocaster? I was listening/watching some videos with Julian Lage on his 1954 Telecaster.
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I do. It’s my favorite ‘player’. Love Julian Lage! Great guitarist, although I haven’t yet had a chance to see him live (my son saw him in SF and raved about the show). I also own a candy apple red ‘57 reissue (like David Gilmour’s), among many other guitars - I’m a gear head, what can I say? But Julian’s is the real thing.
I adopted Strat1117 as my on line handle many years ago, when I got my first strat, an SRV artist model that is now long gone. I always regret the ones I sell (unless I really don’t like them), but you can only have so many before it becomes ‘too much’.
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