I find myself wanting desperately to spend every available second out in the garden, my high maintenance summer friend, who's time is limited.  The mere size of this garden was a guffaw in itself.

A Birthday Tea Party for Maddy in the Morning Glory and Birdhouse Gourd vine house.

Normally, I have a normal sized garden, but this year, I planted a 300 foot by 90 foot children's garden with an opening of flowers, a vine house, veggies on the sides, pumpkins in the middle and a corn 'maze' on the south end.  I learned that there is a reason for the way farmers plant their fields in neat rows of the same plant.  My artsy garden wasn't so hot at producing mass amounts of food, but it is a beautiful sight to behold.

The back of the vine house, with clumps of sunflowers, like sentinels at each corner,  planted by children (open packet, dump seeds, cover with dirt, repeat.)

The veggies didn't do so well.  I put all my energy into everything else, flowers, weeds, pumpkins, weeds and weeds.  I only planted about 1/6 of the pumpkins I hoped to plant due to time constraints and a mild heat stroke the day after planting about 100 pumpkins. But oh, the flowers are amazing, baby's breath, six foot zennias, ten foot sunflowers, four foot giant marigolds, those cosmos, towering above all.  Maybe my forte isn't so much growing food as it is growing flowers, pumpkins, gourds and children.

Thank goodness for farmers who ARE great growers of food.  While the flowers are perfect food fot the soul, I'm not sure how long we might survive on pumpkin and sunflower seeds alone.  

In a favorite reading spot by the zinnias.

In the vine house under the birdhouse gourds.