Progression of color throughout the year at the "Outlaw's Hideout"

Growing up on a farm in the Arkansas Delta has given me a green thumb. I like to grow vegetables and flowers. The following photos will show the changes during the year in our yard.

First are the colors that are around every day all year, 24/7.
I have always enjoyed spring bulbs. We could not grow spring bulbs while we lived in South Texas because it was too warm in the winter for the bulbs to go dormant. After moving back to the St. Louis area I looked forward to the colorful display of spring colors from bulbs. In the fall of 2009 I put out about 150 spring bulbs. The first to appear in March was the crocus.

Followed by hyacinths.
Daffodils
Tulips in April

In early April this color appeared. This year it came down the first week of October since the Cardinals did not get into post season playoffs.
In April the flowering trees start to bloom.
Red Bud
Tulip Popular
Bradford Pear
This beautiful Bradford Pear suffered a broken limb during the summer (see my blog "Timber!!!"). Here is how it appeared before a large limb broke off.
The broken limb that fell across the driveway came close to falling on top of Jeff's car. It just scratched the back.
This left a big scar on the tree.
The after effect removed about a quarter of the canopy of the tree.
In the fall of 2009 I planted lettuce and spinach, but I planted them too late and they were frozen by a hard December freeze. But to our surprise in April 2010 they came back strong and we enjoyed fresh spinach and lettuce for several weeks. Along side these pants is the broccoli that I set out in April. I have to put a fence around the vegetable garden or the rabbits will enjoy more of it than we do.
In early spring the Azalea that is at the corner of our garage is in full bloom.
In May our Iris start to bloom.
I got some Iris bulbs from a friend's flower garden that produced this beautiful orange bloom.
By late May the Lilies start to bloom.
These are along our front walk.
These Lilies are around our deck on the back of our house.
I plant my vegetable garden in mid May and it is in full growth by mid June. I plant Zinnias and Marigolds around the perimeter of the vegetables.
I placed two solar powered tulip lights at the corners of my vegetable garden.
Marigolds
By mid summer the Zinnias are in full bloom.
The Zinnias attract a lot of butterflies.

Bees are also attracted by the Zinnias.
And humming birds.
Summer time brought the perennials in full bloom.
Cone Flowers.
Black-eyed Susan and Purple Salvia.
The Cone Flowers and Black-eyed Susans attracted Goldfinch that we could watch from our table by the bay window.
Laura Phlox
Saliva, Coleus and Cocks Comb.

Indigo.
Indigo and Saliva
Hibiscus
Clematis.
Jackmani Clematis
Light Purple Clematis
Pink Hydrangea and early growth on Chrysanthemums.
Front porch flower box with Begonias.
Front porch hanging basket with New Guinea Impatiens.
Knockout Roses.
In my vegetable garden my favorites are tomatoes and okra. This year I had 24 tomato plants with 5 varieties, Burpee Early Girl, Burpee Big Boy, Sweet 100 cherry tomato, 2 varieties of a heritage tomato.
Heritage tomato.
Big Boy Tomato.
Okra is in the same family as Cotton and Hibiscus. (see by blog "Don't waste a Southern delicacy when it's in season". The flowers are white the first day, then turning to red the next followed by the okra pod.

I enjoy okra fried, boiled, and stewed with tomatoes. I always grow more okra that we can eat, so I share some with neighbors who like it. We always make dill pickled okra with some of the small pods.
Eggplants have a beautiful purple flower.
As much as I disliked chopping and picking cotton while growing up on a Cotton Farm, it is impossible to dismiss those formative years on Redfork Bayou in Watson, Arkansas (see my blog"Its Cotton Picking Time down South - or- Why I became a Chemist"). Because of this, I sometimes grow a few Cotton plants in my garden.
When we lived in Texas, I was able to get some seeds from brown lint Cotton.
We had several Boston Fern baskets in the back yard.
In the fall of 2009 we salvaged this large Boston Fern (without a pot) from where yard waste is dumped at the St. Peters Eco Center. We put it in a 15 inch pot and wintered it in the corner of our bedroom. After the danger of frost in spring of 2010 we placed in on a corner of our deck where it grew very well. It is now back in our bedroom for winter. That is where this picture was taken.
In mid September I planted spinach and lettuce for another fall salad garden. We enjoyed several weeks of fresh salad greens from the garden. After the hard frosts of late October, these plants started to wilt back from the very cold weather. The plants are still live and green and we will enjoy a new salad garden when they revive in March 2010.
Decorations in my flower gardens.
There are a lot of rabbits and squirrels in the back yard.
In late September and early October the Chrysanthemums started blooming. They were in full bloom by mid October.

By mid to late October the trees started to change to their fall colors.
Tulip Popular.
"Fruit" on the Bradford Pear.
"Burning Bush" on the back of our house.
Berries on the Crab Apple tree along our back fence.
By late October the leaves began to fall.
Black berry like seeds were on the orange Iris plants.
We enjoyed a warm fire in the fire pit in the back yard, where we roasted hot dogs and s'mores.
We are approaching our first big frost. The cotton has been picked.
The first hard "killing" frost was predicted for October 27. On October 26 we picked all the green tomatoes left in the garden (26 Pounds). I enjoyed several batches of fried green tomatoes. We used 18 pounds of the green tomatoes to make chow-chow relish with bell peppers and onions. We left over a dozen of the green tomatoes to ripen and enjoyed ripe tomatoes until early December.
By Thanksgiving most of the dead garden plants and flowers had been removed. It was now time to put up outdoor Christmas decorations.
We had a white plastic molded Nativity scene that was given to us by our neighbors on Marshall Avenue in Webster Groves, MO. We displayed it every Christmas for 38 years. The last time it was displayed was Christmas of 2005. That year we spent Christmas with our family in St. Charles. However our house on Allwright Street in Rosenberg, Texas experienced its first ever white Christmas in recorded history. We were not there to see it, but our friends, Rich and Martha Martin, who lived 50 miles north of us who did not get snow drove to our house to photograph our yard with a white Christmas and the nativity scene was in their photos. We did not display that nativity scene during the Christmas of 2006 because we had left the day before Thanksgiving to come to St. Charles County, Missouri to look for a new house. The nativity scene was crushed in the move from Texas to Missouri and we had to get rid of it. Every since we have been looking for a nice nativity to show the "Reason for the Season" in our outdoor decorations. In searching on the internet after Thanksgiving 2010, we found this Nativity available from a Knights of Columbus near Chicago. We placed our order over the internet and it was delivered the next day by UPS.
In the early morning hours of Christmas Eve it started snowing. By the time we woke up we had a good snow cover and it continued to snow much of the day. We got about 3-4 inches. We had a beautiful white Christmas the next day.