Tuesday.  Thought I would post some pictures of the gardens.  The first one up shows my two rosemary and one of the scented geraniums.  Poor little geranium is recovering from a rough shipping.  It arrived nearly upside down in its pot.  As you can see from this photo and the next, we use our patio chairs as plant stands.  It is much too hot to sit outside during the heat of summer and we don't hove much shade which wouldn't moderate the temperature much if we had it.

 My sweet basil and purple basil have been trying to bolt but I have been clipping the blossoms before they can open.  The flowering plant is one of the two geraniums that came through shipping well.  The geraniums are a new hybrid from Burpee called "Angel's perfume" and it does smell very nice.

Here is an over view of one side of the patio.  Another geranium at the bottom and (going up) Patio Princess tomatoes, Blue Lake pole beans running up the trellis, strawberry (that white blob is the pot) with lemon basil, gold leaf lemon thyme and pepper mint.  This is a new stack arrangement that, for the moment is working very well.  It packs as much growing space into as small a space as possible while allowing me easy access to all the containers.  The whole area of the patio is about 16'X20' with the storage shed, air conditioner, trash tote, and compost bin taking up about a quarter of that space.

This is the other side of the stack shown in the last photo.  I have peppers (albino bullnose and corno di toro rosso) in the two lowest buckets.  The strawberry in the white pot is in an over the fence style hanger hanging off the uppermost pot that contains the gold leaf lemon thyme.  That works well with a block of wood as a spacer.  The blue container has borage, stevia and sage.

 The northwest corner.  My beard-tongue foxglove by itself for the time being.  A mystery plant against the fence, lemon balm and cypress vine in the long container straddling the two large containers and strawberries, portulaca, summer savory and bee balm in the pink tub.  Why "mystery?"  Well I had hibiscus in that space last year.  A real beauty with big purple blossoms.  It didn't survive our nasty winter.  Damn and blast.  Instead this plant came up and I have no idea what it is.  For now it will stay there while I try to identify it.  I know I didn't plant it.  Probably come in on the wind or birds.

 North Center.  We picked up the little bird bath with the intention of putting it in the container but we couldn't find a good way to stabilize it.  So it is in front on the cement.  Rose, hyssop and petunias in the left container and a couple of dwarf sunflowers in the bucket by the bird bath.  Then the new planter stack I bought on impulse over the weekend.  I haven't filled it fully just yet.  I do have transplanted portulaca into two of the cells.

 View from the other side along the path through the stacks.  Black pot to the left has melons coming up nicely which I will train up the trellis.  Lower bucket on that side has lipstick peppers in it.  And the bucket on the other side has yellow crook-neck squash planted.  I saw seedlings poking through the soil there.  Like the melons and beans these will be trained up the trellis.

 East side.  Martino's Roma tomato, shiso and lavender.  Shiso is a new plant for me this year.  Thought it might be an interesting addition.  I have more plants coming up in the mini greenhouse.  Where I will put them I have no idea.

The strawberry tower I constructed in the corner.  I put in a lot of new plans this year because most of last year's plants didn't survive.  The only survivors are in the top.  Below I have a mix of Loran and Tristan varieties.  The Tristan caught my eye because it has red flowers.  I didn't know strawberries could have red blossoms.  We have had a handful of berries so far.  They make a nice treat right out of the garden.

I put the rest of the strawberry plants in the long planter on the table.  In front--a bird feeder.  Why there you wonder.  Well as you can see birds are very messy eaters.  They scatter more seeds than they actually eat.  I can sweep up the seed, sift out the dirt and put it back into the feeder.  And I don't get as much in my planters.  As it is I will spend far more time weeding than I have in the past.  But we do like watching the birds.

And this is what I put in the bird feeders old place.  It is a spiral with space for three small pots.

That is the tour for now.