A visit to my Dad's in Maine

Today, the hubby and I drove up to Maine to visit with my dad. It was also my brother's day off, so I was able to visit with him, my sister and law and my nephew that I don't see very much. It helps that my brother lives right next door to my dad.

My dad is my go to guy for all plants that grow. He has been growing and designing gardens since he was in 6th grade. He went to college for it and is a wealth of knowledge. Growing up, we always had a big beautiful garden. Now I mostly keep a veggie garden (as if you didn't know hehe), but I have a couple of flower gardens by dad. He lives in an apartment building, so he doesn't have a big garden there, but he does have a little outside area that he spends a lot of time at when it is beautiful out, like today.

You can see some of his tomato plants to the right. All around this little corner, he has planters and pots full of flowers and other plants. I love the black eyed susans.

He does have a big veggie garden however. It is just not at his home. A little drive down the street and around the corner brings you to the towns organic community garden. It is a really big garden.

The garden has many lots so that many people can garden here. Some really take care in what they do and it shows, Other's just think that they can put some seeds in the ground and put a little water on it and that is it.

Because it is a organic garden, no pesticides or other means to get rid of bugs or pests are allowed. They are encouraged to use more natural means to lure the "bad" bugs away. There are sun flowers all over the garden to help control the Japanese beetle population. Lots of the bean plants still got ravaged by these annoying bugs, but the sun flowers sure are working as well.

Dad watering his plot. he actually has two plots. Every year he mixes the dead plants into the soil to decompose and make wonderful compost for the following years veggies.

He is growing some zebra tomatoes here. That's dad watering his garden.

Some of his rainbow Swiss chard. I have never had it before, so no idea how it is. Lots of people sell this stuff at our farmers market though.

Beautiful Gladiolas. These were growing at the plot next to dads. The gentleman who was growing these showed up right as we were leaving. He also gave dad a bunch of cucumbers.

Of course I couldn't leave without taking some pictures of the sunflowers that were all around the garden. I just love their colors. The just scream happy to me.

After spending some time at the garden, we drove to a little store and grabbed some sandwiches and headed to Portland to eat next to the water. I didn't get any pictures because I was busy eating and talking and catching up with dad.

It was a long day, but it was nice to see dad and to get him out of the house, even if it was for just a little while.