Today's garden cocktail: The blackberry margarita. Or whatever you want to call this concoction!

So I'm overloaded with fresh blackberries. My friend Sarah keeps telling me I need to muddle them into cocktails. So I did.

Fresh picks from the garden: Blackberries, mint

From the store: limes (mine aren't ripe yet!), a nice tequila, cointreau, soda water, agave nectar

I wasn't too scientific about this, but in a shaker, muddle 4 blackberries and 4 mint leaves. Add 1/2 cup of ice, juice of one lime, a shot or two (depending on how strong you like it) of tequila, spash of cointeau and about a teaspoon of agave nectar. Shake well and strain into a glass with ice. Top off with club soda and garnish with more fresh mint.

Fabulous on the patio at the end of the work day. Thanks Sarah!

If you're like me, you might just be up to your ears in tomatoes right now! Here in Texas, we're pulling in our harvest from spring planted tomatoes. In a week or so, it will be time to start planting our fall crop of tomatoes (yes, we have TWO tomato seasons here!) The last thing you want is for any of your homegrown produce to go to waste, so be sure to have a plan for what you'll be making or how you'll preserve the harvest.

What do you do with all your tomatoes? Here are just a few things I've made lately with my abundant harvest:

Marinated tomatoes - a great way to use up the millions of cherry tomatoes you might find yourself with. I like to use rice vinegar flavored with a bit of ginger, garlic, thyme, basil, salt and pepper.

Simple tomato salad - slice up a bunch of fresh tomatoes and arrange with fresh basil from the garden. Mix up a simple dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. DIVINE!

If you feel like turning the oven on, how about a simple tomato tart? I didn't feel like making actual tart dough, so I just substituted Filo this time around. Olive oil brushed between the layers, sprinkle with some fresh mozarella, basil leaves, cover with sliced tomatoes and drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. In the oven for about 25 minutes at 400F. Sprinkle on a bit more fresh basil. DELISH!

I think that next up on the tomato menu will be green tomato pickles...enjoy!

I have to say, I've seriously enjoyed the mild spring we had here in Dallas this year. And yes, temperatures have turned hot with the onset of summer, but we've also enjoyed some unexpected and much needed rain. The veggie garden has been delivering big this year and it's all I can do to keep up with the produce!

I'm picking veggies and fruits daily: Pictured is my Saturday morning harvest. The scallop squash are getting away from me (just put up quarts and quarts of it in the freezer!). Blackberries are comming out of our ears and we'lre covered in tomatoes. But hey, I'm not complaining! It's great to be able to feed myself from the backyard.

Happy Summer Solstice everyone!

Pop quiz: What do you do when you're swimming in backyard blackberries?

DUH: Make pie!

Now, I'm not a big sweets fan, but I love fresh fruit and it seemed a crime not to do at least a bit of baking with these fantastic fresh blackberries. My bees worked so hard pollenating the heck out of the bushes this year...so I bake in honor of them!

I prefer simple pies...no thickeners or any other junk added. Just a simple homemade butter crust, berries, sugar.

It turned out so good that I think I may just have to make another one. Happy Summer!

As a certified, and certifyable, plant geek and obsessed gardener, it's often difficult for me to understand why other people choose not to garden at all. The most common explaination for the lack of a garden? "Gardening is just too much work."

Too much work...too much work? What? Yes, I work in the horticulture industry. But I've never felt my own gardening activities were "work". Gardening is my refuge, my therapy and my sanity. When I need to destress I head out to my garden. Watering my plant babies is the most soothing of "tasks". Pulling weeds is strangely gratifying. Feeling my toes and fingers in the soil brings me back to a much needed earthly connection. AND I don't have to talk to anyone. ANYONE. Sure, after a day spent turning soil, planting, weeding and pruning, my muscles might be a bit sore. But does that make it work? No way! I actually feel sorry for folks that have never really gardened because they assume it's just too much work.

So I thought I'd ask some of my fellow professionals in the business to tell me why they don't feel like gardening is work to them.

First up? Helen Yoast of "Gardening with Confidence". Helen says " I garden one day a week, on Sundays. It is my time to connect with the plants, wildlife, and nature. I grow a dense half acre habitat that is the anticipation of my week. My kids and husband know exactly where to find me.

1/2 an acre sounds like a lot of garden to maintain, eh? Doesn't sound like Helen considers it work, but rather a refuge. This is the big secret those of us hortiholics are here to reveal: Gardening isn't work. Gardening is discovery, inspiration, connection, beauty, rewarding and good for you. You don't even need to have 1/2 an acre to garden. You can garden in a few planters on a balcony or patio. Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting more quotes from hort-heads about what gardening means to them.

So, why is gardening not too much work for you?

So, it's going to be 90 °F all weekend in Dallas y'all. Summer is right on schedule! If you planted your tomatoes on time and haven't been over-fertilizing through spring, you should be seeing baby fruits on the plants now. That means it's time to start a regular feeding regimen.

When you continually fertilize tomato plants through spring, before they've set fruit, you can often end up with a whole lotta plant, but no tomatoes. Too much Nitrogen prior to flowering and fruit set will encourge plants to keep putting their energy into more green leafy growth, instead of into flowers and fruit production. That might be all fine and well in a more mild climate, but here in Texas you have to get plants flowering and setting fruit before the summer heat sets in. If you plant too late or over-fertilize in spring, plants can go into heat-delay and you get little to no harvest.

Best practice is to amend your soil with organic compost and composted manure at the beginning of the season and work in a dry organic fertilizer at time of planting. Then wait to feed again until plants start to set fruit.

Once baby fruit is about 1/4 it's mature size, start feeding your tomato plants with an organic tomato or vegetable fertilizer about every other week. That's a side-dressing of dry fertilizer. If you're using liquid feed, such as Hasta Gro, apply it to the roots and foliage weekly. Apply and mix per the application rates on the package.

Cherry tomatoes will start to hit harvest time in mid- to late-May with slicers typically ready to pick in mid-June. Want to start your fall tomato transplants from seed? Do it now! Plant into the garden in late-June through early July.

I can't count the number of times I've been asked this question lately. My answer will always be the same: No.

There's a reason that I didn't sell straight run chicks when I ran North Haven Gardens. We worked really hard to provide sexed females only for sale at the garden center. Why? Well, because roosters are outlawed in Dallas. Regardless of how you feel about the necessity of that ordinance, it's current law.

What happens when you buy straight run baby chicks? Well, chances are you'll get 50% males, 50% females. It's just the law of nature. So when you buy straight run chicks, and live in an area that doesn't allow roosters, you should have a plan for how you're going to deal with the roosters once they mature. And no, that plan does not include me (or anyone else) finding a home for them for you. Believe me, I've had an incredibly hard time finding just one home for a rooster that was abandoned at the garden center during my tenure. I spent 9 months raising him to maturity (silkies take a long time to reach sexual maturity) only to be bonded with him by the time he started crowing. Took me months to find just that one home to take my sweet Rico. If you don't want to bond with roosters, don't buy straight run chicks. Again, I say "thanks a lot" to the jerk that dumped him and his siblings.

Incubating new chicks for your kid's class is really cute, right? But guess what? You're going to get 50% males. So again, what's your action plan for dealing with them once they mature? If you live in an area that doesn't restrict roosters, then great! But if they're outlawed, where will they go?

Keeping backyard livestock means taking full responsibility for the animals. So if you go ahead and buy straight run chicks, then you're most likely going to have to "dispatch" the males once they show themselves. Learn how to use a sharp hatchet or a stiff broom handle. Think I'm being mean? Well, then you haven't kept backyard livestock before. Sometimes your birds become very sick, or egg bound, or injured...the most humane thing you can do is put them down in some of those situations. So you'd better learn how to do so, unless you want to pay a vet $200 to stick a needle in their heart to put them down (that's more stressful and painful for the bird).

Go ahead and peruse the boards of the local backyard poultry group to see how many of those "free rooster" postings get responded to. If you're really lucky, you might be able to find someone outside of town to take them. If so, great! But the chances are high your rooster will be going right into their soup pot. Why? Because really, how many roosters can one person keep? Not many. One rooster per flock...two if they just so happen to sort of get along. Production farms can't take your birds, because there are strict bio-security laws that apply to commercial operations. So you can tell yourself you've saved them from the hatchet, but you may just be passing the buck to someone else.

Back to that ordinance: Don't agree with it? Work with the city to change it if you feel strongly about it. Believe me, I did my share of haggling with the city to get the whole backyard chicken thing rolling. But defying the ordinance and creating a "rooster problem" in Dallas only puts the entire practice of backyard livestock in peril - why give the naysayers an excuse to complain?

There are many places to purchase sexed chicks. Local feed stores should and typically do distinguish between sexed and straight run chicks. If they don't, you should assume they are straight run. Then run.

When you're a gardener, every day that makes up the transition from winter to spring is like having a birthday. We can't wait to hit the garden each day to discover emerging bulbs, leaves and blooms. Each new bloom sends the endorphins rushing through our system. Seriously...plants are like a good dose of crack to us plant addicts. I have no plans to kick my habit any time soon. Or ever.

So what's blooming? Now that the final tulips are exiting stage right, my garden will transition over from what has been a predominance of white flowers to purple. Everything is coming into bloom a bit late this year due to the extended cool temps.

The white bearded iris are always the first to bloom in my garden and around town. They are always my first official signal that spring has arrived. These beauties will soon be followed by purples and blues.

The butterflies should be showing up in no time now that the Scabiosa (pincushion flower) is peaking out.

These are the best smelling blooms around! Texas mountain laurel is one of my absolute favorite plants. This is the first time this young plant in my garden has bloomed!

'Joe Woodard' rose is just peachy, and the first to crack a bloom this spring. I love this tidy compact bloomer.

Savia 'May Night' is kicking into gear with some stunning electric purple blooms. The cool temperatures are really amping up the flower colors this spring.

All the crossvine has expoded into flower in just the last couple of days. Gorgeous! There's lot's more going on in the garden, but I'll save some for later. What's blooming in your little patch of happiness?