Summer Gardening

As the summer's heat * wilts away our vegetables, and the tang in the air reminds us that fall is fast approaching, I feel like it's whipped by us so fast; there's more left to be done. 

As an aside, and reminder to myself, barrels do not make friendly homes for viney things such as melon. BAD idea. Also a bad idea is using old fence board to create false bottoms in the barrels so as not to use so much dirt. They need that dirt, but what they don't need is the fungus that the rotting fence board provides. And not to overplant tomatoes. They will turn into leggy horror-house tomato plants.

Back when I Didn't Know What I Was Doing and haphazardly tossing any ol' plant that would grow into our raised garden I've sense ended up with a hodgepodge flower garden that is mostly taken over by lavender. Not complaining one bit. Slowly but surely it's grown into a full-sized herb garden.  Non herb plants include Jasmine (that is increasing tough to wrangle without a real trellis to grow on, but I'm training it to do a little something that will look great in Spring), gladioluses (that are seeing their last days), decorative garlic (also going to be gone next year), yellow narcissus that only blooms during Spring, and of which is a delightful harbinger of the season and hydrangea.  

Now let's talk about hydrangea. It's root word would be hydra , which one knows automatically means it needs a lot of water. That's fine, but because I planted two of these in that raised bad when I Didn't Know What I Was Doing eight years ago, it is so in the wrong exposure that during the summer I have burnt blossoms and crispy leaves. It must go.

So, this morning I huffed and puffed and wrestled ONE of them out of the garden, fighting the mint (which totally made me think of the ice cream Vinny made with our fresh chocolate mint from the garden), and the stupid crab weed. It was humid and warm by 11am and completely unbearable to be outside so I didn't finish until late this evening.

In it's place, I planted sweet basil since we lost our in the frost last year and we're nearly out of what we harvested from that crop.

I would say we've been very successful in our vegetable garden this year. Countless servings of broccoli, salads, green beans, peas, tomatoes, sauce from said tomatoes, squash and zucchini, and a couple of savory melons helped cut down our grocery bill a bit.

It's kind of like a Mastercard commercial.

Seeds: $20
Dirt: $60
Water: $30
Ice cream maker: $50
A summer of home made and garden-fresh dinners and deserts? PRICELESS.

Next weekend will involve stucco, molding and paint!

*I wrote this while it was 90º in our house because we were trying to conserve energy. Note the number of typos. I suspect there is a direct correlation to the number of typos to each brain cell that died of heat stroke. My apologies.