A Garden Update

You may be wondering why there was a ten day gap in posts and now two in a row. The reason is the heat and the garden. We are experiencing a heat wave and it promises to continue through Friday or maybe even longer. Those who know me are aware that I'm not a fan of hot weather, preferring our usual summer fog. Still it's nice for the kids recently out of school to have weather where they can swim in the ocean or a neighborhood pool. Maybe that's what I should try! In general when it's too hot I just hunker down and nap or read. Anything else sounds like too much work, including cooking and baking.

Before the heat descended, I spent a glorious amount of time in the garden, at last. Weeds that had been sitting there reminding me of my tardiness were pulled and went into the green can. Pots of used soil that should have been cleaned up last fall were finally cleared of old soil and given a good scrub before new soil was added. Sweetie helped with the weeding and with checking out the drip system for watering a large section of the garden. There is still some hand-watering needed, but not much.

With the addition of bags and bags of bark mulch, the garden was finally ready for me to place the pots and add the seedlings that had gotten root bound waiting for me to get into the garden, to rig up the netting for the cucumbers and beans to climb up, to plant the bean seeds in the pots. Trellises were placed for the late sweet peas and for the morning glories to climb. It is so uplifting to see things fall into place.

zucchini, delicata squash, morning glories, roses, netting for cucumbers

Along the front walk there are lovely mixtures of wild flowers blooming. I had planted those seeds in late winter. This morning I spotted a hummingbird enjoying the flight from flower to flower. The mystery element were the large poppies, but they bloomed this morning and are a pretty pink that goes well with the other wild flowers in bloom there.

I did plant a pumpkin plant,

 two zucchini plants and a couple of delicata squash plants in early spring in the big planter box. They are thriving, along with a couple of sunflowers, some nasturtium, and the morning glories that self-seeded last fall. Around the planter are the love-in-a mist (nigella) that also self-seeded.

There are a couple of pots with tomatoes that went in at the same time, so we might at least get cherry tomatoes by July. The strawberry plants that have been on a drip system for a while are producing sweet red berries.

Of course about 20-30 minutes per day is spent watering the things with no drip, including a lily that should bloom in July, some pretty Sweet Williams and nice Iceland poppies.

At the same time that I was enjoying being in the garden, I made a lovely set of whole-wheat walnut breads. I'll post about that the next time.

XO, Elle