How Does Your Garden Grow?
As temperatures soar here, I find myself diligently watering the front and back gardens morning and night. The one downfall of having all those huge shrubs removed - now I need to water my flowers and plants, and weed the garden.The overgrown shrubs that were here never needed any such care, but then, they looked overgrown and uncared for, too. Even with majorly trimming them back last year, they couldn't be trimmed back far enough. So now I have lovely rose bushes and other flowers, that require watering, and the beds need to be weeded at least once a week.
While in the back garden, where I've planted a half-assed vegetable garden, I noted that one of the three zucchini plants Mom started for me has a small zucchini on it. W00t! I love zucchini and frequently use it in place of cucumber, as I'm not so fond of it. Also, zoodles are one of my favourite dishes.
I call it my half-assed garden as I got started really late, and only planted two tomato plants and 3 zucchini plants. I had thought of planting green beans (or maybe yellow, as I really love those), but as the bushes were pulled out late and the weather turned cold and wet, I didn't get around to it in time. And I just wasn't into it.
Next year, I'll start earlier, get a bunch of top soil, and plant some salad fixings. At my farm up north, I had a tremendous veggie garden, and despite the heat, grew amazing lettuce. It was awesome to go out and pick the lettuce, tomatoes, green onion, radishes, etc and be able to have a home-grown salad every day. Maybe next year I'll get my act together.
One of my tomato plants this year has a tomato that should be ready to pick tomorrow. I probably could have picked it today, but thought I'd give it one more day. Yay! My first homegrown tomato of the year. My mouth is already watering anticipating it's warm juiciness, fresh off the vine.
Tomorrow, very early, like maybe at 4:30am, I'm going out for my bike ride before it gets to darn hot. Today, the only time I went outside was to return library books and pick up some fresh fruit at the market. That's the only down-side of living here - all the wonderful fruit is ready at the same time. Blueberries, peaches, raspberries, strawberries, nectarines, plums, cherries, apricots - all ripe and ready right now. I love all those fruits, but simply can't eat that much in a week.
Yellow beans are a favourite vegetable of mine, and I picked some up today and then was given some fresh beans from my neighbour's garden as he's grown too many. I absolutely love this friendly neighbourhood and great community. What a difference from my previous abode.
So now I have enough food to last me into next week and I just hope I can get motivated to cook it, as right now, with it being as hot as it is, I don't feel like eating, never mind cooking.
Comments (17)
Planting lots of flowers which I grew from seed and I'm a bit worried when we're going on holidays - setting up the garden completely new is a lot of work and I don't want to see the flowers dying. Neighbours on both sides said that they will water when we're gone, so hopefully the majority of plants will survive.
Enjoy your garden - if you want to cut down on weeding, you could put bark mulch around your flowers. I will wait until the perennials are a big bigger and get a trailerload.
Nothing beats growing your own veg.
Here in Wisconsin, a lot of veggies and fruits are in season! Yesterday got some of the tastiest and sweetest corn I have ever had! It was beyond delicious!
My favorite time of the year!
Re: the dead bee. That fascinated me, to see that bee on the dead flower, and it preserved as if it was still alive. I'm amazed that it even caught my eye, as there was so much other live stuff around there.