The Summer That Wasn't

For the first time in many years I had a large veggie garden this year.  Below is a picture of part of the terraced garden in front of the basement.  I was diligent, starting my seeds indoors and transplanting them early.  They started off promisingly.  In April we were blessed with unseasonably hot weather, and the garden took off.  And then summer came.

At least the calendar said it was summer.  You couldn't tell it by the weather.  We'd have a few hot days, and then the clouds would move in and the skies would turn gray.  So my garden's been growing in fits and starts.  Once, we had almost two weeks of hot weather, but then it turned cold again and everything quit growing.

And so it's been, all summer.  My corn is 5' tall, but has only begun to tassel.  I probably won't get any corn this year.  My tomatoes, on the left side of the picture, are tall and vigorous and loaded with tomatoes--all of them green.  I have 6 large tomato plants, and so far, have harvested less about a dozen ripe tomatoes, most of them cherry tomatoes.  My summer squash is barely producing, and my acorn squash is so late that it hasn't even begun to blossom yet.  My sugar snap peas are a joke.  You can see them lying anemic on the ground in front of the tomatoes My green beans, however, are doing great and I've been eating beans for weeks.  The broccoli is just starting to form heads, and my cabbage and Brussels sprouts are iffy. 

The only thing that grew immediately, and fast, was my radish crop.  I had to pull them up and toss them, as they were all wormy.  I'm never growing radishes again.  My carrots are still infants.  My Walla Walla sweets aren't even adolescents, though the jalapeno pepper plant--the only one I planted because I bought it by mistake at the nursery--is growing like crazy.  When I bought it, I thought it was a green pepper plant.  My other green peppers are sickly.  My cucumbers haven't a single blossom yet.  My parsley, on the other hand, is growing like gangbusters.

All in all, we've had an absolutely lousy growing season for veggie gardens.  I'd bought a canning and freezing book this year, anticipating canning and freezing all my produce.  Guess I'll put the book away.   I certainly won't have anything to preserve this year! 

Spring Flowers

Pat Rice posted a picture of her lovely clematis on her blog site, and lamented the fact commenters couldn't leave pictures of their own in the comments section. I agree. I would love to see other people's flower pictures! I love looking at (and smelling) flowers, so I decided to post a few of my own here. I hope you enjoy them!

The yellow picture is a perennial called Basket O' Gold that is one of the first things to bloom in the spring. It cascades over the railroad ties in my landscaping in wild abandon. Their bright yellow flowers are so cheerful. This is a hardy plant that thrives on neglect.

The purple picture is the clematis of a friend. I love how the ruffled edges of the flower remind me of the ruffle on the hem of a Regency debutante's dress.

The green picture isn't of flowers, but of bracken ferns. I liked the pattern of the ferns as well as the bright green color. In case you couldn't tell, I like doing close-ups. *g*

The single flower in the next picture is a columbine, another cheerful little perennial that is blooming in my whiskey planter tub right now.

And the last picture is yet another hardy and determined little flower, the first harbinger of spring: a primrose. These primroses have survived hail, snow, sleet, and driving rain, and don't seem adversely affected by any of it.

Oh, wait, I have one more picture to post. The pink rose is the only rose plant in my garden. I call it my Rose Stick Plant, because it is just one single stalk that sticks out of the ground and it never branches out, nor does it produce more than one single pink rose each year. Originally, it produced a single blue rose, a hybrid I bought through mail order and which I highly prized for its rarity. Then one year the goat I used to own ate the rose down below the graft point, and now all I get is the pink rose, since the stalk the blue rose was grafted to was for a pink rose. Alas.

So these are just a few of my flower pictures.

Same Rose, Different View

I guess you could say I love my camera. After taking over 100 pictures of the same rose, I ended up with perhaps 5 really good pictures. Those of you who are photographers will understand.

Here's a picture that I particularly liked. Of course, it helps that I love the color pink.

A Rose by Another Name . . .

. . . is still a rose. Or however that saying goes.

Yesterday I took over 100 pictures of a rose. That's one of the shots on the left. It's from a rose plant, one that consists of a single stem and one rose. I planted the rose in my garden years ago, and it has never grown taller than two feet. It has no branches--it's still a two-foot tall stick. And it has never produced more than one one perfect rose each year.

I love the velvet texture of roses, and their scent is divine. A rose is Mother Nature's gift to mankind.

Up Your Nose!

Gross!!! Yesterday I picked a gorgeous spray of flowers from my rhododendron. It's a rare scented rhodie with a lovely, sweet smell. As I walked to the house, I buried my nose in the flowers and took a deep sniff. And came away with a hideous black garden slug on my nose and upper lip.

I'm not a freak-out person, but that got me good! I slapped it off my lip and hurried to the house with my upper lip stuck out so as not to contaminate my lower lip. I wiped it off with tissue, then soaped up a sponge and scrubbed my nose and lip.

Ahhhhh, nature. Sometimes, I think Mother Nature is a practical joker. Have you ever had anything unexpected happen to you as a result of Mother Nature?