How Does Your Garden Grow?
This has been an ideal year for the garden. Plenty of snow in the winter deep watered the fruit trees and hostas. We are finally reaping our rewards in terms of the height and breadth of the fruit trees in the back yard. The writer has built a few more raised planters and the tomatoes are nearly 3 feet high now. There are 3 varieties this year, one is called "Mr Stripey", looks like an artistic fruit/vegetable - we'll see how it tastes. Of course there are roma tomatoes and some beefsteak/larger variety to go with the arugula and fresh soft cheese sandwiches in late July. Funny how looking back at summer while growing up in New Jersey I remember the tomatoes being the best part of the end of the day. A neighbor to the left of our house on Franklin Place would grab a beefsteak tomato perfectly ripened to dark red, firm to the touch and bite into it like an over ripe peach that would send rivers of juice down chins and arms to elbows! Salt and freshly ground pepper, mayonnaise, vinegar, whatever you wanted. It was a meal in itself!
Then of course there are the flowers. This year brought early roses - all the tea scented delicate and most multi blooming stems worth. The front yard has lambs ear pushing out its delicate purple blooms and the lavender already shooting stems upward
from last years woody base. It is heaven. The round garden in the middle of the front yard is host to a mixed salad type of foilage and flower every year. Last year the lambs ear produced a phallic like stem that reached nearly five feet high. I don't use anything but bone meal in the fall and some organic food in the spring so I was amazed at the height it had grown. This year was something different. Tuilips, agapanthus, darwin sized blooms on something that looked like an ironed out parot tulip. So fast it filled in the whole of the circle with the birds playing in the bird bath in the center. Soon enough they started to die back and it was time to fill in until the lambs ear, lavendare, sage and lemon balm filled the spaces inbetween. I added pansies in blues and periwinkle, something that looked like a miniature foxglove and the bee balm that grew without aid of being planted (gotta love the variety the birds bring) has returned and takes nearly a sixth of the circle. The holly hocks will be quite tall this year they are already reaching the three foot level and the stalks are thick and strong. The bleeding heart I wrote about earlier are still clammering to take over the corner of the brightest side of the front porch. Go figure! A few iris show their heads, one that was a deep deep purple/black had 4 blooms on one stem. There are signs of the gladiolas that didn't bloom last year have returned and are showing some thickening around the base a good indication that blooms will appear in July and August.
The weather rolls from hot and humid to rainy and humid to cool and yes - - - humid. The amount of growth on the morning glories can be measured in half feet instead of inches. Soon the back fence will be completely green. With all the physical pain that the writer and I live with daily it is sheer pleasure to see the blooms and growth - not so much the lawn that needs mowing twice a week, but still - nature does its best to cheer us when we are slowed down from the pain.
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