July 28, 2020

Not much happening around here except for the everyday things which make me contented, the necessary jobs involved in meal making, keeping house, taking care of animals, and apart from a pandemic, a really great summer with lots of heat and almost the right amount of rain.

I laid out two soaker hoses in my vegetable garden, which, once again, is one of the best gardens I've had in years. It then rained overnight which gives much better results than any hose watering.  Maybe the success of this garden is about starting a lot of my plants from seed indoors, as well as having fresh seeds (ordered online during the thick of the pandemic). Or it could be that most of my completely full compost container got worked into the soil and it is a lovely, hot, humid summer.

I always love to look at the intricacies of plants. I don't have a fancy camera (in fact, it's just my phone) and I am finding that the new blogger does not provide crisp, vibrant images anymore. My header photo, for example is much brighter than you see here. Does anyone else find that to be the case?

Regardless, my peas are climbing and have little pods and beautiful white flowers with delicate curly-cue vines.

My three pumpkin plants (yes, I am aware that my garden is too small to house three pumpkin plants plus everything else, but all three germinated. What could I do??) are taking over the world and as the vines reach the edge of the garden, I redirect and let them continue to wind their way through onions, carrots, and beans.

The blossoms are so pretty. (Notice the squash beetle? Bastards.)

I always grow leaf lettuce, rather than head lettuce. This is almost too pretty to eat. 

I grew dill with the intention of making dill pickles, but we all know the story of my cucumbers, so now I just pull a bit off and squish it in my fingers to smell it. Heavenly!

Here's another colourful, although likely not edible plant. I did not plant flowers in my urns, as I was too late and all the good stuff had been scooped up by isolated, bored people. This coleus was a great alternative, grown by an independent green house owner.

Please imagine it to be more vivid than the photo is showing. It really is fabulous.

Blooming right now is my Russian sage, a perennial that is both big and little at the same time. The plants themselves take up quite a bit of space, but the flowers are small and understated, providing a "wash of purple" from a distance. I apologize for the out of focus one in the foreground. (No reading glasses at the time).

My header photo shows Russian Sage with Black Eyed Susan - a nice colour contrast.

Lastly, as anyone with "livestock" can tell you, sometimes something gets sick and dies. One of my brown hens was looking sick (purple-ish comb, listless, standing apart from others) and I likely isolated her too late, but I put her in a separate cage, gave her antibiotics in her water (and also put them in the water of the rest of the little flock), and a variety of food that she might like, but it was not to be. Now this morning, I saw another one had a floppy, although still red, comb and was starting to take that hunched - over stance that chicken owners are familiar with, so I managed to grab her and put her in the now disinfected cage with fresh antibiotic water and placed her in the shade, well away from the chicken coop. 

We shall see. I am preparing myself to lose a few more. It happens.

July 21st 2020

It was a very good day. I accomplished a lot. It's funny that I always feel it's a better day if I get stuff done, check things off a list, have a sense of good tiredness. Others may think it's a good day if they do very little, rest and relax. Everyone's different.

Husband had been finishing a home project involving our front hall. All the messy, dust producing work is totally done, with just paint touch up left, so I got to work cleaning up the dust in the house. Naturally, that led to other cleaning because one thing leads to another... but it felt good to pull furniture out, really see how bad it was behind things, and then give it a good cleaning. I know, I know, lots of people did that during their isolation, shut down, lock down time, but I didn't. I was still working from home with two other people working / studying from home. 

After I had a bit of lunch, I tackled the great outdoors. My Christmas present trimmer (whipper snipper, weed eater, whatever you call it) got refueled and I proceeded to cut the long grass along the rail fence, by the house, by the pool fence, by the chicken coop... My arm was shaking by the time I was done. Oh but what a joy to use a gas powered trimmer instead of the battery powered one I was using for years. I didn't have to stop with a job half done while the batteries recharged.

I've been doing really well "keeping ahead" of the weeds in my vegetable garden and this is one of the best years so far. 

For the past two years I have had hardly any success with tomatoes due to blight and just very little growth. This year is a whole different experience. We had very heavy rains and wind a day or so ago and although I had caged my tomatoes, they still tipped over. I ended up staking them now. The picture may not really show it, but they are lovely and big and healthy. I grew them from seed that I purchased through Mackenzie Seeds. 

My pumpkins are crawling through everything else and have had lots of blossoms. I love growing pumpkins but haven't done so for years. All of this is due to digging out all of my strawberries last year. Now I have room for lots more vegetables. Ignore the weeds in amongst the beets and carrots. If I pull them out, that will disturb the roots of those vegetables, so they can all grow merrily together.

I can't seem to get my words lined up along the left-hand side without some problems, so if the next bit looks odd, that's why. I had to replant quite a few things: beans, peas, cucumbers (x4), but everything is great now, except I gave up entirely on the cucumbers and have a couple growing in big yogurt containers. I may stick them in the ground when they look like they can handle themselves.

Here are two more tomato plants that I didn't have room for, so I stuck them in a big planter on the porch. They grew so much, I put a tomato cage in there with them. For interest sake, I am growing Big Beef and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes.

The following flower pictures are what is in bloom at the moment, all glorious "hot" colours with echinacea, daylilies, crocosmia, and trumpet vine. 

Oh dear - that's rather out of focus, isn't it? That's the problem with looking at your little phone screen without your reading glasses on!

This is daughter's very first car of her own, purchased with her own money (which wasn't much considering she's been a university student for a while). Husband is a handy guy, never afraid to tackle anything: electrical, plumbing, construction, pool-making, and mechanics and body work. (Not big on cooking, however) He is just starting to take care of the rusted sill plates (do I even have that right?). Everything else is done for it to be certified, this is the last thing that needs finishing. There's always a project going on!

I've been doing some reading. I really enjoyed Magpie Murders written by the same author as Midsomer Murders. At the Edge of the Orchard was a bit of historical fiction - not bad. I've read Ann Granger before, so I knew Rooted in Evil would be another good mystery. I tried to start Brett's Death on the Downs, but it was so unnecessarily wordy that I just couldn't stomach much past the first chapter. I wanted to shout, "Just say it!!" All of these books were ordered online through my local library's website. Now I have to think about what I want to read next.

That's it for today - now I shall read your blogs!

Still a Few Flowers in this Crunchy Summer

I don't water my perennial beds, just my small vegetable garden. We have been fortunate enough to have a little bit of rain (enough to fill my buckets under my downspouts, but not more). Despite these arid conditions, I do have a few things which have managed to bloom. Perhaps you have also had these same blooms in your gardens.

Delphiniums which usually get beaten down by the rain have stood tall for a greater length of time this July.

I love how iridescent they are. They remind me of carnival glass.

This dark wine, almost "black" daylily is one of my favourites. I don't get many blooms from it, but it is thick and meaty, unlike my other rather spindly daylilies.

Very dependable snowball bush which just seems to thrive on either neglect, or severe cutting back. It doesn't wilt like my little decorative pink hydrangeas.

My trumpet vine took forever to become established enough to bloom. This year it is doing very well and the hummingbirds are enjoying it. It is difficult to tell from the picture, but it is covering a wooden arbour attached to rail fences.

I'm not totally certain what this flower is, some sort of coreopsis, I think. It is tall and big and doing very well. I don't even remember its origins, whether I purchased it as a plant from a garden center, or whether it was gifted to me from someone's home garden. Regardless, it provides nice, bright colour right now.

My hollyhocks have been dwindling over the years. I had so many that were gorgeous dark pinks, light pinks, and a whole variety of other colours. Now many of them are washed out shades and too solitary to make much of an impact. I'm considering whether I should renew my supplies, or do away with them altogether.

You simply cannot go wrong with limelight hydrangeas. It would be the one I would recommend to anyone in any setting.

A traditional daylily. I have others which are more orange in colour, as well as a pure lemon yellow. Even though daylilies tend to be pretty bomb proof, mine are suffering in this drought and aren't putting on much of a show.

Of course, I don't feature my sad, dry, lifeless plants, or the strangulating bind weed which threatens to take them down, or the grasses that grow amongst all of them. I did pick a cucumber this morning and I have eaten three tiny tomatoes - candyland is what that variety is called- smaller than cherry tomatoes.

How doth your gardens grow?