Amost August: Still Weird

Luna moth above the kitchen door. Yes, my house is stained black. On purpose.

Almost  August. Garden update. State of the world – hmpf, we’ll see.

So the green beans have finally started producing, and the yellow beans are barely starting, but coming. Peas are done except for a few foolish individual vines still growing green and producing flowers way up the vine, while being yellow and dried up below. I left them because, well, snacking when I’m doing other stuff in the garden.

Fava beans this year just plain suck (technical term). So do the winter squashes and pumpkins, which are yellowish and whiney in their new field beds between the peach trees. There are two volunteers just outside the compost bins, however – planted by some critter who dragged the guts out and left it – that look lush and lovely. No flowers yet.

The corn experiment is not a great one. A few stalks – about mid-thigh high, which for you non-gardeners, is a pitiful height, they should be towering over my head by now and all tasseling – have tasseled. I blame it on the water situation, but who knows? Everything is weird this year. A friend just started picking peas – his green beans came in before the peas. Go figure.

The heron decided to spend the summer on the wart.

One of the tomato plants that had disappeared has reappeared, and no, I can’t explain that. The three plants that arrived too soon this spring that I had to up-pot and up-pot and move from sun patch to sun patch for weeks, are the only ones a normal size, and from one I’ve plucked three ripe tomatoes – so thank you for that monumentally stupid shipping date, mail-order nursery.  The other tomato plants are mostly… let’s say struggling. They might produce a little fruit, but I don’t have much hope for the six that are still only 18 inches high. Unless we have a wicked long, warm fall, that is.

Replanted carrots have germinated and need thinning; replanted beets not so much. Basil that didn’t germinate and didn’t germinate finally did after a recent rain; ditto my scarlet runner beans, which I have little hope for this year. Okra’s short, but seems relatively happy. No morning glory has done much more than sprout. We have webworm in the cherry and pear tree, and in some of the blueberries. The amaranth is getting there, slowly. Of all the five entire packages of sunflower seed I planted this year, about six plants actually germinated, and they’re 4-6 inches tall. The volunteers from spilled seed from  last year’s planting have taken over one bed, and while they aren’t as tall as they should be, they are blooming. And pretty. And completely in the way.

Sage in bloom, Johnny Jump Ups helping.

For the first time in years I planted a cucumber plant in the garden instead of in a pot, and it’s clearly much happier that way. We’ve had a few nice cukes, and the plant doesn’t whine anywhere near as much as its potted predecessors did. Summer savory is everywhere, making little bushes. I love summer savory, it’s better even than basil on sliced tomatoes. 

One small patch of nigella seed (Love in a Mist) has grown and is flowering; the cosmos and calendula and bachelor’s buttons and Love Lies Bleeding are struggling, and they’re usually hale and hearty.  Bleeding Heart was lovely, earlier, and Johnny-Jump-Ups and creeping dianthus have bloomed, been pulled or trimmed, and are starting again. Three daffodils, which were late blooming, are still greenly vigorous; and no, I can’t explain that, either.

Wildflowers are fine, and the fields are full of blooming thyme, so have a purple haze to them; the heather in front of the house is also in full bloom. Lilies are doing well enough, but Iris weren’t as happy as usual, and poppies went by quickly, which the Bee Balm is also doing. My one zucchini plant isn’t really producing much; the one summer squash is doing better. Raspberries, surprising for such a dry year, were prolific and tasty and I’ve never seen them so loaded with berries; blueberries are also very loaded and ripening well. Near the blueberries, there’s a nest of hatchlings and two angry parents in the birdhouse on the arch – we get scolded regularly if they feel they can take time between the exhausting trips to feed their shouting offspring. 

Some gorgeous golden butterflies covered the Bee Balm one day.

Buzzy Boy’s missing his scarlet runner beans, but I keep his feeders topped up well, and he’s taken to speeding right over my head through the wart tent any time I’m out there trying to snap beans or do some other chore. He’s chased me in from the garden at dusk a few times, too, but this year seems to be the year of really fast, shoulder and head fly-bys. Over, and over, and over again. I love Buzzy, but he can be fairly intimidating when he wants to be.

Gardens are weird, every year, but this year the garden’s even weirder than usual. Sort of like life.  And the freaks in government who keep getting weirder and weirder. 

But now it’s time to go pick more green beans to store in the freezer for winter. About mid-January, I’ll be glad of them. Today – not so much!

 

Above photos: the Polish poet witch up the hill, through the woods, asked a local artisan to make her a Little Library, which she installed near her pond for neighbors to enjoy.

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com, 31 July 2020

All photos Deb Marshall