A Midsummer’s Garden Tour

(I planted this not long after June 21, 2012 but then it remained dormant in the archives until sprouting just now.)

I have further enlarged my Garden Kingdom adding yet more acreage to the Lorelei.  I decided last fall to give up my first and smallest garden, poor Jones, no longer in my garden orbit, because the plot outside my front door, the Lorelei, has space to grow everything Jones grew plus even more.  Shedding those extra square feet, or rather creating at least 60 more square feet in the front yard, I’ve saved myself countless walks (or wasteful short drives) lugging garden tools there and  produce back again.  It is so much easier and pleasant to step right outside to work – weeding, watering, conquering yet more new ground, harvesting – and to enjoy the green and floral beauty I’ve planted there.  Let me take you on a tour right now.

I’ll start with what’s left of the spring greens, now down to a few bolting (but still, amazingly, edible) red leaf lettuce, endive, and assorted lettuce plants plus several specimens of an odd attractive Asian green called mizunah.  Some of the lettuce is going to seed (see those tallish stems with little yellow flowers?) but that’s o.k. it adds interest.  I followed the lettuce with beans, planting a couple dozen bush bean plants as we harvested the salad.  I planted beans two to three weeks apart to keep the harvests small.  I started with Dragon tongue wax beans, the first mess  of which we absolutely wolfed down last night.  So sweet!  Planting number two, a traditional green bush bean, is just starting to bloom now and the third two dozen or so broad podded Romano green beans are just now peeping out from the ground.  I love the graceful arc of a bean seed pushing through the soil, that square inch of the earth’s crust that will support and nourish it from that humble beginning to my plate.  I hope my spaced-out plantings will provide a steady supply of these sweet podded wonders.

Now, let me show you my okra, 18 lush, green, vigorous beauties, tremendous stalks that are already supplying us with fruit, amazingly sweet, green pods.  We fry them in olive oil with only a simple corn meal coating.  Never has plain tasted so fancy, common so rare, boring so fascinating.  We’re disappointed to come home of an evening and find few pods ready.

O.K., so over here are the flowers.  I transplanted this large bunch of daisies from Jones last fall and it looks like it’s going to bloom like gangbusters.  See, here, these zinnias in front of it?  I planted a smaller, multiple blooming variety, and a larger, showy variety.  One benefit a gardener has is that he only needs to spend a few bucks on seeds but can bring his wife hundreds of dollars-worth of bouquets over about five months with pretty much the same positive response as a bouquet that cost the same as six or seven packets of seeds.  I wonder if gardeners tend to have happy marriages, just for this reason alone?

Next on the tour let me show you my perky, though late planted, cucumber seedlings.  I planted one variety along a trellis after pulling the peas (thus their lateness), and the rest, “bush” (meaning short vines) varieties at the feet of my poor, under-producing broccoli.  Last year the broccoli grew tall and strong and produced pounds of green florets.  This year, we’ve barely had two or three meals worth.  I don’t understand.  Back to the cucumbers, imagine my shock, my surprise, no, let’s be honest, my unabashed jealousy of a local organic farmer who, last Saturday, was selling cucumbers from a huge pile of ’em.  How did you get them so early, I asked, sophomore that I am?  They only take 45 days to grow, he answered.  They’re one of the first to produce.  So where was I 45 days ago?  I won’t have cucumbers for a few more weeks, yet.  I planted some in Smith before these.  I hope for a lot to pickle for gifts.

Now, here, wait, c’mon over here and take a look at this.  Last summer this was my herb garden.  Now I call it Herb’s Jungle.   Everything is growing too well, chives, thyme, rosemary, volunteer cilantro, parsley, onions, and look, here, see all this green, leafy French Sorrel?  I learned recently this is a perennial.  It’ll come back year after year, a dependable addition to salads and soups and, well, I don’t know what all.  I planted some world travelers without knowing it, lemon balm and oregano just aren’t content in their own backyards.  See this bunch of lemon balm?  Here, rub this leaf and smell it.  Lemon balm for sure, but look where it is!  Almost ten feet away from the original plant over there.  And this oregano here?  It seemed last year to weaken a bit in the front of the bed, but imagine my surprise when it appeared four feet away in the back of the bed.  Maybe it didn’t like the neighbors or the visibility in the front where I had planted it (and where the folks still live), so it moved a few blocks away in plant distance to the suburbs to start a new live.

We’re almost done with the tour.  Step around this hedge and look on the other side of the walk from the okra plants to see a line of five tomato plants, extra seedlings that were ready to plant and needed to go somewhere.  (I have a hard time planting just a few tomato seeds plus I like making sure I get plenty of tomatoes.  I consider these insurance.)  I had to dig this new area up and add leaf mulch to get it ready.  I’m wondering if the hedge behind will function as a sort of living tomato cage, holding up the plants as they grow.

I am so glad you dropped by to see the garden.  Come back anytime.

About literarylee

I sling words for a living. Always have, always will. Some have been interesting and fun; most not. These days, I write the fun words early in the morning before the adults are up and make me eat my Cream of Wheat.
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