{"id":4392,"date":"2011-07-28T07:09:42","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T11:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=4392"},"modified":"2011-07-28T07:09:42","modified_gmt":"2011-07-28T11:09:42","slug":"smith-jones-and-the-lorelei-welcome-me-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=4392","title":{"rendered":"Smith, Jones, and the Lorelei Welcome Me Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was looking forward to a little vacation, ten days in Indianapolis to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday and four or five days with our three children, their spouses and, of course, our grandson Rider.\u00a0 The only thing that bothered me was being away from Smith, Jones, and the Lorelei for so long.\u00a0 Gardening can be an inconvenient hobby since it involves caring for plants.\u00a0 Living things are notorious for needing nurturing.\u00a0 Especially in the middle of summer, gardens need extra watering if the weather becomes hot and dry.\u00a0 Crops, some just beginning, need harvesting.\u00a0 You’ve got to keep plants like beans, cucumbers and tomatoes picked because that’s what keeps them producing more fruit.\u00a0 We had discussed being away for two weeks but I did not want to be gone from the gardens for so long.\u00a0 A week to ten days was about all I was willing to risk.<\/p>\n

Lucky me, lucky Smith, lucky Jones, and lucky the Lorelei that the day before we left, a soaking rain deeply and thoroughly watered everything.\u00a0 A few days before that, another deluge had done the same.\u00a0 Much of Smith’s soil is shaded, being lushly filled with plants that keep the sun from evaporating the ground’s moisture too fast.\u00a0 In the other two, thick layers of mulch help retain water in the soil.\u00a0 Humorously, I even mulched the Lorelei the morning we departed (you should have seen me tossing leaf mold from the van window as we drove away).\u00a0 I departed with a prayer and a hope that it would rain at least once, and that the gardens would be o.k.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Sadly, the week I was 600 miles away from the gardens saw the hottest weather of this year so far, and for these same dates for many years past.\u00a0\u00a0 Temps in the upper 90s and low 100s baked the Midwest and the East Coast, driving people indoors to seek cool, dark places with icy, tall drinks, and making plants put on a stiff upper lip and try, if they dared, to survive.\u00a0 I didn’t know what the heat was doing to my gardens, but I feared and imagined the worst.\u00a0\u00a0 I was anxious and a little nervous to see what shape they were in upon my return.<\/p>\n

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Corn and Cosmos Capture Comment<\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine my relief to find that nothing had died.\u00a0 Some things like tomatoes, beans and peppers, kept producing and growing, almost as if they hadn’t been abandoned during the hottest week of the year.\u00a0 Winter squash slowed down a little but still had blossoms.\u00a0 We wonder if the heat affected the fullness of corn on each ear, though we’ve been eating and enjoying it upon our return.\u00a0 The flowers at Smith were in full bloom and almost seemed better for the neglect.\u00a0 Even the eggplants at Jones were doing o.k.\u00a0 Four looked healthy (one even has a blossom!), and three others looked good enough.<\/p>\n

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Still producing, even after some high-summer neglect<\/p><\/div>\n

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Border Sunflowers Defy the Heat<\/p><\/div>\n

So yes, gardens need tending.\u00a0 And yes, life muscles on, even amid hardships like neglect or less than ideal circumstances.\u00a0 It’s easy to want a perfect garden (or a perfect life), whatever that means.\u00a0 Maybe there’s something more important than getting, or trying to get, everything right.<\/p>\n

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Laden with Roma tomatoes, even in the heat<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was looking forward to a little vacation, ten days in Indianapolis to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday and four or five days with our three children, their spouses and, of course, our grandson Rider.\u00a0 The only thing that bothered … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[69],"tags":[209,70,544,660,659,661],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4392"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4392"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4436,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4392\/revisions\/4436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}