The Garden

Some of you may be wondering (although it's doubtful) what is happening with our garden.

Jon and I have been working hard at making sure there are no weeds, no morning glory and no unwanted insects. Sometimes, it seems futile because Mother Nature seems to have an endless supply of all of the above. We've been trying to resuscitate the lawn both front and back. The front lawn looks much better, the back looks awful. In the back, the grass was exposed to too much sun and not enough water. There is one small patch shaded by the neighbor's invasive mimosa tree that is thriving but the rest is brown and dried out. What little green there is comes from the amazingly healthy crab grass which doesn't need anything but dirt and sun to grow. It doesn't seem to matter how much crab grass we pull or whether or not we pull it from the root, crab grass thrives in our backyard.

In terms of flowers, the geraniums and the marigolds seem to be thriving. The red hot pokers and crocosmia we planted are just not coming in. The grape hyacinth bulbs which made sweet little flowers in the spring, sent up new leaves but no new flowers. The day lilies produced 8 flowers total from 3 of 10 bulbs we planted in the spring. I planted something called Gomphrena in the front which is thriving and shows no sign of slowing down.

Our herbs and vegetables - well - those are doing okay. The tomato plants look terrible and sickly, but are still making fruits. The 4 hot pepper plants are making more hot peppers than I can handle and I'm giving them away. The 3 surviving bell peppers plants of the 4 I planted, are not producing copious amounts of peppers like I hoped. I've collected two so far. The other three I'm leaving on the vine to see how big and/or sweet they get.

My arugula was attacked by some strange green worm and I no longer want to eat it. It's not growing as well as it was mid-summer. The basil plants are amazing. We could eat pesto every day if we wanted. My peppermint plants produce obscene amounts of mint. I have so much now, I'll probably have to throw it away. The swiss chard is interesting. If you wait too long, the leaves start to rust, but if you pick the leaves to early, they don't have as much flavor. But the plants have been steadily sending up leaves all summer. The thyme and parsely are delightful. The herbs are doing so well, that two weeks ago, I added cilantro, oregano and rosemary to the garden. The plants are not growing as rapidly as I hoped but in a month or so - we'll see.

The last item worth mentioning is the red cabbage. The red cabbage is growing slowly but surely. It's cool. Every day, the plant seems to curl tighter and tighter into a ball. I can't wait to see how the heads turn out.