Season of Change

A couple of days ago my position at work was eliminated.  I knew it was coming months ago.  I have had a plan in place to make the transition as painless as I possibly can for a long time now.  I have lined up a part time job that starts this weekend and will become full time in the near future.  It seems I've managed to keep my affairs in order.

Still, it stings a bit to be told you're no longer needed in a job you've done, and done well, for the last 16 years.  So I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself these last weeks and especially the last couple of days.  I admit to spending a bit of time not quite certain what I ought to be doing consumed with an empty, nagging feeling that I've forgotten...something.

It seems I've always had something to do.

It's not that I don't have anything to do.  Perish the thought!  It's just that my routine is disrupted.  The things I had to do before are no longer on my to-do list.  Things like getting up at the crack o' dawn to drive an hour and a half to work.  Or like packing my lunch the night before and shopping for special lunch items that travel well and making sure I have something clean to wear to the office.  It's really a pretty long list.  I don't really miss that part so much.

No, the things I have to do now are simpler.  Take out the trash.  Wash the dishes.  Cook some dinner.  Mow the lawn.  Putter in the garden.

Ah!  The garden.  Now there's a change of scenery.  So much happens so quickly in the short time we have our growing season here in the heartland. 

I took some pictures.

The tomatoes are crazy tall.

New to my garden plot this year is the Indigo Rose tomato.  A friend at the aforementioned job grew them last year and gave me a few to try. They were cute and tasty.  These are still green, but when they're ripe, the bottom of the fruits will be red and the top will stay purple.

Just today I got my very first cherry tomato of the season.  I don't have a picture of that tomato because it didn't make it 3 feet away from the plant before I chowed it down.  But here are some its kin:

Right next to the tomatoes, whether I wanted it there or not, is a massive row of volunteer dill plants that are every bit as tall as the tomatoes.  They even came up in a bucket of dirt I had nearby.

Speaking of volunteers, I have a few in the garden this year other than the dill. Here are the petunias:

 The petunias I plant on purpose never look that good!  

There are, of course, sunflowers:

And these brown-eyed susans and catmint:

 And let's not forget this onion that I missed pulling last summer:

Onion flowers are quite pretty, aren't they?

The garden is really going well in spite of the record amounts of rain we've had this year.  Lots of the local farmers had to abandon hope of planting anything at all in some of their soggy fields.  I'm fortunate in that I garden pretty much exclusively in raised beds.  Minor flooding really isn't an issue.

After harvesting most of the potatoes and the last of the peas last weekend, I decided to plant some late crops.  I put in these pole beans where the peas just finished up:

Beans are almost instant gratification seeds since they germinate so quickly.  These yellow summer squash seedlings are coming up right where I dug the potatoes.  They come up pretty quickly, too.

The cucumbers are not really a late crop for me, I just got them planted later than usual.  I heard if you delay planting until after June first or so, the plants will do better and be more resistant to damage from insects.  I hope so.  Those cucumber beetles are a menace.

These are a bush variety that I've never grown before.  The plants are still pretty small and I'm not sure how big they'll get in the end.  Looking forward to cucumbers soon.

This year I was fortunate enough to harvest an adequate amount of black raspberries to make a whole pint jar of jam and still have enough fresh berries to snack on while I did the picking.  Here's the plant with the spent canes removed.  Those are the new canes that will bear next year.  I learned recently that if you let the ends of those canes get so much as a whiff of the soil, they'll set roots and start a new plant.  I have room for another bush, so I might just do that if I can get the plant to go where I want it to go.

The large daylillies in the front garden are going gangbusters this year. They look especially nice with the native bee balm right beside:

Today's blog closes with a parting shot of my latest garden toy.  Yep, that's right.  It's a tractor seat on wheels.  Now I can sit and pick tomatoes in comfort and style.  Just don't look when I try to scoot around the beds on that thing.  It's not a pretty sight.

Have a good one!

360 Degree July Garden Tour--2013 Edition

Phew!  Still hot! Not 360 degrees, but 97 is pretty warm. Yesterday was a scorcher!  So I spent my day indoors looking at and editing a whole slew of pictures I took of the garden inhabitants over the last week or so.  Let's start in the back garden where I have the vegetables growing.

Okay, so these aren't technically growing anymore.  Lying here on the edges of my Top Hat Blueberry bushes drying in the sun is but a mere portion of the onions I planted this year.  I planted them in three waves about 2 weeks apart and guess what?  They're all coming on at the same time anyway.  That's the last time I try that.  In the background, you can see where the bush beans will be emerging any time now.

This is the boatload of shallots that I got from the 12 or so sets I bought in the spring.  Note the cutting edge, high tech drying tray.  Can you tell I made it myself from an old trash can lid and a brick to keep it from sailing away in the wind?  Nothing but the best.

If you look a little left-ish from the onion drying station, you'll find where some of the onions had been growing and some still are, a respectable stand of volunteer dill and my potato buckets that have been re-purposed for cucumbers and tiny pumpkins.  I have created a 'trellis' by drilling holes in the edge of the buckets and running twine from there up to the edge of the patio cover.  Since I took this picture, the cucumbers in the two right hand buckets have grown at least a foot.

Against all the odds of a crazy spring and summer, I have an actual tomato.  I have spent a little time wondering if I would get any.  Apparently, I will get at least one little Roma.

Here we find a close up shot of the coleus I started from seed.  It was called 'Rainbow Mix' but all the coleus are pretty much exactly the same.  What are the odds?  Not much of a mix, if you ask me.

On the back arbor, I have hung four little planters with begonias, white petunias and moss rose.  An odd combination, I know.  I just went to the garden center and picked out the plants I liked the best.  This is what I wound up with.

The white petunias.  You can't tell in this pic, but there is a slight pink cast around the edges.

 

 

 

A particularly nice moss rose blossom

Look behind you and you'll see what might be the silliest garden thing I've ever done.  Yes.  That's corn.  It's a special variety called Corn On Deck and I got it online from Burpee.  I can't say I can recommend it though.  I got a package of 30 seeds and planted them according to the instructions.  This is all I got.  Admittedly, they are starting to tassel but whether or not I get any corn at all remains to be seen. And no, Burpee didn't pay me to say those things or give me the seed.  As much as it pains me to admit it, I bought it myself.  Let's step over to the berry bed.

These are the first raspberries I've ever grown.  They are black raspberries.  The tiny handful that I got were delicious.  Continuing on around the corner we find my second tomato bed.

The plants are still small but they are sturdy and there are blossoms forming.  I am always impatient for tomato season to begin.  This year has been torture.  That gigantic plant on the left side is my tomatillo plant(s).  Lots of sweet little yellow flowers but no fruit yet.  The marigolds in the front are from seedlings I started in March.

In the foreground here, my much anticipated asparagus plants have sprouted!  All but one of the crowns I planted has come up.  I was expecting a 50% survival rate, so this is unprecedented.  Looks like we'll have a good bed if they all make it through the winter.

 Just look what the cabbage loopers have done to my brussels sprouts!  I am constantly on the lookout for these tiny green menaces and my response is swift and squishy.  Next year, the brussels sprouts get the row cover treatment instead of the squashes.

A wider shot of the fence in progress.  Yes, the white chairs are for sitting and admiring the work so far.  Come around to the front yard.  There are some really great flowers to see there.

RAWR!!!

This is what I've been waiting to get to!  My hen n' chicks have flowered!  I've seen many beds of these succulent lovlies, but never any in flower.  They look FIERCE!

The most beautiful orange lilies I've ever grown.  The picture honestly does do not do them justice.  Stunning is the word.

On the other side of the bed we find bee balm in lavender.  This is the 'natural' color of these flowers.  It is just starting to come out in bloom now.

This is a hybrid bee balm...I've forgotten the variety just now.  I should write these things down.  This blossom is past its prime, but the red is spectacular!

Due to the fence construction activity, I've had to relocate my potted peppers.  Here they are sitting on the end of the driveway.  Lots of leaves and not many flowers yet.  But their time is coming.

On the fence around the kennel area are these two hanging pots with impatiens and coleus.  I did not start these from seed.  Aren't they beautiful?

Well, I guess that's it.  Good thing too as it's getting hot again.  What does your garden look like in the middle of summer?