Tag: summer gardens

Summer Garden Recap

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The lawn is littered with leaves from the windstorm last week. The tips of the leaves are starting to change. The sun is still warm but the air feels cooler and the days are getting shorter. Summer is over. I’ve been on a blogging hiatus for the past two months, but thought I would post some garden pictures from the last few months as a last look at the season.

We’ve had so much rain this summer that the vinca outgrew the pots….a bargain that I will definitely be buying again next year.

And the color went nicely with the pink Knock-Out roses.

The dipladenia did well too. Like it’s cousin the mandevilla, it’s a tropical plant which thrived in this year’s sauna-like weather.

I bought a blue lightweight collapsible patio hose, (in the background below), but it rained so often, that I only used it a couple of times.
This was the first year I bought begonias – only because I couldn’t find pink geraniums.

Sometimes they looked okay, but sometimes they just had too much rain or not enough sun or something.

I think I prefer geraniums.

The clematis did so well, that for the first time it actually grew over the arch of the arbor.

It was lush with greenery, but not with flowers.

Sometimes seed packages can be misleading….these look blue and pink to me?

But I got deep purple morning glories and fuchsia zinnias…..

These morning glories turned out pink, but I could have sworn that package was blue too?

My neighbor’s lotus flower was only out for three hours….they have short life-spans….but it was perfection while it bloomed.

A sunny break from all that pink…

More mellow yellow….

The new lavender plants did well, the new rose bushes not so much….

As for the vegetable garden, I’ve never seen so much lettuce, all from four boxes of seedlings and two packages of seeds. I didn’t have to buy lettuce all summer and even had enough to share with the neighbors. Same with the tomatoes the whole month of August….from two seedlings, one beefsteak and one Roma, although the beefsteak were on the small side, probably from lack of sun.

I was pleased with my Brussel Sprout plant too….a new experiment for me.
Fellow blogger, Dorothy, of Dorothy’s New Vintage Kitchen, (see recipe for sweet and sour brussel sprouts), advised me to prune the leaves off so it resembled a pineapple, as that helps the plant to concentrate it’s growth towards the sprouts. The few I have been able to harvest were tasty little things, but they were difficult to remove from the stem, so I think they have to mature a bit more. I hated brussel sprouts when I was a kid – the smell of these min-cabbages reminded me of my grandmother’s house – but they are full of vitamins and antioxidants, so I’ve learned to appreciate them.
While the rain made everything flourish, and it was nice not to have to drag the hose around watering, the heat and humidity and mosquitoes made sitting outside unpleasant, both day and night. So much for enjoying the garden or the beauty of nature.

We’ve had very few of the sunny blue-sky, low-humidity days that I remember summer being about. I don’t mind the hot temperatures, but the humidity just saps my energy, and the gloomy skies don’t help either. I took to walking in the cool of the evening, but even then some nights the air was so thick I couldn’t walk at all.

Even now, the end of September, the weather continues warmer than usual. We haven’t had any those brisk, frost-warning fall days yet. Usually this time of year, I’m more than ready for the change of seasons, but not this year. It’s like I’m still waiting for the real summer to happen. It was the summer that wasn’t summer. Will this be the new norm?

I don’t mean to be a whiner, in view of the many areas of the world facing drought and wildfires, but it makes me wonder if we’re ruining the earth, or maybe have already ruined it?

There’s still time for one last bonfire…..under a full moon.

And one last look at the lake…

And also time to plan for next year….

PS. I have no idea why there are two different sizes of font in this post, and some of it showed up as captions? It was all in regular font in the draft version – maybe I’ve been away too long…..