This summer's rain and sun have worked their magic; my patio flower garden is awash in flowers of pink and purple, red and yellow and orange. Bee balm is rampant, much to the delight of numerous bees and the single hummingbird that darts from blossom to blossom. The phlox has grown tall and is blooming. Its slightly musky, pepperminty scent takes me squarely back to childhood and my mother's garden where, as a small child, I loved to sit and talk with the flower fairies. Orange and yellow lilies hold their faces up to the sun and purple petunias in the hanging buckets strike a complimentary tone to the more delicate pink fairy roses. If it weren't for the voracious hordes of mosquitoes that attack me the moment I open the door, I'd have every meal at my patio table. As it is, I enjoy the color in brief snatches as I hurry from cottage to car or out to the screened tent.
The vegetable garden is thriving, as well. The snap peas have all been harvested and sweet peas load the vines. Steamed lightly and kissed with butter, they taste marvelous! Squash and cucumbers are in flower, the beets and carrots are ready for thinning, and I will pick swiss chard for dinner tonight. Little green tomatoes peek from beneath the foliage, both in the large garden and on the cherry tomato plant in the herb garden. A pesky, as yet unidentified bug chewed the leaves of the eggplant but I noticed a couple of brave blossoms doing their best to hang on and bloom. The beans will be ready to pick in a day or two and there will be plenty of potatoes to dig come fall.
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| Beets and carrots waiting to be thinned. Potatoes in the background. |
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| Little tomatoes growing bigger by the day. |
It's a very satisfactory life I live here in my little cottage. Comments on a fellow blogger's site let me know that life can't be perfect all the time and people who pretend it is are boring and shallow. Still, right now, right here, things are pretty good. (There are those miserable mosquitoes though...)
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| A gift from friends in England. |
12 comments:
Nice garden, the native bee balm is starting here. I have you beat with tomatoes, mine are starting to turn.
nice..your garden and back yard are full of life...love food straight out the earth...it just tastes better....we have a ton of japanese beetles this year, eating everything...
I don't envy you the mosquitoes, especially as I am allergic to their bites. However, your garden is magnificent and your vegetables are doing you proud. It all looks lovely.
Your flowers are gorgeous. I love all the colors all together. Mosquitoes do make it hard to enjoy them, though, don't they?
And the veggies fresh from the garden. So different from store food that it all should be called by different names.
Wow, your yard looks like a little piece of paradise! Great job.
xo jj
OOTP - the cherry tomatoes in my herb garden are turning but those bigger ones remain stubbornly green.
Brian - that's what ate my eggplant leaves - I caught them in the act!
Thanks, Star - the mosquitoes are a bane but oh the color and the fresh food - worth every slap!
I agree June. I think of my harvests as "real" food.
JJ - This whole place, cottage and grounds, are my little bit of paradise. I was lucky in finding this spot!
Your flowers are gorgeous! And what a great vegetable garden, too. I wish I lived nearby to get the overflow! The mosquitoes are awful here this year, too, or I'd spend hours down by my little pond. I just hate smelling like mosquito spray all the time.
Barbara - you'd be coming for dinner! As for the mosquitoes, even DEET isn't repelling them this year! It's torture to go outside!
Your garden is what Eden looked like BEFORE.
Glorious!
The NY Times today had a possible cure for the one thing that ails it and you. To shoo away the mosquitoes, a fan is recommended. Just a plain old electric fan. Plus it in, turn it on. Mosquitoes can't buck the breeze, and depart.
(You just need an electrical outlet outside, dunno if that's an obstacle.)
Sounds like you've carved yourself a wee slice of Nirvana. Congratulations. :)
(Oh, about those skitters. Once you get a couple thousand bites, you hardly even react anymore. Hang in there.)
A beautiful garden. My Grandmother's in Detroit was so well done: corn, peppers, strawberries, tomato's--that kind of a garden. And a good place to hide and play too!
Your garden looks beautiful - love the sign
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