Blooms & Vegetables

I missed yet another Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.  This time it was due to problems importing photos from my camera to the computer.  By the time I got them all uploaded, it was very late, and I was very tired, too tired to make an entry.  Oh well, maybe next time?

In the mean time, I do have some blooms.  Most of my garden is suffering the mid-July dry spell, which I am slowly working to correct.  One of my online acquaintances told me that it takes years to really get a garden going, and I'm beginning to see what she means.  I keep reminding myself to take things slow and really consider what I want out of the space.  Each year is an improvement, and I learn from every mistake.

I always try to keep some impatiens around, since they do well in the part to full shade conditions of the front porch facing east.  This year I grabbed a few pinkish/lavenderish Elfin hybrids, which have added some much needed color.

The stars of the front flower garden right now are the 'Stargazer' Oriental lilies, which have mostly turned out more pink than I imagined.  But wow, they are beautiful and smell fantastic.

In the backyard, the vegetable garden is holding up well, though it's barely produced anything for a meal.  Last Friday I decided to dig for potatoes and found these little beauties:

I washed them and then hid them in the pantry for later.  On Monday I made a nicoise salad for two, with my steamed fresh new potatoes and green beans from the farmers' market.  The beans were a little tough, but my potatoes were tasty.  Though, to be honest, I could not discern much of a difference in texture or flavor compared to the store-bought variety.  Even so, on principle, I prefer the homegrown variety.  I never realized how easy they are to grow.

Otherwise, I have no carrots, no green onions, have harvested one jalapeno pepper, and two tomatoes that turned out to be rotted inside.  Two weeks ago, I harvested all my beet leaves and used them to replace Swiss chard in a pasta dish, which turned the pasta pink--but boy did it taste good.  I have tons of tomatoes, a few of which are just itching to turn red.  Odds are that August will be the major harvest season, and I'll have more than I know what to do with.

By the way, that acquaintance I mentioned keep track of her garden online, if you'd care to have a look.  She and her partner (C.P. McDill, proprietor of ambient music label Webbed Hand Records) utilize many principles of permaculture in creating a garden that is organic and sustainable, a place that is capable of producing a majority of the food they need--but also beauty and color.  I've found it particularly inspiring.