Early June in the Garden
Since what I’m eating for dinner tonight is exactly the same as what I ate for lunch, I figured I’d take y’all on a little tour of the garden instead of subjecting you to yet another photo of my food.
This rose is “Mermaid,” an old, simple rose with a vigorous and sprawling habit, a territorial nature, and exceptionally vicious and numerous thorns. It blooms prolifically and grows at a gallop… I planted this rose at the back fence just a little over a year ago. It’s been duking it out with the ornamental grasses I inherited from the previous owners of the house ever since.
Just inside the back gate you can see my Rouge Vif d’Etampes pumpkin vine, beginning to grow, as scheduled, through the bottom of a little tripod built of branches. Growing up the tripod itself is autumn clematis, a volunteer that appeared when we chopped down some old diseased thujas that were slowly dying on the spot when we bought the house. The pot holds my “Penelope” rose, past her first bloom already. She’ll have another in the early fall, though, don’t worry.
In the Forest of Volunteer Herbs, at the corner of the back porch, we have oregano and dill, thyme and lovage and Bavarian sage, purslane, some baby basil that I bunged in down front recently, and a few garlic chives. I note that this is what happens when you aren’t careful about pinching off the blooms when your herbs start to bolt: the following year you get surprises. I’m just amazed there isn’t any cilantro. By rights I should be up to my elbows in it. Off to the right is some Kentucky Colonel dill I rooted from a bunch some friends gave me, which seems to be doing all right and will doubtless be having turf wars with the sage before summer’s out.
Looking down the side yard, where the raised bed lives. Most of the day it gets full sun, only after about 5 pm does the back half get shaded. Down front there are tomatoes — Tula Black, Brandywine, and Green Zebra — and peppers of the “Biscayne,” “Lipstick,” “Chi Chien,” and guajillo varieties. Further back a bit, Good Mother Stallard beans, Flor di Castilla beans, both of which are shelling varieties, and a couple hills of “Eden” pole beans, a string bean. Beyond that, there is chard aplenty, a couple varieties of gai lan, some bok choy, broccoli “Belstar,” and Brussels sprouts, along with a few starts of Roma tomatoes tucked into odd corners. To the right, with the white flower heads, is one of the elderberry bushes. To the left you can see the rainbarrels. Yeah, actual barrels. Actual whiskey barrels, actually. They still smell of it some.
The baby blueberries are still working on it. I planted these berries just this year, so any fruit at all is a nice surprise.
Over the fence is my neighbor’s yard. He likes roses, can you tell? It’s nice to be able to enjoy all these roses and still have lots of space to concentrate on growing good things to eat. Speaking of which, do you see my tiger lilies there in the lower right? Lily buds are good eating… when I can bear to pick them. I do so love watching them open.
Another view of the raised beds, with chard and broccoli in the foreground, beans and elderberry bushes in the back.
Up front in the mostly-unkempt, once-and-future shade garden, to which I haven’t yet done much, my astilbes are beginning to bloom. There’s a volunteer black-eyed susan just to the left, too, that I’ve decided to let run riot if it will.
This is a Sea Holly (Eryngium “Blaukappe”) surprise. I’d started some of these from seed last year, and felt all studly when I planted them out, whereupon they promptly died. Or seemed to, at least, until a few weeks ago when they reappeared as if nothing had ever happened. In the background, Echinacea purpura, and more tiger lilies.
Last but not least, here on the front porch, my $2 begonias. They started out, a month or so ago, as dinky little three-inch pots of completely rootbound begonia for sale cheap at Trader Joe’s. I purchased their freedom and brought them home and installed them somewhere with a little breathing room, namely a porch planter, and promptly enrolled them in the patented regime of benign neglect to which I treat all my plants.
They seem to like it fine.
