For no reason at all. NYC, March 2008, Madison Avenue

Only a slight eyesore. Not very noticeable from the street.

Don't you just know that the McCain people would love to find a young Hispanic conservative to put on the ticket?

Oh how I love my dahlia.

New growth on digitalis. Will it bloom again this year?

I couldn't stop myself from breaking off the dead digitalis flowers once they turned brown. And now there's new growth!

And those ugly "trunks" on the left are from my yellow butterfly bush that I clearly didn't prune properly. I got it a year ago and what everyone said was true: you've got to prune brutally. Hard for me to learn that lesson. I may cut it back to the ground (in the fall? next spring?) and see what happens.

The amaranth is looking good

Volunteer lamb's ears. Or is it lambs' ears?

Could this be purslane?

Another blogger, Kitt, posted about purslane and I've been looking for it ever since (http://kittbo.blogspot.com/2008/07/weed-feed-sauteed-purslane-with-bacon.html)

I wonder if this is it? It popped up just in the last day in one of my lettuce planters. (I tried late lettuce in the garden and in planters and it's doing much better in the planters.)

Rosemary. A plant that loves my yard a little too much.

Over the past 20 years I've planted a lot of rosemary in what I call my herb garden. Too much rosemary, as this picture shows. It often blooms in the winter, is evergreen, smells wonderful, and needs no care. But it's pushed almost everything else out of the garden so I must remove some of it. A fall project.

Dinner tonight

Fennel is currently my favorite herb. Good on just about everything.

Balloon flower

I want to move this in the fall. I think it needs more sun. The petals are like velvet. (I think that may be cilantro-coriander peeping into the picture in the lower left. Must check. 7/29/08 update: I finally checked. That isn't cilantro. It's rue. Another plant I should move so it gets more sun.)

In the future, none of my butterfly bushes should be any bigger than this one

Good gardening advice. In a poem.

Originally posted here:
http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com/2008/07/buddleia-poem.html


Butterfly Bush

I used to love the buddleia,
its long purple trumpets in summer
buzzing with hummingbirds and butterflies,

until someone told me it was common,
invasive, a weed —

its withered flower cones
spilling armies of seedlings
to colonize the neighborhood.

Then I was embarrassed to have loved it.

I began to see its offspring sprouting
everywhere, hated how they rooted
between loose bricks, flourished
from cracks in the sidewalk.

So I cut mine back to nothing,
buried the broken stump —

only to find it returned
the next spring, multiplied.

And though I hated it
then, a part of me wanted it
to live. So I resolved to remove

the spent flowers, trim the branches.
Each autumn its size diminished,
and each spring an open

relaxed shape returning.
Its abundance held in check.

And now I love the buddleia
again as before,
but by second nature —
as one who returns to the garden
after the fall.

--Peter Pereira

Peppers -- one hot, one sweet -- and spring onions

A tomato test

1. 2 healthy tomato plants in a container -- July 8.
2. picture below (see entry for July 19) shows what they looked like after the deer got to them.
3. assuming I protect the plants from the deer, will more flowers / fruit grow back over the next 2 months? Already there are 5 itty bitty tomatoes.

Is it good or bad for the fruit that there is so little foliage now? Maybe the absence of foliage will actually make the fruit grow faster? or larger? As in, all the nutrients sucked up those stalks have to go to the fruit b/c the leaves are gone. Or is just the opposite the likely outcome: without the foliage the fruit will suffer and be puny because the fruit rely on the photosynthesis that goes on in the leaves. I should know by the end of August. Meanwhile the plant looks pretty pathetic

to be continued...

Mom (behind fence) and babies resting

Jalapeno peppers. Or maybe just green peppers.

I've only got 4 plants but they've already produced about 20 healthy looking peppers, and the flowering continues.

Nasturtiums make everything taste better

Bird of Paradise. another picture from the Botanic Gardens

amaranth, grown from seeds

My niece, sitting on the ground below, grew amaranth last year at her home-farm in extreme western MD.* So I decided to try it too, especially after my friend Susan gave me some seeds. Mine are doing fine, as long as they're protected with mesh fencing from the deer, but they are not as lush as my niece's were. I remember hers as tallish, sort of hip high, very dark rich red, full, unruly. My niece's husband, is sitting on the porch. My sister is holding the spectacular little A----, who was, I think, about 10 months old in this picture. The sweet and gentle G--- is in the background. He was 3 1/2 (I think) at the time.

*You can't see her amaranth flower beds in this picture but they were just beyond the house on the right, just out of sight. Wish I had taken pictures.

The deer are sweet. But.

Look what they ate. This pot had 2 very healthy tomato plants. Sometime between about 9 PM Thursday, July 17 and 7 PM Friday, July 18, one or more hopped over my 6-foot fencing and had a nice meal of hostas and tomatoes. The hostas I can forgive. The tomatoes I cannot.

First-ever eggplant

So-called bi-color butterfly bush. But I see three colors.

My mom's perennial petunia. Planted 1996!

Gus

Oliver

Home-grown, home-cooked, home-eaten

US Botanical Gardens, Washington, DC. July 12, 2008

Two-toned leaf

Fiber tree

Pool. Design based on quilt design. Not sure which one.

Orchid

Pineapple

My first potatoes. Born July 11, 2008

June 14, 2008

July 10, 2008

Oliver. Typical day.

Threadleaf coreopsis

Love the name. I planted some today in the front garden. Lots of sun. The picture is from Bethany Beach, DE. Some day mine will look like that.

unidentified mushroom

tomato after the deer poked her nose under the netting and chomped off the top foliage, including tiny tomato

perennial flower name forgotten