July gardens

Most perennial enthusiasts learn to balance their gardens. You have to account for height and texture and color of course. And you have to account for the period of bloom. Yes, there are flowers that can bloom for a good part of the summer, but in my experience, the perennial flowering period tends to be short. I'd say two weeks, on the average. Maybe three if you don't mind a more weathered look. So the trick is to plant different stuff for early spring, interspersed with stuff for late spring, and then for early summer, mid summer and late summer, and finally for autumn. 

But from the outset I rejected this way of planning a garden. Yes, I wanted to be sure to front load the flower fields -- get stuff in there for early spring, because we are so hungry for color then! And after that, I picked plants I liked, regardless of their bloom time. And since I like a lot of lilies, the garden definitely has a peak period when it is at its finest and that period falls on July. It's not that in the other months it is stagnant, it's just that the feeling of abundance starts right about now. Every day is exciting!

A sunny day today and I do spend time dead heading lilies, because I really like the clean lily bed look...

(the day lily has to provide a challenge to froggie: I mean, every day, it has to jump to a new bloom...)

And we eat breakfast on the porch and Ed has picked our wild blackberries so we add those to the mix of fruits...

And then I pause with all things outside, because my daughter's visiting friend is set to have a meet up with my mom (he knew her when she still lived in California) and the kids are coming along for this and I promised I'd be there to help with the whole thing. Including the picture taking.

Okay! Kids, time for you to go for your swimming lessons! I'm going to take you there! (They love their swimming lessons! Absolutely love them.)

And now I'm home again and Ed is prompting me to go outside. We are seeing the first (or second and maybe even third) mosquito so we probably have a very short window in which we can still work without the company of those horrid bugs. Fine. Let's finish with the moving of hostas.

This is how you quickly move from early morning to late afternoon. 

 For us, Thursday afternoon means that we take a trip to pick up our CSA veggie box. Today we also want to get to the farmers market just as it opens. I'm eager to purchase the newest arrivals: Wisconsin blueberries!

What? sold out in the first five minutes?? I suppose everyone is thinking of throwing them in for a red white and blue dessert for Sunday. No? Well I am. If you're lucky, the Fourth of July brings with it the tail end of strawberries and the arrival of blueberries. All you need is the cream and you're set. (I have mentioned numerous times on Ocean that for people like me who hate live, loud fireworks and who dont grill meats all that much (ever?), this holiday has few traditions I can latch onto. This year, it will again have to be in the dessert. If I can find some blueberries at the Saturday market.)

For now, I'm celebrating July 1st, bursting with new flowers. How beautiful to look outside now! How good it is to be in the thick of the growing season.

flipped

Sometime right around dawn I had an epiphany: flower field number 11, the one by the barn, all newly planted this year, is not doing so well because the trees grew so tall in the last year or two that they completely blocked out the sun. I had remembered it as a fairly sunny spot. That is so wrong. On the other hand, the big hostas in the other new bed (aka number 3), the one that went up as Ed brought down a couple of dying trees, are drying up from excessive sun. This is the first summer without those trees and the dappled shade I had remembered here is actually full blown sun for a good six hours of the day. The solution? Flip the beds! Dig up the hostas and put them in flower field number 11, dig up the day lilies and false sunflowers from 11 and bring them into all this sunshine! Isn't that a great plan??

In theory it's fantastic! Win win! In practice? Well, let's see how the day proceeds.

First, the morning walk. I am snipping spent lilies like mad. It doesn't look dense out there yet, but I'm sure I've exceeded 100, maybe even 200 this morning and it's not even July yet. Things are looking just fine out there!

(lilium, exploding!)

 

(back by popular demand: the green froggies who love love love my day lilies!)

(cascading Clematis)

(daisies and day lilies)

Breakfast. 

Now comes the big flip. My first job is to dig out the massive hosta. Really, I should dig out more than just one, but that's too ambitious. I'm not that nuts. It's really humid out there and once again Ed keeps reminding me to pause and drink water.

The plant is massive. A jumble of leaves and roots, fatter than a barrel. I can't do it. I literally jump on the handle of the spade to get it to pry those roots out of the soil, but they are all intertwined with the thick roots of the dead tree and I just cannot pry the plant loose. Ed comes out to help and together we finally hoist the green giant onto a tarp and then into a wheelbarrow. 

The rest is a breeze. Seven day lilies come out of Field number 11 and go into Field number 3. All I need to do now is get monster hosta into the ground over by the barn and move the false sunflowers over to Field 3. Later. I'll do it later. Ufff! I'm thinking that this is the kind of work you should do only after you've just had a stress test. I mean, if I can run uphill, I should be okay lifting out overzealous hostas.

At 1, I take a pause to pick up some flowers. The cut kind. Back in February, it struck me that it would be really nice to hand over a few dollars to local farmers rather than to my grocery store for the cut flowers that tempt me all summer long. So I signed up for a flower CSA. I don't regret it, though today's bunch, the first of the season is very... dainty. I'll be going over to our meadow to supplement it for sure. (Next to it is a day lily stem that the boisterous cats knocked over. Thanks, cats.)

Okay, back to the flower field flipping. All afternoon I dig and move. Until my predawn fantasy is a reality and most of the plants are now in their suitable environments. I say most, because I can only do so much in one day. I am, however, hoping that tomorrow's morning epiphany will be something like -- wouldn't it be splendid to sit out on the porch on a cushiony chair and read the rest of my novel? Days of strenuous work should be mixed with days of no work at all, don't you think?

Toward evening I do put my feet up for a Zoom call with my two friends who live in the far southern corners of this country. I wish we had a regular old meetup, but the fact is, they do live far so Zoom for us is really a gift that keeps on giving.

As we linger a little longer, I hear Ed drive off for his Wednesday night bike ride (he takes the car to the starting point). And then he comes right back.

What's wrong?
The car. The spark plug wires have been totally chewed up. Two of them. Decimated.

By whom?? 

Um, an animal obviously. Maybe a chipmunk.

I glare at the cats for letting some rodent get the better of us. Dance goes off to chase a bug, the others sprawl out in the courtyard, unfazed by any of this.

What happens now?

I go buy some new wires. Darn it, those were good ones, too. I'd just replaced them.

I think of all the ways that living here on the farmette is only possible for me because Ed is there, to lift out a hosta or to replace wires that some animal eats in your car. 

Thank you -- I tell him. He doesn't ask "what for?" Just mutters uh huh... He knows.

stress

Every once in a while, your doc will ask you -- when was the last time you had a stress test? Mine did that just before the pandemic. Predictably, throughout the Year of Crisis, I avoided the idea of going in to pant in a room full of strangers. But, there's no reason to avoid it now (or at least there's less reason) and so the day came when I was again scheduled for one of those run until you drop deals in my clinic. Last time I did this, my doc noted (with admiration or disdain, I couldn't tell) -- my, you're competitive. That was then.

 

Today, I wake to rain. The walk to the barn is wet, but very very fragrant. The last load of wood chips dumped at the end of the driveway was all pine and every time it really rains, the farmette smells of a pine forest.

Things are slowly picking up in the flower fields...

(a day lily in front of a true lily)

(day lily doubles with their awesome scrunched faces!)

(so pink, so wet!)

(bold!)

(this my dears is a true lilium...)

It's not a day for outdoor work. Breakfast is on the porch. 

Unfortunately I am not allowed caffeine today and the combination of rhythmic rain drops and absence of morning coffee makes me so sleepy that immediately after breakfast I join Ed upstairs for a very protracted nap. Seriously!

Then comes the scheduled stress test. I tell myself that at 68, I no longer need feel competitive. It's not you against them anymore. It's just you, passing through life, doing your best to stay steady and calm. Still, as I start my trudge up their treadmill, I brush off suggestions of shedding the mask. On a scale of awful to great, how do you feel?

Great! Fantastic, as if I'm sitting down by a lake with a fishing pole!

You want to continue to go more uphill and faster?

Don't make me laugh! Of course!

So there's a lesson in all this: maybe when you get to be 68, you are as you were at 58, only more so. Hmmm.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is at the farmette. 

 (last cherry earings of the season...)

The girl is at a wonderful age of still very young, playful, delightfully silly, at the same time that she can be serious, thoughtful and strong, both inside and out. (I could not get her to break into a giggle here and believe me, I tried!)

Reminding me of my own more advanced years, she beat me in all rounds of Memory, but hey, I can still carry her when asked and she does ask, fairly regularly!

Back at her house, a quick visit with the boys...

(he looks twice his age here...)

(He looks... his age here)

 

 ("hey, I'm not that young anymore!")

 

Then home again to survey the rain drenched flower fields.

The beautiful rain drenched flower fields.

Not bad. Really not bad. Are we out of a drought yet? I hope so!

chicks and ticks

We are in the car, returning from a trip to Natalie's. Her farm is just about a half dozen miles south of us and we decided that yesterday's second chocolate zucchini cake should go to her. She needs a boost and if she's not looking to find it in sweet cakes, well then she can share it with those who help her out in the veggie fields.

Halfway home, I look down and see a dark speck on my leg. Definitely moving up. Keeping my eyes on the road, I pick it up and hand it to Ed. He's the resident tick analyst. 

So is it a tick? -- I ask.

It's not even a bug! It's a piece of debris.

If so, then it's debris with legs. It crawled. Look closely!

He does. But I'd already mangled it enough for identification to be a problem this time around.

This is not an unusual occurrence for us: we step outside the perimeters of the farmette lands and we bring in a tick. This spring has had its fair share of ticks. Or so we hear.

But the fact is, we have picked up none of these horrid bugs from working outside here at all. We'll spend the entire day in the farmette fields and bring in nothing. Not this year. Not last year, nor the year before. The only time we'll spot a tick is on a day when we hiked elsewhere.

We think it's because of our free ranging cheepers. 

 

 

I mean, this is all anecdotal stuff rather than a scientific sampling, but we did leap from with ticks to no ticks pretty quickly once the cheepers came to regard this place as home. Ed has a good working theory: his view is that ticks meander toward the smell of human movement. They tend to move in closer to the farmhouse and the courtyard and in so doing, they come into cheeper territory. Zap! Crunch! Gone.

Earlier in the day, I did my usual several hour weeding stint. Now's time to take a look at what's blooming at the end of June. Each day, a few more lilies pop open! I'll show you a handful, even though I know that single bloom photos may be a tad boring to look at. At Ocean, the story is, I think, in the whole garden (or at least a big chunk of it). But right now, as you'll see, the beds are just waking up from their month of rest after a big spring effort. It will be another week before a flower field lets go of its green face (no matter how varied the texture and tone, it still appears as "merely green" to most). So for now, I'm enjoying a bloom here, a bloom there and so this is what you get as well.

Here's my day lily roll! (These girls are scattered throughout the eleven farmette fields.)

 

(a big splash overnight in the main lily bed!)

 

(ruffled)

(bold colors)

(gentle colors)

(looks good in front of the hydrangeas)

(looks good behind the daisies)

(okay: one general view photo! the back of the Big Bed...)

Breakfast is on the porch of course. 

Shall I end the post with breakfast? Yes! Even though I worked hard on the weeds after, I also took time for reading in the farmhouse. Had I the time for it, I would have taken a very long nap, smack in the middle of the day. Maybe tomorrow!

the unpopular vegetable

First of all, thank you to all who participated in the unofficial contest on how to remind me that there are plenty of good ways to identify plants using apps, brains and computers and/or smart phones! The mystery plant (from yesterday's post) is indeed spreading dogbane, so named possibly because it is toxic for the poor pooch who would get too close to it. It's always a surprise to me how many beautiful flowers are toxic to animals and how savvy those animals are when they encounter it.

Now about vegetables: it came as a bit of a surprise for me to find out that no one in my family likes zucchini. (I don't include myself in that since I pretty much will eat anything that's fresh and honest. You can laugh at that, but it really is true.) This distaste for what has to be the most prolific summer veggie here extends to Ed and believe me, I have tried shredding it, mixing it with other stuff, roasting it, or serving it raw. It's a no go.

This distaste for summer squash would be reason enough not to sign up for a CSA, since boxes of veggies straight from the farm always include a ton of it, from June through August. I mean, it's ratatouille season! Of course you're going to get the zucchini! But I am determined! And so when the first green squash appeared in our veggie box last week and two more followed this week, I knew I had to get creative.

Today I decided to go for chocolate zucchini bread. Maybe I can fool them all into zucchini acceptance!

The plan, by the way, is to spend lots of time in the kitchen today. I have the young family coming to dinner and in addition, my daughter's friend is visiting from California. Reason enough to take extra care with the meal. First though there is the garden stuff to attend to. 

(Dance follows me on my weeding expedition...)

 

Here's what's blooming!

(Clematis Heather Herschell)

(daylily loveliness)

(ah... The Meadow!)

(Here's Bed No. 2: it's the one that runs along the driveway. Rarely photographed because it's long and narrow and a tiny bid odd in the plant selection. Still, I've made a small effort to improve it over the past two years, so I'm bringing around my camera here again!)

There's weeding to be done and I do it before breakfast. 

(morning meal that now typically gets pushed closer to noon on Sundays)

And then I get to it: chocolate zucchini bread from the Love and Lemons website. It's a great recipe because it uses no sugar (just maple syrup) and just a tiny bit of coconut oil. Otherwise it's all about eggs and flours and spices and cocoa and chocolate chips. Two loaves! They better be good!

The gang arrives!

Hey, is that a first smile that I see on Sandpiper?

Maybe, maybe not. Hard to tell!

("hey, what do you want from me? I'm only a month old!")

(held by the newly arrived guest...)

Dinner is a shrimp, squid and scallop pasta.

 

We eat.

And for all the weather fluctuations -- the hot, the dry, the wet, the steamy -- tonight was one perfect evening. Kid bedtimes always end an evening for us. Were it not for that, I'd be out there still, watching the night set in, slowly, gently, with just a touch of a summer breeze. Like a song. Like a beautiful summer song.