"A good gardener always plants 3 seeds – one for the bugs, one for the weather and one for himself."
–Leo Aikman
5/13/16:
Often when driving around town at this time of year, or walking through the neighborhood on my way to the beach, I notice all the bright and aromatic flowers that other gardeners are cultivating. There are wildflowers blooming as well, and hardy plants that were imported long ago, now left to fend for themselves. The honeysuckle bush next to our parking spot is one of these. Nobody waters or fertilizes it, but there are still lovely yellow-orange blossoms every spring. Steve and I were admiring it the other day, when he told me that the flowers tasted as sweet as they smelled! He plucked one of the darker orange ones for me. The flavor was very similar to a floral honey. So now I can add this bush to my mental list of edible plants around our yard.
It's been a great May for my flowers, even though the April showers weren't as plentiful as I'd hoped. My vegetable seedlings are still not faring well however. I re-seeded the tomatoes and peppers yesterday, but might just give up on having lettuces until fall, since these are said to be cool-season crops and temperatures are only going to get more summery for a while. I'm protecting the freshly-seeded planter box soil with thin net fabric at the moment; haven't yet come up with a long-term solution for deterring the digging squirrels.
Clicking on the small images below will bring up a larger version.
Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica).
Calla lilies.
Fruit trees at K-Mart.
I bought a discounted rainbow peperomia to add to my indoor hanging plant collection. (Once it's established in a larger pot and I've decided where to place it, I'll take a picture.) I found this one at at K-Mart, of all places. I only started exploring their garden section last fall when it was mostly seeds and pots; it has gotten more interesting in recent months. They have a nice variety of fruit trees for sale: peach, nectarine, orange, fig, mango, papaya... even "Bacon Avocado", which looks particularly tempting. I'll do some research into what fruit might grow well in my garden, and then select one of these to live among the line of small trees along the south side of our fence.
It's now been a full year that I've striven to get better at gardening while writing and photographing my experiences. There's a sense of accomplishment when I realize that I stuck with a commitment to regular updates here, even when I wasn't in the mood to write and my plants or the weather were being contrary. I'm also proud of how much plant knowledge I've quickly acquired. The passion for gardening certainly wanes at times, but it's such a huge subject to delve into, and wonderful to realize that I will never run out of new things to learn or try.
