"Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed."
– Lewis Gannit
10/5/16:
I was puttering about in the garden yesterday after work, watering plants on the south side of the house and the lawn, then planting some morning glory seeds. I sipped a beer while making the rounds with the hose and digging; it occurred to me that "Hoegaarden" was an aptly named beverage for the evening's activities. It was sunset before I had a chance to start taking the week's blog photographs, so I got up a bit early this morning and captured a few shots in the just-risen sun's rays.
Clicking on the small images below will bring up a larger version.
Watering, planting, sipping...
Some decent tomato plants.
Shooting Star hydrangea.
It seems my tomatoes ripen so slooowly, but when I compare what I have now to photos from past weeks, there's a lot of fruit development happening. I've decided that I prefer the Beefsteak and Cherokee varieties I have this year to the San Francisco Fogs and undersized Romas of past summers. Medium-large tomatoes are easy to use, not only in salads or salsa, but for sandwiches and bruschetta too, unlike the cherry-sized ones.
I moved most of the tomato plants into the sunniest area of our yard, which is now crowded with pots. There's such a greater proportion of shady-patches, however.
In 2015, I made an effort to discover both food and ornamental plants that could be happy in shade: one of these, a Shooting Star hydrangea, has surprised me with lovely paper-white blooms beginning to unfold much earlier than last year's December flowering. I hadn't had hydrangeas before, and the indoor/outdoor care specifications on different websites were confusing, so I'm glad to see that it grew nicely once moved from the windowsill to a not-very-sunny outdoor spot this spring.
Other noteworthy plants at the moment are cayenne peppers, growing long and brightly red, and various colors of daisies and mums. I find small caterpillars curled up in the flower petals of these, but am examining the plants often to manually remove them. (Caterpillars might be immune to my coffee and garlic sprays, the only pesticides I'm currently using.) They're most likely the younger state of a light brown apple moth: a threat to our local oak trees. But the flower garden is otherwise thriving, and I'm pleased with having added a couple more mum plants in September.
