This summer has the most usual weather that I can remember. We get rain almost every other day. Sometimes I wake in the morning and the ground is wet from a rain during the night. I am just thankful that I have not had to do much watering this summer, except that one dreadful week. My little pine still has some brown spots, though I trimmed a lot off, it needs another trimming. I think that since I am over the shock of its injury I can get on with the final trim and she can start on the healing.
Last night we received a torrential downpour with distant thunder and lightning. I find it so refreshing to hear it pounding on the roof and the ground, drowning out the sounds of everything else in the world. Wake up to bird bathes filled and a wet drooping garden. Everything that I have in my garden seems to need staking at one point of another. It doesn't help that most of my plants are drought tolerant and all this rains makes them droop from heaviness--the plants suck up too much of the moisture. So everything is sodden and sad.
The wetness makes dark days feel like I am living in a marsh. I went out today and stepped through the soaked grass and let the mosquitoes bite my arms, they seem to think it a bog as well. If our climate is going to become more tropical I will have to change my garden scheming.
I already have plans in place to add more shrubs. I find that with my increasing health issues that is the best low maintenance way. I have this spot in my backyard that is shrouded by the branches of my neighbors mulberry tree. She drops her stinking berries in this dreaded spot where I have tried to make a lovely garden and really it is just a fermenting, bug filled mess. So I have plans to relocate many of the perennials and rake it smooth and plant grass. This will help with all the hidden craggy places the mosquitoes like to breed. Next to this garden was an old shed platform that my husband finally pulled out. He had to cut away the plywood boards and dig up the old beams. Underneath revealed an old ground hog tunnel that we had long ago sealed off. This too will become lawn--nothing does well in that forsaken corner.
So my motto has become--simplify, whereas before I was obsessed with order and every little plant in its place. Simply put, you can not control how your garden grows no matter how much you try. They plants will either grow too big, droop or die off or look lovely for a few weeks and they brown the next. I learn to take it as it comes and still find beauty as it is.
Several days ago the American Gold Finch found her way back to my yard as they do every year at this time to find the seed heads of my purple cone flowers and monarda. I leave the heads just for them. My naked ladies have come out with almost my missing them, I was hibernating several days indoors and when I peered out one morning suddenly they were there.
So my zucchini is done. The vine borers finally sucked them dry, I ripped them out and threw them in the compost. The vine borers always get the zukes first. Now just today I saw that they are moving on to my yellow squash. I am not concerned as I have gotten so many squash that I am giving them away. I have a volunteer pumpkin in my compost that I am wondering why it just does not bare fruit, as it has spread all over. Everyday I find another cantaloupe, alas the one I just cut was not very sweet. Perhaps that is because of all the rain. Well with weather what ever comes must come.
Next year I have pondered giving the veggie patch a rest and sowing a bunch of annuals. I really do not give it the attention it deserves. With my laxity I came out to find another mammoth squash, sigh.
It might be fun to consider tucking some of my veggies in the flower beds. I wonder if doing that would confuse the squash beetles.
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