What's Growin'?

Other than a freakish few days in May, it's been on the cool side all spring. This weekend the people who control the weather are obviously attempting to simulate the conditions in Beijing: 90s, with afternoon thunderstorms.

If only they hadn't paid off the grass seed farmers. Add a little air pollution and the we could really be guaranteeing that we only send the most prepared to China.

Anyway, I digress. With the onset of summer, I thought I'd show what's in the ground. The May flower season seemed to be prolonged by the cool temperatures.


There were quite a few nice surprises as we peaked through the tulips and irises. The lonely bleeding heart really outdid itself this year. This is a completely maintenance free plant.
If memory serves, it dies back to the ground and disintegrates so fast and thoroughly that I don't even have
to remove any foliage at the end of the season.



L insists the clematis looks like a giant valentine heart this year, but I think she's just being sappy. We're going to have to replace this side porch real soon--I'm hoping to enclose it, but we'll definitely make every effort to preserve this vine.


As always, the best part of summer is yet to come. As much as I love the showy flowers, the real reason for all this is the veggies and herbs. This year we have 5 kinds of tomatoes in the ground, and three different chilis.



The tomatoes have been especially sad and slow to take hold, but they have all perked up with this week's heat. The cinnamon basil got hit hard by slugs--even with the aid of copper rings. A couple weeks ago I added beer traps though, and that seems to be helping alot. Now if we can just get the grass seed farmers to switch to food crops we can get that pollen count down.