Out of the Darkness: A Late Bloom Day Report

When you’re living in the Dark Ages, you don’t really know it. Remember rotary phones? No one thought, “Gosh, I wish I could just push the numbers instead of taking all the time to dial.” And remember walking to the television to turn a knob to switch between your whopping THREE channels? (Okay, you have to be over the age of, say, 40 to remember that.)

Well, same goes with computers. After all my fretting and after TWO DAYS of hideous angst while I tried to get all my files back and my programs operational, I feel like I have entered the Age of Enlightenment. Do you know that they have computers with little tiny slots on the front where you can just load your little camera memory cards so you don’t have to deal with spaghetti wires and cables? Who knew?

And now that I have this fast-o dual core processor computer with a 22″ flat screen monitor, things seem so much more beautiful. The virtual world is so colorful!

But alas, the delay meant that I missed Bloom Day on Friday, June 15. That’s when garden bloggers post photos and information about what’s blooming in their gardens. (I don’t believe that this Bloom Day has any relation to the Blooms Day, June 16, that is celebrated by James Joyce fans by reenacting Leopold Bloom’s day-long trek through Dublin and told in the incredibly painful read Ulysses.)

I will celebrate with my own personal little Bloom Day +6 with a show-and-tell of the many photos I took yesterday when I walked away from the madness of the computer switch.

This is the bee balm that I have been worrying was going to take over the garden. Our friend Lucia gave me a couple of little clippings from her garden last year. Lucia never seems to know the names of things and always gives me these little gifts with the explanation that “It’s beeeyoootiful.” Often she also gives some little explanation of other virtues. In this case. “It keeps away mosquitoes!”

Well, as you might guess, it is also invasive. I have let it go this year. I even let a garden club lady take a bunch. But next year, I will SHOW NO MERCY. Oh, it’s beautiful alright. But I would like something besides bee balm in the garden!

Also blooming here is ice plant and little miniature petunias. That’s a peony next to the bee balm and obedient plants in the background.

Then we have the cucumbers. Every year I think, “Fewer vegetables, more flowers.” Ever year, no matter how much I try to restrain myself, we ALWAYS have too many cucumbers. AND WE LOVE CUCUMBERS!

These plants have hardly made it up the bamboo supports and already I have a stack of cucumbers in the kitchen. I will likely be carting them around to the wine shop guy, mail store lady and other people I see on my daily errands. I am my own version of “Meals on Wheels.”

A proper Colonial garden always mixed herbs, vegetables and flowers. The type of garden I’ve been more or less modeling mine after is the type you might see on the edge of town, perhaps owned by a moderately successful merchant.

I have also been experimenting with intensive planting–squishing more plants into an area than the seed package calls for. Sometimes it works well. Sometimes it doesn’t.

My bush beans and swiss chard don’t seem to mind the crowding. Tomatoes, on the other hand, insist on having LOTS of room or they get sick.

This is the herb and lettuce patch. The black seeded simpson is starting to bolt, but the red sails lettuce is so far still hanging in there. In the middle are hollyhocks. The purple cone flower is also blooming. Also there is basil, dill, oregano, parsley, tarragon, lavender, chives (just past blooming) and garlic chives. It’s a regular salad bowl!

Then, here’s an overview of the garden from the ground.

Those are day lilies in the foreground. On the trellis over the gate are wisteria and clematis. Yes, one on one side and one on the other. I can only explain that I didn’t expect the wisteria to grow. My mom warned me that I should tear it out before it got out of control. But like in most things, I don’t listen to my mom and will probably live to regret letting it go so long. For now, I still think it’s beautiful. It just stopped blooming a couple of weeks ago.

Then we have a few mixed flowers. This is pretty much the area where I stick all the plants that I don’t have another place for or that people give to me. I found this lovely bird bath online at Smith & Hawkin.

The tomatoes are still just babies. They will grow to nearly 8′ high. I have brandywine, but also planted some hybrids, just to see how they compare in growth and hardiness and also to prove that I’m not a snob.

You may be able to see the marigolds planted between. I stared those in my super-duper indoor light garden this year. I also planted lots of other flowers, such as bachelor’s buttons, cock’s comb, moon flowers, black eyed susan vines, pink spiked cleosa, coleus, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Then there’s the squash. Actually zucchini and musk melons too. That’s my henryi clematis (yes, I spelled it correctly) to the left. It has already grown too large for the tuteur, so I need to figure out how to propagate and grow more little Henryis.

Well, enough for today. I need to go check on the mourning dove that flew into our back window. Ben pulled him from Miss P’s (cat) cluthes and we have him in a bucket out back. We’re hoping he’s just in shock.

Ciao!