the last of the red [cool] lovers

I love my little herb garden, even though it's pretty inconveniently distanced from the house.  Dill is great for salmon, cilantro puts out beautiful tiny flowers that I love to use in bouquets, and parsley is great for a mild accent.  I haven't used any thyme yet, but I have plenty...along with the basil.  When you plant 10 varieties, you get...a lot of basil.

So far, I'm only using 2 varieties in cooking.  Cinnamon, Ruffled, Lemon, Holy Tulsi, Amorotto, Cardinal, etc. sound interesting, but they don't smell quite right for recipes.  Thankfully Todd likes pesto!  So far, a broccoli lemon pesto pasta and a standard mixed-basil pesto for an artichoke/roasted tomato pizza have been rousing successes.  And, of course, all basils are lovely in bouquets!  

We had one last blast of rain before the summer heat set in.

My beloved sweet peas and snapdragons are rapidly going to seed.  I've picked a last few bouquets using those and other last-legs cool flowers.

The final poppies are giving up the ghost, but leaving behind gorgeous seed pods.

Thankfully, there's new growth in the garden to distract me.

These are strawflowers, which look like juicy raspberries before opening.

They are so named because their petals already feel dried - like straw - when they bloom.  Naturally, they last forever in bouquets and dried arrangements.  Aren't they unusual?

See the little hunter?

We have a lot of other life around here.  Deer...with baby!

A lone turkey, hurrying into the underbrush.

Growing tadpoles!!

Bees...

Dragonflies...

...and loads of butterflies.

Pests are abundant, like Japanese beetles...

...and the flea beetles on my amaranth.

You have to take the good with the bad in gardening, of course.  Now that the heat has set in, "the bad" includes 3 hours weekly of monotonous watering for me, and around the same for Todd with mowing, just to keep our paths clear around the barn and to the pond.  Typical summer stuff!

At least the dry, hot weather slows down the weeds. 

Have a great week!

petticoat junction

For the past week, I've watched my fall-sown poppies crack open.  Would they be pink?  Purple?  White?  The buds slowly split, soon looking just like a Victorian lady's dress, with bustle and fancy ruffled petticoat.  The poppies are...red.

Red is a color that I don't use much in the garden.  I prefer soft pinks, cream, lavender, yellow.  But these are making a bold statement that I like more than I expected to!

I don't pick them for bouquets...just leave them in the garden to enjoy.  

The white flowers are nicotiana - flowering tobacco.  They have delightful lettuce-y leaves.

We've reached the part of the season of purely morning work.  With midday temperatures in the mid-90s, I have no interest in being outside.  At this point, the plants are on their own.  I do a little weeding, a little watering, but mainly, I leave them alone.  It's been damp and humid enough for some pretty nice mushroom colonies!

Hot and humid are the norm for an Indiana summer, and I'm just glad that we made it to mid-June before the heat really set in.  The extra-long cool spring provided a wonderful foundation for my "cool annuals," which are just starting to wind down.  The first of the "hots" - snapdragons! - are just beginning.   

I like being out in the early morning.

Dew dapples the new blooms.

I like seeing the new blooms, from flowers which were just theoretical the night before.  Paper seed packet pictures and a long, slow youth as identical green nubbins in the soil.  Then they burst open and are finally real!

As they bloom, they must be picked, or they'll go to seed.  I've been slow about ordering flower food - those little powder packets that come with store-bought bouquets - so mine only seem to last for 3-4 days.  Therefore I toss, toss, toss, and cut, cut, cut.  A couple of times per week...

I definitely have a soft spot for the aforementioned snapdragons.  They're a flower that I remember from my childhood, and they're long-blooming and vigorous.  And the colors!

There are early-, mid-, and late-blooming snapdragon varieties, and I've planted them all.  I can't wait to see what comes up!

The newly-plowed back garden is finally showing some growth.  At last!  I won't get any blooms for another month, but still exciting.  I've planted close to 140 sunflowers and many of them are here.

My new lens is still (and indefinitely) back-ordered.  This means that I can't take my usual insect/nature photos, which is tough.   Even though my subject material is now pretty limited, at least it's a pretty nice source material.

Have a great week!