Sixteen Months Later....

It's been awhile since I posted garden photos, and I know you are all waiting with bated breath to see how it looks at this very moment.  OK. So humor me.  I want to show you how it looks right now.

As I've mentioned previously, it's been a seriously hot summer, starting in May, with an almost unbroken chain of 90+ degree days for May and June and now into July with no letup in sight until September.  Hot. Now, the summer muggies are here.  It's not quite as hot as it's been during the day, but the difference is negligible, the nights warmer, the air is thick with humidity and we've had several thunderstorms that brought much-needed rain. Now, while I may not enjoy the heat or the humidity or thunderstorms, the garden loves all of it.

The big picture.  Remember when I arrived in February of 2010 this was all a sea of green?  Well, in February it was actually brown, but you know what I mean. Lots of hard work went into this, most of which is chronicled on these pages somewhere, if anyone is curious.

Marigolds, hurriedly seeded in a veggie bed because the holes in the concrete block weren't filled with soil yet.  I had the best intentions of transplanting the seedlings, but you know what they say about good intentions.  Note the big carrot greens and white flowers behind, and bits of the wildflower garden on the right.  Not to mention that big fat squash plant in the rear.

Echinecea and basil seem to do well enough together.  Another temporary home for flowers in the veggie bed.  That yellow crookneck squash is the only one of three remaining.  The other two, both patty-pan, succumbed to the dreaded squash vine borer a week or so ago.  This one was covered with squash bugs and had signs of the borer, too, but a good spraying with Eco Smart insect killer seems to have taken care of both.  It's thriving, at any rate.  The others were gone beyond salvation when I came home from work one day.

Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and okra.  No ripe tomatoes yet, the peppers are disappointing so far.  But, I've had eggplant and okra with plenty more coming along.  When the tomatoes begin to ripen, I'll have more than I want.  But, I'm all prepared to make a bunch of home-made marinara sauce and freeze it in pint jars.  Already have a bunch of pesto in the freezer, in single-serving ice-cubes.  This summer's bounty will last awhile.

I have a veritable forest of baby redwoods sprouting from the humus around what I guess is my 'mother tree', a twig brought from Oregon that I hoped would grow.  They aren't large, but they seem to be quite vigorous.

So that's it, people.  Oh -- I also got a whole handful of blueberries today from the three bushes.  More are ripening every day, but that bird netting makes it almost as hard for me to get to them as it does the birds. Definitely need an improvement to this system for next year.