A New Year Begins
So, I'm Back :)
Writing again after a long absence feels both strange and wonderful, and the New Year gave me a great reason and starting point.
The garden didn't take a break with me; it never does: perennial gardens are long-lived, self-sufficient and powerful, and the gardener is more of an accessory than a critical factor.
I helped a little, planting a surprisingly productive miniature vegetable garden.
It produced a bounty of peppers, cucumbers and holy basil, but was very stingy with the tomatoes. I guess it was not their year.
If you have never grown holy basil, do yourself a favor and try it. Its scent is indeed divine, and it was very enthusiastic about setting seed, so I harvested a good helping to plant next year, right before the first freeze set in.
Last year I just gardened, not journaled.
The short version of it is spring cleaning, planting, weeding, feeding, watering, dead-heading, watering, weeding, fall clean-up, planting spring bulbs, and putting the garden to bed for winter.
This year I'm planning to write the long version, though.
Happy New Year, one and all!
Forever Ever
The garden was dreamlike beautiful this summer!
It was exuberant and surreal with color and fragrance during the blooming abandon of June and July, and predictably turned unmanageable by the end of summer, as it always does.
The black and blue sage, a lovely perennial, if not an enthusiastically invasive one, took over half of the flower bed, and I couldn't bring myself to thin it and tame its aggressive spreading tendencies.
A heavy summer storm took care of that problem for me, and flattened half of it, so I harnessed its incredible vitality to populate less desirable garden areas.
It obliged with the same enthusiasm in dry shade, full shade, poor soil and many other not endearing conditions.
Here's hoping it will bloom with these heart-melting flowers in places nothing else does.
Seriously, don't plant it in full sun and good soil, especially in sweet clay, which it loves with a passion: you'll end up with a monoculture.
Spicy Veggies
Summer brought a wealth of hot peppers, so many I ran out of space to dry them.
These curly cayenne peppers grow almost a foot long and ripen to a deceptively intense red; in reality, they are not very hot, according to the Scoville Scale, just enough to add an enjoyable kick to hearty stews.