in and around the garden :: mid summer splendor

(a full basket of herbs to dry for tea~  recently my six-months-from-now self gently nudged my right-now-self's shoulder and whispered a reminder that I rather like herbal tea, especially in Winter, and I ought to get picking and cutting and drying.  so I did.  tulsi and mint and anise hyssop and elder flower and catnip and feverfew and chamomile and caldendula and eucalyptus and lemon verbena and lavender and raspberry leave and california poppy- all in this harvest basket above.  whew!)

coming home from a week+ away in late July means lots of garden catch-up.  it is no exaggeration to say that the first thing I did (after petting my dear Ollie cat) was to take a walk through the garden and weed a little here, pick a little there.  even before stepping a foot inside.  and oh, the flowers!  flowers, flowers flowers.  so much golden and pink and purple what with all the rudbeckia and sunflowers and cosmos and coneflower and larkspur and zinnias.  it's like full on summer glory out there when it comes to flowers right now.

the basil is amazing and surely some pesto-making is in my near future.  I generally grow genovese and thai basil, and I have been cutting thai basil to top my dinner just about every night, so loving its bright and complex flavor.  I've also been cutting and drying lemon balm and mint and tulsi by the armloads to have plenty for my favorite tea blends this winter.

this mid summer garden of mine is a place of beans and squash, peppers and greens.  we've harvested the onions and the garlic~ always one of my favorite things.  we grow our entire year's supply of garlic and enough onions so that we don't have to purchase them for at least a couple months or so.  they take up a good amount of space for a good amount of time, but I am never ever sorry to have planted so much and if anything, usually wish I planted more.

we've got a couple tomato plants out there but mostly I just pick tomatoes when I'm at work at the farm.  they take up a lot of space and we seem to have some sort of fungal wilt in our soil that always, always gets them, so.......  it's kind of sad to watch them grow up all hearty and happy and then one day be totally wilted.  now I plant a few each year and pretend to ignore them and not really care (all the while totally caring) and we get by like that, the tomatoes and I.  and speaking of garden hardships, when we came home from our recent trip I had to pull out several (most!) of our winter and summer squash plants due to damage from squash vine borers.  ah!  what beasts!  these plants that looked SO happy and vibrant and that were covered in baby squashes were just all sad and wilted.  squash vine borers are kind of new to us, and I've decided that they pretty much suck.  if any of you have tried and true tips on dealing with them, please send them my way.  I've always thought of the squashes as being pretty tough until they eventually succumb to powdery mildew late in the season, but this is no joke.

the rhubarb that was transplanted almost two years ago from my grandpa's land in the Adirondacks has now really found its footing and seems really happy.  so sweet to have a little piece of my grandparents with me in this way.

the raspberries gave out weeks ago and we are on to blackberries and blueberries and grapes.  and the grapes are so, so good!  having them almost takes the sting away for the fact that the squirrels ate all but one or two (out of over a hundred!) of our apples on our young trees.  and the photo up there with the pear?  that is our pear harvest.  as in, that ONE pear.  a late (well, totally appropriately timed actually, when not accounting for whacky climate change) frost got just about all of the flowers on the pear tree, but later on it put out just a few flowers and this wee pear is the one that made it through all of that.  it will be our first pear from the backyard.  it is weighing down a wee little branch and there is something altogether kind of ridiculously cute about it all.


the garden is my happy place, no doubt.  I look forward to spending some time out there every morning and throughout the day.  when I participated in Amanda Soule's 'Garden Tour' guest posts over on SouleMama last summer, I very much enjoyed answering her very thoughtfully put together questions for the interview portion of it.  one of her questions was "what is/are your favorite thing(s) to grow?"  it seems so obvious a question to think about and plan according to, but I realized that year after year I would of course plant these things, but then also plant 'just a bit' of so many other things, too.  well, after thinking about it and answering that and other questions, I decided I was done growing the things I don't really, really love and/or enjoy growing myself, for one reason or another.  so now I am growing loads of greens and herbs and flowers and alliums and I also grow a fair amount of snap peas in the spring and beans and squash (well, I try anyway) in the summer.  a smattering of nightshades and root crops.  I've left behind the broccoli and cabbage and brussels sprouts, the carrots  and turnips, (they just never seem sweet when we grow them no matter what season or variety!) and larger tomato and pepper plantings (relying on the farm for those instead), and it feels good, this dedication to my favorites.  I feel like at first glance it almost looks like it is all tulsi and flowers and kale out there now.  it isn't really, but........ well, they feature heavily.

if you have a garden, I'm curious- what are your favorite things to grow?