Jackie – The Bit in the Middle

Garden Notes

We moved some plants around this year with varying degrees of success. In the past, we mixed in vegetable plants with the decorative ones in the borders, but this year we marked off dedicated space for vegetables and planted seeds directly into the ground in early June. Lettuce, broccoli, and peas were early successes. The chard is plentiful and the borage seems happy as well.

The tomatoes have been slow, but we have new red ones every day now. We should be overrun with zucchini by this time of year, but we’re just now getting our first ones. Asparagus was a total failure.

Luckily, the Anaheim chiles are doing well. We picked and roasted a few last weekend and are looking forward to using them in all manner of dishes – from soup to green chile cheeseburgers.

August

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

~Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

Beetle Mania

it’s that time of year when the Japanese Beetles emerge and begin feasting on their favorite plant foods. A few years ago, they decimated our previously healthy and productive grape vines. Here, their favorite plant seems to be our poor Serviceberry.