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| Fourth of July fireworks: Red Asiatic lily (name unknown) blooming among the amaranth. |
Sometimes I long for just one good old childhood summer. Remember those long stretches of sunshine, bike rides, and building "dirtbike" trails in the woods behind the neighbor's house? Now that summers have (d)evolved into 40 hour work weeks, cleaning, grocery shopping and other adult tasks, it feels like it's July before you can even blink.
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| The wild (as in, not yet tamed) back garden. |
Since the garden has been feeling looking pretty neglected, we decided to forego cookouts and play in the yard today. We filled up ELEVEN of those Costco yard bags, so you know we got a lot done.
We limbed up the cherry tree, created a proper wood pile, transplanted a couple of tomatoes, and did a TON of weeding. Amongst the casualties? More of the weedy orchid that I first wrote about a few years back:
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| Epipactis helleborine, naturalized here since the late 1800's. |
I also finally clipped off a few of the sunburned/wind burned fig leaves that looked the worst. I had thought I was so careful this year when I brought them outside... but the leaves say otherwise:
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| And this is one of the ones I kept... you can imagine how awful the others were! |
On the bright side, in spite of all the sun damage I somehow still have baby figs. And in spite of not cleaning up the broken-birdbath-turned-succulent-planter yet this year...
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| Lots of dead leaves strewn throughout this planter, no? |
... I'm anticipating a bloom on a succulent that has never flowered for me before!
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| This future crassula perfoliata bloom looks cute and fuzzy in bud! |
And with that, I'm going to hit a hot shower before I roll into bed... hopefully, that will help keep some of the aches away so I can get up on time! (Yet another thing we never had to worry about as kids... ;-)
"What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it."
- Charles Dudley Warner
