An off year

 Walking around the yard this year is a little bit challenging, and a real reminder of how much time we're needing to invest on the human side of the Motley Garden this year! The plant side is really taking a hit.

But this single plant, coming around the corner from the garage to the vegetable garden, is a bright smile - this is a cosmos that seeded itself from the annuals that Sam gave us last year. What a fun little bright gift.

 Because this is what we mostly grew in the vegetable garden this year. Weeds, weeds, and more weeds. Weeds of all kinds, and many taller than I am. And all going to seed. Underneath those weeds are some poor pathetic pumpkin and squash plants that the girls and I quickly stuck in the ground this spring, but I doubt the poor light-starved plants have produced anything. There are also potatoes hiding in there, too, sprouted from the ones that we didn't find last fall. It will be interesting to see if they amount to anything if we (hopefully!) can get out there to dig them up.

 But, ah, tomatoes. It's hard to go wrong with tomatoes. They, too, are feeling the effects of neglect - no water when it's hot, no weekly tying up and pruning, no regular picking, but still - look at those beauties that grace our table!!

And there was one plant that did survive, and is finally flourishing: the pie pumpkins! We have at least a dozen 8" pumpkins trying to turn orange before the growing season is over.

 And then there's THIS ... thing. It came up by itself. It's growing the most incredible, large (14-18") warty pumpkins! Won't these be fun to put on the steps in a few weeks?? There's one beautiful orange one, and two or three more giving it their best effort.

 And, up in the front, the eggplants are thriving. We're giving them away to friends (and strangers! That was a fun story. Matt was at the kitchen window and saw a woman walking on the path stop to look at our plants. He ran out and told her to help herself! So she came back the next day and did...and came back a few hours later with a two-serving helping of what she had made complete with recipe. It was good. We made it again! Still don't know where she lives or what her name is! We'd love to plant more edibles by the path garden next summer with a sign saying, "Enjoy!") and we're trying to eat some of them ourselves.

Tasty for lunch

Since this is apparently the summer that I don't have much time to really BE in the garden, but just to occasionally enjoy it in passing, here is yet another tidbit of a post on what I found out there the other day.

Yum. Fresh cucumbers, and DILL! which is a first for me. I've had two people mention that although it is an annual, it tends to reseed itself, which I'm hoping proves to be the case. Regardless, for lunch today with a touch of vinegar, we had some delicious fresh pickles!

A surprise

For some reason I thought lupines needed two seasons to bloom. Apparently this one didn't get the message:

What a fun surprise to find in "Great-Grandpa's Garden"!

Daylilies

The white lilies in full bloom

Aren't these incredible? They're huge, pristinely white, and last for such a long time.

Weeds

Gardening is great for analogies, and as a mother of nine children, every time I'm out weeding my gardens, I can't help but think of the work that I do every day as a mother.

Sometimes the weeds I pull up are just little things that I grab as I'm walking by. These are kind of putsy to pick at, but they come up easily - the whole root and everything in one little tug. Some of parenting is like that. "Oh, no, Evania, scissors are for PAPER, not hair." Once, done. I don't expect I'll have to repeat that one again for her.

But sometimes it's a much bigger job, and MAN is it crazy how quickly some of those things can grown! And once that root is down in there, you can pull all you want, but unless you go after it with a shovel, you don't stand a chance - it will be back just as strong next year (or later this same summer!) And even if you DO go after the big ones with a shovel, the odds of you getting the entire root are not very good. It will be back. And you've got to keep watching, and when you see it sticking its ugly head back out of the ground, you've got to go back after it again and again and again until it finally dies.

Burdock is one of my top five hated weeds, right up there with creeping charlie, thistle, and the beautiful purple wild flower that takes over and chokes out other plants and refuses to die. And that leaves one more slot in the top five open...I guess I'm undecided what should be in that spot! There are a number of contenders depending on the season...

And some just never seem to die.

Just as I have a tendency to fall back into the same patterns of sin again and again, I see it ever so clearly in my children. The weeds that don't get pulled out right away have roots so deep that no shovel of mine is ever going to pull it out. Oh, on those nights, how I pray for the Roundup of the power of God to pour down on those weeds and watch them wither away, because some of the "weeds" growing in those little hearts have roots that are no match for even the most skilled human gardener!

What I've found is the best thing to do at that point is just to simply keep at it. Pulling *part* of the plant weakens the plant, which slowly, ever so slowly, weakens the root. Pulling up the immature plants prevents the disaster of a weed going to seed. That burdock up above might come back (though I think I got enough of that one we might be okay for at least a few years!), but it's not coming back as anything other than itself! No baby burdock surrounding it this time!

But in the meantime, the work of the weeds also has the potential to be a great connector of me and my children. Especially among the younger set, and often even Leah, too, I have eager helpers, and pretty dependable, too, I must say.

Rinnah and Evania are here helping me pull out an edible weed from the vegetable garden. It's a win-win - they have something to bring to the front yard for their game, and I lose the weeds! Reuben has learned to distinguish this yellow-flowered clover, and will very deliberately pull up just those. It's great for me - he makes slow, but real progress, and it keeps him  happily engaged near me in an activity that it outside!

These precious summer days spent outside together are irreplaceable.

And a few days later...

 Do you see it? In the midst of the growing jungle that used to be a vegetable garden (and doesn't the ancient rusting wheelbarrow that used to belong to Matt's grandma and the old shed that Matt's dad designed and built when he was in high school just add to the whole scene??) there is one big exhuberant burst of color.

Sure enough - that volunteer "salad green" turned out to be a beautiful explosion of color.

And...white lilies!

Didn't have to wait for long! This morning the first two were blooming, and by evening, more were opening up. What a pinnacle of each summer when these stunning beauties do their thing.

Anticipation

 'Tis the season when my anticipation begins to build as the gigantic white lilies...

 ...and the silly old wild allium that seed themselves like weeds, and are generally a nuisance...except when they're blooming...

 ...and the majestic and impossible-to-transplant, so they shall live here and only here forever globe thistles...

...are all just on the cusp of bursting into bloom in the cottonwood garden at the top of the driveway! I can hardly contain my excitement!

Surprise!

I found a volunteer in my vegetable garden today. Last week I'd seen it and thought it was some odd sort of salad green that had come up from last year's that went to seed, but turns out it's not.

I do believe in a day or two I will have a lovely poppy amongst the weeds that are taking up residence this year in the vegetable garden!

The tomatoes and cabbage are all in

Thanks to my two little helpers (and our friend Carrie who was inside with the rest of the little people so I had enough continuous time to do it!) we finally on the first day of summer have the rest of the tomato plants in the soil.

I had Evania help me carry one of the packs of plants, and I took the other three, leaving two that I figured we'd come back for later.

Gloria had other ideas. Here she is toddling around behind us!

And Evania's getting good enough with a shovel to be a real helper. Gloria just wanted to wander around holding clods of dirt.

And after lunch, Leah and I were able to scoot out and throw in the rest of the cabbage and broccoli - woo hoo! All of the veggies that we had purchased are in the ground!

Orange Lilies

 These orange lilies are not one of my favorites - it's just not a color I prefer - but they ended up being the right choice for this location. I realize I need a photo with just a little bit more context, but we have this incredible piece of granite that used to be in our neighbor's yard. [back story: our house and the house next door belonged to brothers who were truck farmers. The house next door no longer exists after an accidental fire.] Even though this came from our neighbor's yard, it has a great personal story.

 See that long, vertical groove that runs half way down the rock? Well, the neighbor in the house two down from us grew up in the house next to us (Matt's Dad's cousin), and her brother was over one day and shared the story - when Matt's Grandpa and his brother were clearing their fields, they had many rocks to clear. Some, like this one, were too big to remove as is, so Grandpa Walter used a hand drill to drill that groove that you see, and filled it with TNT, and made the rock smaller. 😊

 I wanted to plant something around the rock, but didn't want to hide this fantastic bit of family history, so these lilies were the right ones - they have enough height to stand up to the rock, but also leave the view clear.

~ ~ ~

Also around the yard tonight:

The blueberries continue to grow. This is our first full season with the bushes, and it's great to see how many are on there! We have three varieties, plus a bonus one from Sam from the garden store, and they intentionally bear at different times. These are the earliest ones, growing plumper every day.

We had incredible winds yesterday, resulting in the larger half of the top of our old apple tree blowing down. We're going to try grafting with this tree - we love the apples, and have no idea what variety they are. Besides, grafting just sounds so cool, and not too difficult! If we do, we'll probably end up with a few of them, so if anyone we know wants one, they could have one (friend Elisa who is the only other person who reads this blog that I know of besides me!!! I thinking of you!!!)

Owen and Matt went out today to tackle the first pass at getting it cleaned up.

Please also note that the tomato trellises that Owen and I so carefully dug in also blew down. So now Matt has to do it anyway. I am grateful, on this year when we really don't have time to devote to the vegetable garden as we're still busy adjusting to life with the two newest members of the Motley Crew, that the plants were not big enough to be ripped out by the loss of their trellises! Also grateful that I only planted on one side, so far, of each trellis. That makes it easier to put them back in without disturbing plants.

Early June garden tour

These late May, early June days are some of the best for the garden. I tend to hit the garden with full vigor in the spring, so find that my spring bloomers tend to be the best developed. The last year or two I've been trying to be more intentional about filling up the later summer with something other than yellow daylilies, but this season is still when the garden shines its brightest.

Starting earlier in the day, the fountain was putting in some time. I'm looking forward to developing the planted areas of the fountain garden to provide more physical and visual cues for where people are and are not intended to walk! I'd love to incorporate some more permanent (and less tippy!) seating options over here as well.

 It's wonderful that this is an activity that Reuben can share with his sisters!

 

Later, after the kids were in bed, Matt and I were able to spend a few minutes outside.

The garden up the hill from the small rain garden:

These yellow iris are glad I pulled some of the myrtle out from around their toes last year!

Looking up from the rain garden to the yellow iris at the top of the photo. I like how the yellow bookends what's happening in between.

Moving up the path from the lower to upper yard, on one side the coral bells are blooming alongside the blue flag iris.

The gooseneck is an invasive one! I try to keep it to the south (right) of the stepping stones, counting on the concrete stones to create something of a barrier. This motley garden relies on hardy plants, but that also means we can be somewhat ruthless keeping them in place. Looks like I have some pulling to do!

Moving into the large garden by the old elm and big maple, the large red root beer iris I planted last fall have decided to go ahead and bloom this year! These will be so pretty after a few years of settling in! These are like little sentinals at the entry to the path that leads through this garden to the yellow slide and the G² office entrance of the house.

You don't get a good view of the swirling pattern of this portion of the garden from the photo, but you CAN see that the gas plants took pretty well to their transplanting last season! The three smaller ones at the beginning of the spiral took it a little harder, but they may still come into their own over the next few years.

Such a fun variety of colors and textures - the large, flat, lobed purple leaves in the front, the serrated glossy foliage of the gas plant, topped by the stately white columnar clusters, next to the fine grained slim lines of the chives, topped this time of year with their tiny purple globes. The dead elm provides a nice backdrop.

This garden around the base of the cottonwood is always one of my favorites.

And the peonies have all burst into flower after those first two started last week!

Nothing like a profusion of old fashioned peonies to transform an ugly, peeling, old shed!

And into the vegetable garden, which is apparently going to have a mostly fallow year. And that's okay. With Mira back in the hospital, I had Owen help me put up the two tomato trellises. How nice to have a son who's strong enough and big enough to take Dad's place in some things!

Also, in the front of the photo, you can see the potato sprouts greening up. These are the last of last year's harvest that we didn't eat because they were beginning to look like little aliens crawling out of their box in the dark basement! We thought it wouldn't hurt to put them in the ground, and apparently they took to it quite well!

And, lastly, the garden on the north side of our practice retaining wall between the blueberries and the vegetable garden. A bright hosta, some root beer irises, and basic orange daylilies for later in the summer. I really enjoy the part of gardening where you split and transplant,and it looks mediocre for the rest of that season, but the next year, it's lovely, and in two more years, it's bountiful!! How could you not enjoy being a part of this!

Thinking about Eden is one small piece of what makes me look forward to eternity. If, before the Fall, Adam and Eve spent their time working in a garden that must be a little bit of what paradise must be! And we get to be part of that in a tiny way when we garden here in our short time on this earth.