Saturday, June 20, 2009

Glorious Summer Gardens






Today I decided that I am the luckiest person in the world. I was standing in the middle of the garden, barefoot (the only way to navigate in a garden), in shorts and t-shirt, with my new Tilley hat on and realized that life is pretty good when I looked at it from the middle of garden. I was surrounded by my favourite plants - eggplants,tomatoes and basil, and couldn't think of any place that I would rather have been on the day before the summer solstice. It was 31 degrees out at the peak of the day, it smelled of fresh earth, tomato plants and basil, and Friday was my last day of work for the summer - life doesn't get any better than that.

We have an absolutely beautiful back yard. It is this way mainly because my husband, Bruno, is a wonderful landscaper/maintainer. He waters, cuts the grass, moves flowerbeds and picks weeds constantly - the result is how gorgeous it is. I am the planter and alternate water girl/weeder. He has threatened many times to put my flower beds on casters so he doesn't have to redo them or enlarge the garden every year. lol

My eggplants are flowering! The bleeding hearts(not shown), chives and Iris' are in full bloom and being sassy about it. I'll post more pictures later as the plants fill out and add more colour. My garden is way behind where it should be because I planted so late this year - too much frost.

I had to laugh when I looked at the picture (above) of my garden because it looks like I am growing red beer cups this year. I normally use cut off 2 litre milk cartons but had none this year for the first time in 25 years. It offends my resolve to reuse things when I have to use something new with the intent of throwing it away at the end of season. However, if it is choice between the cutworms getting my plants and having to use new beer cups, the beer cups win hands down.

Happy Solstice!