early morning mantra

My daughter left to go out of town with her grandmother at five a.m. I decided to take advantage of the cool morning air (and the morning mosquitoes) and have a sit in the garden. I went empty handed, not even a camera followed, and just watched the sun turn on the lights in the sky, inch by inch. It wasn’t long, perhaps fifteen minutes passed, that I found myself thinking about how nice it was, to sit out in the garden and relax, without my camera. And of course, after that light bulb went off, all I could do was obsess over having my camera…. that and my kitchen twine and scissors. This gets me every time. I’ve been searching for an old mailbox to set up in my garden. I’d like to keep my kitchen twine, and scissors, and trowel and maybe some wire in it for close reach. No gloves though, because I’m terrified of black widows.

So, of course I get the camera. And of course, I forget the twine and scissors. After I took a few shots, I decided to take care of my luffa vine. I’ve never grown luffa. It’s one of those gourds I’ve always wanted to plant, but I never really had the gumption or the space while I was surrounded by the bounty of nursery retail goods. So I planted three. I mean literally, three seeds. No double dropping of the seed or any of that mess. Those three seeds came up with no problem, even the one I experimented with in the cinderblock hole (this is an on-going experiment, soon I’ll have a database file of all the plants that do well or fail in cinder block holes) looks exactly like the other two in the larger bed. Two of these guys have begun busting out of the seams of my humble 6 or 7 foot trellis fence. So, in comes the kitchen twine. Oh, how I love kitchen twine. I’ve used other tying elements in the garden, shoe laces, torn shirts, wire, jute, that expensive green twine you can buy in the nursery…but I’ve finally narrowed my favorite down to plain ol’ “stuff a chicken” kitchen twine. It’s cheap (family dollar, can ya holla), it’s biodegradable, and it expands with water and dangles in the breeze. I love cutting liberal amounts and just letting them hang like they are on some sort of veggie Mardi gras float. And they will just melt into my garden on their own time, like everything else is allowed to do.

luffa gone wild.

Once I get the luffa some extended horizontal space via the kitchen twine (I have no idea if they will take to the horizontal twinning, but I’m willing to aggressively help them reach their destination). I…take more pictures, and sit just a bit more until the humidity starts making it a little uncomfortable.

strawberry

pennyroyal & horseradish

watermelon flowers....i think i'm in trouble.

spearmint bloom

tea tree

Last year I allowed some of my tomatoes to mold and rot in the beds and I had a couple of volunteers come October. So when we had that uncharacteristically cold winter, they had no chance. This year, I’m going to try and allow some volunteers some room, and if they feel the need to grow, I’ll help them out a little with some sort of hothouse/cold frame set up. The thought of having fresh tomatoes in the winter is just too exciting. Plus, these guys look like some sort of jim Henson muppet, I can’t help but think they are cute.

her name is cherry

wolf berry

a very happy fig tree

best seat in the house