Garden Journal

Some of my roses are enjoying a second flush; they’re actually blooming better now than they did in June.

I keep trying to take photos of my gaura (Siskiyou Pink), and am not satisfied with any of them. They are very delicate and flutter in the breeze most gorgeously, like flights of pink butterflies. My phone camera has trouble capturing the bright detail of them against a grassy background. I suppose I’ll just keep

Monarch and elephant. David Austin rose. Quickfire hydrangea, pinking up for autumn, with annual planter and purple steps beyond. Double coneflower / echinacea. Hydrangea Pinky Winky.

Meadow rue (lavender mist), an under-appreciated flower, I think. Struggled a bit in the heat of July, but coming back strong now. This one’s going out to all the mums-haters out there. See what a nice backdrop those dark red mums make for the bright purple asters? Come on — come over the dark side

Mums and asters added, to brighten the incoming autumn garden. I never used to like mums, because the yellow ones were already so close to brown, and I found them unutterably sad. But then I learned about white and pink mums, and blue and purple asters. When you mix those together with dahlia, autumn sedum,

Added some hardy mums, which I’m hoping will come back next year (the garden store said plant before September 15 if you want them to come back, and when they grow green in June, cut them back hard, so they’ll bloom in the fall). The various sedum are starting to flower, and the roses are

The problem with planting lots of veggies for the first time is that it’s really easy to lose track of what they all are, which also makes it harder to figure out when to pick them. (Anand is also VERY eager to pick things, which adds to the challenge.) The tomatoes I know, but I

Perhaps someone should have warned me to segregate the squash. Admittedly, if I had actually paid any attention to the vegetable garden in the last two months, everything might not have grown together in such mad exuberance, but the question is, how do I extricate the other vegetables now? I may have to rely on

Bee and meadow rue, summer planter, rose.

Cooked our overgrown summer squash in two recipes. On suggestions from others, I sliced it thin, battered and fried it, seasoning with salt and pepper right after frying. That was tasty, but I find the battering-frying process tedious, and am not likely to do that again. Esp. since Anand liked the result, but Kavya still