We had a very wet spring. I have watered the flowers in the front of my house perhaps twice since April. I was looking at my tomatoes and despairing that I would have any kind of harvest. Then I went back to my June posts for the past two years and lo and behold, my photos told a different tale. My tomatoes were just as small this time of year and did very well. In fact, my garden looked nicer this year than in Junes past. My birthday is in June, and two years ago I had a party and despaired that late June none of my flowers were in bloom. I had a lull of a few weeks. This year, I have had things in flower fairly consistently. In part I think it is a random function of weather. My tulips were very late, my early spring flowers lasted longer because of cold, wet weather, and it got hot very suddenly which woke up the roses, lilies and primroses. My garden has shifted from mostly purple to an explosion of colours in time for Canada day.
The past few days have become excessively hot. Though the peppers and tomatoes are loving it, I am not. We had a party last week, and it poured rain most of the day. Today we have a family lunch and I hope it is not too hot. The prediction is thunderstorms tonight. I had ambitions to weed this week, but it is has been too hot to inspire me to work outside. My gardening and blogging recently has been distracted as well by Game of Thrones (I am now on season 4 so should be caught up before it interferes with the harvest), and a particularly active social life recently which has not revolved around my garden.
This blog post is mostly going to be photos, to keep track in time of where things are at. I will, however, update on my experiments. The storebought cucumbers are doing well in their suspended pots. The ones I planted from seed never grew, or sprouted and died. I have no idea if the cucumber beetles have not found them yet or won't attack them so far off the ground, but so far, so good. The tomatoes and basil and peppers in the hay bales are generally doing better than the ones in the ground and in pots. The sunflowers look small and scrawny. The rose bush is spectacular, and I have hundreds of columbine hybrid babies coming up (any takers are welcome!). I have harvested the garlic scapes and gave out bags of them as party favours, and Josh pureed and froze a lot of them. We have been eating salad from the garden, stretched by storebought lettuce. We discovered that wood sorrel can replace lemon grass in Thai sauces, which is a good thing because my garden is overrun with it. It is in all my salads too these days. The strawberries are ripe and the raspberries are getting there too. The bergamot is in bloom.
Today is July 1st (Canada day), I have no work. The kids are still asleep. I woke up at 6:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep. I have family visiting from out of town this afternoon, and the weather forecast is for 33 degrees. So, still in my pyjamas, I go out to weed, water and harvest. I got a nice bunch of strawberries, salad greens, the last of the garlic scapes and some mint for mint lemonade, which is a favourite around here. I was planning to spray for aphids, but as I put up a load of laundry standing next to the apple tree, I noticed a rather fat, contented looking ladybug making a feast of the aphids and decided to wait until tomorrow.
