Eloquent Pedestrian

The Japanese beetles continue to pester me, though they don't show up a dozen at a time anymore. My Love and Peace rose is blooming and looking awful for all the damage they've done. All of this tragedy just highlights how amazing my Champlain rose is. So I thought I'd tell you a little more about it. Last year I was forced to keep my gardening ambitions limited. I wrote a little bit about this in one of my first posts. But I was absolutely determined to get myself one red rose bush. So for once in the history of my whole garden, I did my homework. I started with the  Friends School Plant Sale  catalog, which contains tons of good information about each of the roses it sells. This was where I first heard of the Champlain. It was called a Canadian rose, very hardy, and the catalog also mentioned it was planted outside of Patrick's Cabaret, which would be helpful, if the catalog didn't come out while there was still snow on the ground. But I looked it up on the int...

So as soon as I said something about the heat, the heat wave broke. Not entirely, mind you, God forbid we should be comfortable, but it's not nearly as hot, and the rain storms keep everything a little cooler. So today we're laying low for the heat to dissipate so we can really whip the garden back into shape tomorrow. The weeds have grown as much as the plants, as I've mentioned, and really need to be managed. But they are not the infestation I'm worried about. What worries me are these guys: Japanese Beetles are beautiful little bastards with iridescent green and brown exoskeletons. They have voracious appetites and a serious taste for my roses. Last year I had to aggressively check for them and kill them, but I could do it with a good squish to them one by one. This year, I have been noticing more and more of them eating the buds before they can even flower. I thought things had gotten pretty bad when, yesterday, I went out and saw about a dozen of them on each of...

So we've broken a few records here and I haven't really seen my garden in days. That's because the temperature is in the nineties, and so is the humidity. Oh wait, it's only in the eighties, that's not so bad, right? The good news is that I haven't had to water, because the air is full of it and because we've had occasional thunderstorms. The thunderstorms don't relieve the heat, but at least they give me an excuse not to go out in it. From what I can tell on my short journey from the garage to the house, all of my plants seem to be loving it. Especially the Pineapple Sage (picture later) which is from Guatemala and probably thinks it's died and gone home. It's gotten very large, which is fine with me as it's a wonderful smelling plant. Fingers crossed for red flowers on that one. The broccoli is flowering, and the lettuce. These are things a city girl who shops in a grocery store never knew existed. I didn't even realize the broccoli...

Remember Jack and the Beanstalk? A young boy gets duped into buying magic beans. His mother tosses them out the window and they grow into a "stairway to heaven" that predated Zeppelin? Rings a bell? Good. I can't say I ever gave much thought as a child to why it was a beanstalk and not a cucumber vine, or a giant head of cabbage. That is because I'd never planted beans before. And then it was obvious to me that neither had Jack's mother, or she would know that all beans are magic. Planning for the garden this year involved a lot of talk about small space/high yield plants for food. We do have a spacious yard, but not much of it was cultivated, and so we ruled out melons and cucumbers and any other plant that requires an acre to really be worth it. Then mom said "well, there's always beans." And I shrugged and said, "Sure. I like beans." And I do like beans. I read up on them and found out that beans, like peanuts, are legumes.  And le...

Happy Independence day, four people from facebook who read my blog! Every time I log onto blogger and see I have one follower I get all excited only to suddenly recall that I followed myself early on when I was figuring out how everything worked. *le sigh* Moving on... The bees are back! While this might have caused me a great deal of panic two years ago, gardening has brought me to peace with my bee brethren (or presumably mostly sistren). This last cold week, leading up to the nasty heat I wrote about, I noticed a conspicuous lack of buzzing in my patch. This is a problem, as several things are blooming right now, and I know that bee activity is essential to getting fruit from my plants. The weather heated up so much that the bees decided to stick it out and didn't show up again until things cooled down over the holiday weekend. I was excited to get them back, even the big scary wasps, and comforted at the sight of my friend, I call it Bumbledore. When I started to call it th...