Every morning I wake up, stretch, walk into my kitchen and look out the small window that frames our backyard garden, hoping to see something new and amazing. Today was no different than any other day, but as I stood peering through the curtains, I noticed a treasure- through the rich foliage and spray of our mediocre watering hose, a shining yellow object about the size of a thumb, just barely hiding in a blanket of leaves. I dropped my glass of milk with a "clunk" on the kitchen counter, slipped on my flip-flops and raced through the laundry room to the back sliding glass door. In my rush to unlock and squeeze myself through the small gap between wall and glass (to keep hot air out), my skirt caught on the lock, tearing a hole, stopping me in my tracks. Calm down, I babbled ... It's just a vegetable!
Just a vegetable indeed. It's my first veggie of summer!! A perfect baby yellow squash, clinging to it's mother plant, resting gently on the soil below. There are actually three of these little gems hanging out and I'm absolutely ecstatic that they are looking so healthy. With the extreme changes in weather, the plants have been growing like weeds, back-n-forth between sun and rain, growing bigger and bigger each day. We've managed to keep the weeds out, which helps, but we've also noticed an unusually large amount of spiders in the yard this year, keeping most insects at bay-- thank goodness for our 8 legged friends.
Next door to the yellow squash is the happy orange pumpkin. Not yet fruiting but looking magnificent, we're expecting the blossoms to fall off soon so round little gourds can start forming. I'm a little worried that this plant is going to end up being HUGE, as it is growing at and extremely rapid rate all of the sudden. That's just fine, I love the little chubby pumpkins. They'll be great for baking, roasting, soups and turning into pasta.
Across the rows, the cherry tomatoes have started to form as well. While the heirlooms are still flowering, the smallest versions are well on their way to being awesome snack machines. The hubbs has been lovingly tracking their development, as these are his favorite mini garden grub yums. We are both waiting eagerly for the big guys to show up as well, especially the giant hothouse tomatoes which we will use for sauces and salads.
The peppers continue to stretch toward the sun and have just started flowering, our green baking apples should be arriving soon since the trees are in full fledged post-pop mode, the plums and nectarines are already weighing down the branches of their collective trees (anyone love fruit?) and our meyer lemons need to be plucked as I sit here typing.
Keeping up with the garden becomes more and more complicated as the season goes on. With temperatures rising, watering the garden becomes crucial, but at the same time we are very concerned with
conserving water resources, so slowly but surely our entire yard (excluding the vegetables and fruit trees) will wither, dry out and go into summer hibernation. These next few upcoming weeks, we will be saying goodbye to the majority of our blossoming shrubs, grasses and flowers-- thankfully our landscaping was designed to be relatively drought resistant, so we'll see them again next year.
As for now, we will be focusing on keeping the food we are growing in our garden healthy, pest-free and plentiful. I'm excited to see what pops up next!
Be well,
B
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