I started this post 10 days ago, and here it is, still languishing. Shall we see if I can resurrect it? Perhaps a wander through the garden is exactly what we need.
On the Saturday before Mother's Day I finished planting the vegetable garden. Here is a picture taken from an upstairs window that very evening. The next day I flew to Texas to see my mom.
It doesn't look that much different now, two weeks later. The tomatoes and peppers are doing well, as are the eggplant. Not everything else is up yet. I have perhaps been remiss in watering daily during the current heat spell, but I have also given myself permission to fall down on the job as needed. The experimental things are up, yacon for example. The flush of green at the back, chervil, is now bronze and dying back in the heat. It probably needs to be pulled but it has also probably self-seeded and will return, another flush of chervil gracing kitchen and garden. The fava beans (front) pods are plumping nicely. I have been eating peas for a week or so.
I had a large handful, about a cup and half, of peas this morning with my local eggs and local bacon. The peas were steamed very briefly, just as long as it took to quickly scramble two eggs, American-style, but still just barely firm to the touch, while still tender and delicate, the way I like them. This was actually the first relatively full breakfast I had enjoyed since my first chemotherapy on Wednesday. Who can say no to breakfast in the soft morning light, especially in a garden?
I have not actually done much in the garden but enjoy it. Put a plant in here and and there, Add a few herbs to my salad. I am waiting for the blueberries.
While I was away the Louisiana Iris unfurled their blossoms and greeted me with their saturated colors upon my return. They are still blooming, soft and velvety, as are the flag iris, which just don't seem to stop.
The blackberry blossoms are fading but the vines are covered in green fruit. Mixed in with the blackberries are the polka roses:
I struggle to find a photo with both rose and blackberry blossom. The scale of the roses dwarfs the delicate blackberry flowers. Perhaps there will be roses when the fruit ripens. Below is a photo of a rose for scale, one I posted on Instagram last week.
Yes, that is a hospital bracelet still on my wrist. Doesn't it coordinate so nicely? I believe I took that after coming home from my first chemotherapy session.
There were a couple of other photos taken before I actually started treatment, an attempt at registering a moment too quickly lost. This peony, for example, the one nestled at the base of the little lime hydrangeas.
This peony lives is this bed on the east side of the front yard. You see the bed below in the morning light. Alas the peonies are gone, but the bed is filling in nicely, and it brings me great joy. This bed was my least favorite part of the yard when I moved in --ugly red knockout roses, red azaleas -- not me. Now it looks like my garden. The peony is behind the dogwood, hiding behind the nepeta now that the blossoms have fallen, the nepeta which looks almost. silvery in the horizontal light.
The Siberian iris which are nestled behind the cranesbill geraniums also bloomed this spring, their first bloom:
This bed has also filled in nicely and makes me smile every day. Smiles are always good. No I haven't filled the planters yet.
I have started planting more cranesbill geraniums in front of the encore azaleas that were put in earlier in the spring, but you don't see much yet. In fact, the leaves of this geranium are deep purple and are not really visible above the clay at the moment. You see their tiny little tags. Named "ghost" they will have white blossoms. Perhaps a moment of craziness, perhaps not, but is not that the joy of gardens, the indulgence of wild ideas, the hope that things will play well together?
As you can see, there is still much to be done. Much promise ahead. Much waiting as well and I am content with that. There is time.
