The summer garden is over, but there is still plenty of life in the garden. The roses are happily blooming now that the dreaded Japanese beetles are long gone. The crepe myrtles are still blooming, and the parsley is a beautiful, huge green mound, ready to eat.



There was a heavy mist going on when I took these pictures yesterday. It felt wonderful. Although officially it is still a few days away, the scent of autumn is already in the air. I love it! I'm ready for pumpkins and scarecrows and leaves blowing in the wind. I will miss the flowers, though, and especially the fresh tomatoes.



These are the Texas Bluebonnets that I planted in June. I became fascinated by the raindrops puddled in the center of the leaves. They did not bloom this year; hopefully they will come back next year.



It misted rain most of the day yesterday, except for when it flat out poured down (known around here as a "toad-strangler"). It was a nice day to stay in with a cup of hot tea and a good mystery.



Most of the vegetable garden has been put to bed for the winter. We pulled up all the tomato plants today, along with the two remaining squash plants. We were still getting a few squash every couple of days, but they were tough and a little bitter. It was time for them to go. We still have a couple of red long bean plants and I planted a patch of Swiss Chard a couple of weeks ago which has started sprouting.

We pulled up one patch of zinnias, but there are many more to go. They looked good for a long time, but that time is over, I'm afraid. I need to order garlic this week. I usually plant it around Halloween. I already have a couple of packs of hyacinths and grape hyacinths that I will plant at the same time. I would still like to get a couple of rose plants in the ground before winter. Since school has started, it has been hard to find time for the garden. Winter holiday is twelve weeks away, and believe me, I am counting down every single day! It will be time for a long nap and a chance to plan my spring garden. That's what cold winter days are for, right?

Now that the tomato plants are almost dead they have begun to produce heavily. The rabbit must have had its fill and has stopped eating them, so now we have plenty to eat. Too bad the plants are almost finished for the year. This evening I will be pulling up what is left of the squash and cucumber plants. It's time to clean up and give the beds a rest for the winter. Soon I will be ordering garlic, which I usually plant around Halloween; it will be ready to harvest early next summer. I'm also going to plant a small section of Swiss Chard, which will hopefully be ready to harvest before the first hard freeze. The red long beans should be ready soon, so we will have a colorful fall season in the garden.

Golden Pineapple Tomato

Sweet, tart, luscious. Words can not adequately describe this tomato. Click on the picture to enlarge it and you will almost taste the sweetness of summer.

The wait is over......

Finally, we picked our first tomato, a Pink Grapefruit (plus a few Snow White cherries). We sliced it and ate it right away, even though it was slightly green. It was luscious!!! There is nothing like the first juicy tomato of the summer. Of course, in my case, it's usually almost fall before I get my first tomato. We have lots of jalapeno peppers, seen above in various stages of green, purple, and red. This is my mutant jalapeno; it isn't supposed to look like this. Next year my pepper plants will be isolated from each other.

It is official; the garden is out of control. The squash and cucumber plants are taking over the back yard, even as some of them are slowly dying. At least, I thought they were dying, but they are getting new leaves. I almost wish the cucumbers would die. I am so sick of cucumbers. I have four plants this year; next year I may only plant two. But we are still enjoying the squash, especially the lemon squash, and I will still plant several kinds again next year; maybe I'll get some more mutants.

The herb garden's glory days seem to be over for the summer. I cut back the spent flowers from the lamb's ear and the lavender cotton a long time ago. The anise hyssop and the yarrow seem to be finished blooming. I need to dead-head the purple cone flowers, but a couple of days ago we saw a little yellow finch perched on a flower head eating the seeds. I guess I don't have to dead-head just yet. The only thing left to bloom are the roses, which should still do well for quite a while, now that the Japanese beetles have moved on. The germander still looks good, even though it isn't blooming anymore. At least now I can walk in the garden without the continual humming of bumble bees. I leaned to co-exist with them but they still made me nervous.

I have killed six sage plants. Tricolor, bicolor, every color of sage you can imagine, I have killed it. Why???

Cross Pollination

Today was a successful day because I learned something new. I didn't know a thing about cross pollination until late this afternoon when I picked a Black Beauty zucchini from a Golden Zucchini plant. I first noticed the bright yellow coloring on the green zucchini, then realized that I had plucked it from the golden and not the black plant. This has never happened in my garden before (that I know of)! After doing some research online, I now know why my purple jalapenos don't look like jalapeno peppers at all. I've grown plants from the same seed packet for about three years, but this year they have a different shape. I didn't have a clue before, but now I am blaming it on cross pollination. It's good to have answers.

I've also learned a thing or two about the dreaded squash vine borer. Aunt Susie has asked me several times if I have trouble with worms on my squash. I smugly assured her that I did not. I guess now I've gotten my comeuppance for being smug. When I told a co-worker about my dying zucchini plant, she told me the most disgusting tale about slicing open the root of her squash plant and removing a worm! I told her if that was the problem with my plant, the worm could have it. I think she was right, though. I removed some dead leaves from around the plant base and found that it was indeed mushy and oozing and totally repulsive. I found a link that show the worm inside a plant stem, as well as the adult moth.

I don't want the zucchini enough to dissect the plant and go looking for a worm. I'm a history major; I don't do dissections. The worm can have it.

Butterfly Festival

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Butterfly Festival at Close park. They have a butterfly garden, which, strangely, appeared to be butterfly free. All the butterflies were in the new butterfly house, along caterpillars and demonstrations of the entire butterfly life cycle. It was geared to educating children, but it seemed the house was just as full of adults hoping to see a chrysalis transform to a butterfly.

No such luck, but there were plenty of beautiful butterflies to chase around the building with my camera.

We had been to Close Park before and had enjoyed the rose garden and the hosta garden, then walked around the lake. But until this event, we had no idea of the many gardens that were in the park. There is an English garden, a Lily garden, an ornamental grass garden, and many others. This will be a place I will return to again and again to see what is blooming throughout each season. Did I mention that it is free?

The amazing thing is that the garden is strictly a volunteer effort. Donations and public funds keep the garden up and running, and each garden is designed and maintained by volunteers. Ultimately, there are a total of 41 different garden styles planned. Volunteers (Friends of the Garden) have worked for years to raise interest and money for a Botanical Center in the park. That goal has been reached, surprisingly enough, during the most difficult economic environment in many years. The Center is scheduled to open in 2010.

As for my garden, the Black Beauty zucchini is dying and the Lemon squash is producing heavily and taking over the back yard. The Lemon cucumbers are doing pretty good, as well. The rat-tailed radish plant is still producing, thankfully in much smaller quantities. Long beans everyday, along with a few snow peas. The zinnias are blooming all over the place, but they look horrible because of the blasted Japanese beetles. I have a row of pink crepe myrtles (plus one white one, it was an accident) along the neighbor's fence in back , but they only have blooms on the bottom because the beetles apparently started feasting at the top of the plants.

I'm not tired of squash anymore since we started grilling it or roasting it in the oven. Steamed or sauteed squash was really getting old. I'm still waiting impatiently for some tomatoes. I found two perfectly ripe Snow White cherries on the plant this evening, but something had partially eaten them. I'm really not into sharing my tomatoes with birds or rabbits.

Tonight I picked sixteen squash, four cucumbers, and a handful of long beans. There may have been more to pick, but I was having trouble getting to everything. I didn't wear my garden gloves because they are dirty and I didn't want to mess up my manicure, so I was trying to pick squash bare-handed. It was very painful, so I didn't dig too deep under the leaves. Besides, lately every time I lift a squash leaf I come face to face with an angry sounding bumble bee. So I just move on and try to pretend I don't notice.

I diced up about a dozen squash and froze them. They were ones that had been laying around for a couple of days and I hated for them to go to waste (and I did just pick 16 more), so I thought I would just freeze them and this winter they would be good in soups or stews.

Tonight I read in Organic Gardening magazine that many heirloom tomatoes can take as long as 100 days to ripen. That made me feel better about my lack of ripe tomatoes. I thought it was some gardening defect on my part, but it is apparently just the nature of the kind of tomatoes I grow. That's OK, they are well worth the wait!

Bowl Full of Squash

We had our first big crop of squash this weekend. Golden zucchini, Black Beauty zucchini, Early prolific straight neck squash, and Fanfare cucumbers. This is only round one, so we will soon be forcing squash on everyone we know. I only wish the tomato plants would show signs of producing. Hopefully it is only the heat that slows them down. It's been 95 or so for two weeks, and we've been that long without rain, as well. Apparently it rained last night, but not much.

The zinnia seeds I planted are sprouting everywhere! Not so the bluebonnets. Only two germinated and the neighbors dog destroyed one of them. Grrrrrr.


Golden zucchini grow at the base of the plant, and are very hard to reach through the huge leaves. It's fun raising the big leaves of squash and cucumber plants to see what treasures are hidden beneath them.

Summer Dreams

We had a bumper crop of tomatoes a few years ago. Aah, those were the days. Since then it's been too much rain or not enough, in addition to worn out soil. I don't have enough beds to rotate everything as often as I should, so the tomatoes have been planted in the same place for about five years now.

This year I eliminated an old herb garden and planted fewer tomato plants in this smaller location. Eight tomato and four pepper plants, to be exact, in a bed approximately 8 x 10. This means I absolutely have to keep after the suckers; no slacking this year! If I don't pluck the tomatoes everyday, the tomato bed becomes a jungle faster than you can blink. With fifteen plants, I just did not keep up. I'm hoping the smaller bed (also closer to the house) will make the job manageable this year.

Tomato plants for 2009: Golden Pineapple, Gold Medal, Pineapple, Snow White Cherry, Pink Grapefruit, Pink Brandywine, Henderson's Crimson Cushion, and Rose.

Pepper Plants: Alma Paprika, Napoleon Sweet, Chinese Giant, and Purple Jalapeno.

Pink Grapefruit and Pineapple are the only new varieties I tried this year. Snow White Cherry and Brandywine are staples that are required in our garden every year as we can't seem to live without them. No new pepper plants this year; I'm just hoping they will finally produce some peppers, for a change. I amended the soil in the new bed, so hopefully we will have an abundant crop like we used to have.

Discovering Tigger melons and Long beans

So here I am, typing my first post for my first blog. Gardening seemed the logical place to start blogging because I've long desired to keep a garden journal and this seems to be the best way for me to accomplish that goal.

I few years ago I came across a catalogue for heirloom seeds. I bought a pack each of four different tomato seeds; Cherokee Purple, Snow White Cherry, Old German, and Pink Brandywine. That year I successfully started from seed and planted four tomato plants (they all lived!), and the next year I expanded to fifteen! Plus squash, cucumbers, tigger melons, and Chinese long beans. My garden was overflowing and I had tomatoes everywhere.

Starting vegetables from seed has been addictive. I want to try at least one of every heirloom or exotic variety I find, and I can't seem to keep up with all the available choices.

This is a journal of my gardening adventures, successful or otherwise, for anyone like me who likes to watch things grow.