I've been spending a lot of time digging in the dirt, both at work and on my own time. The flower beds around the school require a lot of tending right now--they are in year 2 of the 3 years it takes to establish them so one of my jobs is to water them every other day. I set up the sprinklers first thing in the morning and then move them every hour-and-a-half and it takes 2 days to get through all the beds so it's constant watering. In between the sprinkler rotation I continue to mow and weed, lots and lots of weeding! I usually head out to my garden plot in the evening. It too requires a lot of watering. I think we've moved into the dry part of summer and the soil is very sandy so it's almost impossible to over-water.
Freshly weeded and watered flower beds in front of the library.
Field of wildflowers. There are huge sections of the yard that are wild grasses and wildflowers so that there is less to mow. You never know what kind of flower is going to bloom next.
I think it speaks for itself.
Another flower bed that I was working in today.
Compare this picture to the one I posted just a little while ago - it's growing so fast! We've already picked 5 zucchini and 2 cucumbers this week with lots more to come. If anyone has any good zucchini recipes, please send them my way.
Apparently the rule of thumb in this area is corn should be knee high by the fourth of July. I think mine is going for shoulder high. On the last row we have pole beans climbing on the corn. We planted peas beside the next row of corn so that we'd have a natural fence but the corn outgrew the peas and there are only a few plants that survived.
Here's me in the garden to provide a little perspective. Tomato "shrubs" up to my waist and huge zucchini plants.It's been a lot cooler here this week which has made working outside a lot more bearable. Today it was only in the 60s, around 15C, so I was chilly and actually wore a sweater all day. It didn't help either that I'm wet almost all the day from playing in the sprinklers.
2 comments:
Alicia,
Your breath-taking picture of the coneflower reminds me of a verse from my favorite poet, Mary Oliver's, poem "Whispers". She writes,
"Oh, have you looked wistfully into the flushed bodies of the flowers?"
Oops...one more thing....is there any way you could make me a copy of that picture to put with this poem in my book of poetry? I'll send you the entire poem later.
Kristy
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