Oceanic Wilderness

We’re in a phase where I’m ready for the lull in the garden to end a bit, to have more of a haul every few days. Sure, we’re still picking peppers, and a bit of beans and okra here and there, but the abundance of late spring and early summer is gone. A few more weeks and we can think about sowing fall and winter crops. I have been gloriously excited about the Seminole pumpkin bed. Finally, we have fruit! There are at least five small pumpkins out there and one morning as I went out to try to help some pollination along by hand I noticed that the bumblebees…

One humid morning of July 22nd I had a few hours to myself as Chris took Forest to get a haircut and do a few errands. With a plethora of ways I could spend that time I opted to start working on weeding the flower garden path. I worked, head down, for the better part of an hour and a half and was making good progress. Taking a break to rest my neck from the strain of looking down, I happened to look up right at the moment a female monarch was visiting one of the milkweed patches. I watched her and sure enough her ovipositor was dotting the milkweed…

I kept thinking that at some point this summer I would be all “caught up” in the flower garden, enough to sit around for about three days to enjoy the look into a non-existent state of garden homeostasis and relish the garden for a few moments. But, I never got around to that for a variety of factors. The weeds stayed in the path–though the path got weeded in parts–but it never made it to fully being weeded; the deer continually barged through, digging around for roots or whatnot, ripping plants to pieces or pulling them out of the ground in the meantime; and while I managed to keep one…

The current lull between crops is actually very soothing for me. Sure, there’s weed pulling, supplemental watering, and something I’m trying to be better about—fertilizing with fish emulsion—but there’s not a lot of harvesting going on. Blackberries are completed, the beans stop producing when it gets too hot—if we get a light front come through with rain there’s always a new flush of fruit—and squash and pumpkins have yet to begin producing. There’s a lot of growth, though. With the Seminole pumpkin going gangbusters throughout an entire bed, two squash plants attempting to thrive, and new rounds of beans being grown, I’m happy with this later summer growth. In addition,…