Gardening

So. Over. Summer.

gardensummer

cypressvine

drybed

eggplant2

eggplants

gourd

luffa

tree

trellis

tomato

squash

luffa2

Summer. I’m done with you. You are hot, sticky and well, frankly I wasn’t really able to enjoy you much. I didn’t dip my toes in the water. I didn’t hike. Beach? What beach?

I saw a post on a blog the other day that turned the whole “Aww, only one month of summer left” into “YEAH! One more month of summer!” While I do like their optimism, I am wishing it was 20* cooler.

As you can see above the garden is in a state of crispness. When I’m averaging once a week or less to the garden of course it turns crispy. I’m always afraid of what I will find but am always pleasantly surprised when I do find something still alive. And I also don’t feel as bad because for the most part everyone else’s plots are looking rather sad. Everything that says it likes heat really doesn’t—or at least it doesn’t like Texas heat.

Two days in a row I went to the garden. One day I spent time taking down the spent tomatoes and clearing out a few beds, reducing our plot numbers, and the second day I decided to start a round of fall corn, bush beans and black eyed peas. I’m going to have to rip that ugly bed of melons up soon, too, and figure out something to plant there. Now that we have a house we can plant some things here, but we won’t be putting in our beds until Chris is officially done with field work later this Fall. There’s a little spot on the south side of our house which was already planted with tomatoes and peppers and they are doing surprisingly well. I need to thin some weeds out and I might be able to plant a Fall crop or two there. I am definitely looking forward to the day when I don’t have to drive to a garden plot.

I left one tomato plant up at the garden, the Early Girl. It was the one that looked the best and was still flowering, so I trimmed it up and decided to see if it would give me any Fall tomatoes. We’ll see.

As much as I would rather not have any hard freezes this coming winter, I actually would like one to kill off all the squash and cucumber bugs we’ve had this year. Everyone I’ve talked to has said this has been an epic year for them.

How is your summer going?

9 Comments

  • Christina Rosalie

    It’s so fun/funny to hear your exasperation with summer! Here in VT, the days already feel like they’re dwindling. The crickets are out. The nights come earlier… It’s been a whirlwind summer, with not enough outside time and too many to-do lists, so I hardly feel like it’s happened.

    I like see your view of the world. Fat summer vines and fruits, things that are the product of heat and time spent outdoors…

  • Joan (Hemlock)

    The Georgia summer has been tough too. So true about needing a hard frost to keep those bugs in check– ours are bad this year too. But least the predictions about a horrible tick season haven’t turned out to be true, or maybe I’m just getting used to them.

  • Elizabeth

    TOO. HOT.

    I am done. My tomatoes have been nothing but a pain this year. I think I’d have better luck setting up a spider mite farming operation.

    Just ready for autumn to roll around and I would not complain about a really ridiculous freeze, having seen what a mild winter does to our summer.

  • chel

    Doneso. For real. I’m trying to make August really amazing so that next year, I am all “August is amazing!” instead of “how many days until October?” I’m just happy July and June are passed. For some reason August seems like the thursday afternoon of the summer week, if you know what I mean- the end is in sight. Just gotta get through a little more and the reward is AUTUMN!

  • Brianne

    Wonderful photos. My favorites are the closeup of the plump ripe something (sixth one down) and the view through the tiny hole of the leaf (eighth one down) – great perspectives.

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