Amy and I just returned from a week away and as always I marvel at how much can grow and change in the garden in just a few days. I've been wanting to write about our garden for sometime so as long as the pictures cooperate this will be a bit of a catch-up, catch-all garden post.
This year's winner in the category "Surprise Success" goes to the sunflowers. Eight-foot-tall, gorgeous, dinner plate sunflowers that grew all the way from dropped bird seed. Of course the organic-heirloom-whatever sunflower seeds I paid $3.49 for did not even germinate, but these vigorous volunteers have been wowing us for weeks. One of the smaller ones, shown above, even got beat down in a rainstorm, and before I could right it it simply straightened up and continued growing, all the way to a sweet little flower. The three flowers in front of our window are the size of small trees, and now hang down with the weight of maturing seeds. Oh, and those are some canna lilies mixed in, too, which the hummingbirds seem to be enjoying.
Speaking of hummingbirds, I was shocked to discover a complete rampaging of my larger hummingbird feeder when we got home. The squirrels(?) removed all four of the plastic yellow flowers and gnawed a huge hole in the base! The nerve!
The morning glories have been doing nicely, despite an onslaught of Japanese beetles. I knocked a bunch into a cup of water today and last I checked they're still swimming around in there. I'm still not sure how I feel about that but at least they're off my plants.
And lastly, harvest: So far we've picked at least a dozen cherry tomatoes, three "golden jubilee" (I think that was the name) yellow tomatoes (so sweet!), and at least five cucumbers. Just getting warmed up - and this all from our postage-stamp backyard. Today I snipped off a wilting sunflower head and set it out for the birds. Now if that isn't some bird seed that was worth its weight in gold!
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