June, June, June!
The garden is glorious, so of course I am going out of town for a week at the height of its glory. On the one hand, I am sorry to miss it, on the other hand, I can pretend that was the one week when it all came together and looked totally magnificent, and I just happened to come back when the wild quinine has fallen down on the verbena and the salvia needs deadheading.
Ah, annuals...
The steps off the back deck are being engulfed by basil and nasturtiums. I have finally succeeded in growing nasturtiums from seed this year, in a couple of places. (In other places, they are a spindly spray of sad little pallid leaves, but by god, some of ‘em are the sea of foaming variegated leaves and glorious flowers that they OUGHT to be.)
The bee balm redeemed itself this year, and has reminded me why I planted it.
Most of the flowers are just on the cusp of opening, so of course I’ll probably miss the one glorious week that they were all open at once. Damn these June cons…! But the hummingbird is happy with what we’ve got.
I luuuuuv you, flower...
The shrubby St. John’s wort bloomed really FAST this year-instead of one flower a day for a month, it was like ten flowers a day for two weeks. But it made the bugs happy while it lasted.
Meanwhile, the Giant Joe Pye Weed has lived up to its name-two ten foot stalks and one that’s got to be pushing fourteen feet tall. I have had to tie multiple tomato stakes together to keep it anything like upright, as it wilts madly and photo-tropes aggressively. It is an ungainly, ridiculous, completely unaesthetic addition to the bed. Needless to say, I love it madly.
Having the pond in the backyard is marvelous. I just watched an enormous black beetle swim from the horsetail to the gravel slope. It seemed to be quite a good swimmer for a beetle, and it obvious knew where it was going-made straight for the beach, no flailing or swimming in circles.
Except there was a frog in the way.
Frog was about half again the size of the beetle-small frog, large beetle, obviously. The frog freaked out and lunged at the beetle, biting at it. The beetle was knocked back, but continued on, undaunted. The frog attacked it again. (I don’t think it was trying to eat it-it’d be like me trying to eat a German shepherd in one gulp.) The beetle did not seem particularly injured by this assault, but clearly it was pissed, because the frog’s next assault met a savage pincer attack that knocked the frog back. The frog leapt into the water and went to sulk in the horsetails, while the beetle finally reached the shore, climbed out, and trundled off into the woods.
Kevin says he wants me to dig a pond visible for HIS window now, because it’s so damn cool out that. I can’t blame him, but that’s a heckuva lot of digging…
Originally published at Squash's Garden. You can comment here or there.