Another summer draws to a close

It's Labor Day Weekend, when traditionally we in the US have one last blowout to celebrate the end of summer. Buy some slabs of meat and throw 'em on the grill, or grab your tent or RV or boat and hit the road (or lake).

But I'm a gardener. I can't just take off for the long weekend, because there are green beans to be harvested and pesto to be made from all the fresh basil and ripe tomatoes to pick for salsa and... OK, this is Flagstaff. There are a handful of ripe tomatoes--maybe enough for a snack or two--and a ton of green ones sitting mockingly on the vines, taunting me with a promise that will likely never be fulfilled. Summers are short here in the mountains of Northern Arizona; our average first frost date is September 15, so most of those tomatoes will either end up on the compost pile or get ripened indoors. The last two years, the first frost came late--so late that I not only got ripe tomatoes, but I was harvesting them till November. But I know better than to count on that. The nights are already getting colder, and as of last week I've had to turn on my headlights on the way home from work. C'mon, tomatoes, get busy ripening. I need my homemade salsa!

The tomatoes may be slacking, but there's a lot happening in the garden. As I mentioned in my last post, I've been a slacker this season, so the garden is an unruly, unkempt jungle. Hell, there could be a long-lost tomb out there somewhere, and I'd never know about it. But despite my sloth, it's still pretty. So many things are blooming and bearing and burgeoning! And me being, well, me, I took pictures of most of it. Here we go:

Welcome to the jungle, part 1 - the pond












Welcome to the jungle, part 2. This is supposed to be my lovely little potager. Except that a) I was too lazy to finish putting down weed fabric and wood chips on the paths, so the paths are now overgrown with weeds, and b) when I was doing my spring planting, I developed early season amnesia, a disorder specific to gardeners that causes us to forget exactly how big pumpkin vines can grow. So my potager is now a pumpkin patch punctuated with weed strips.



And more jungle, this time outside the potager. Yep, that thing in the foreground is another out of control pumpkin vine.




And a few more views from the area outside the vegetable garden:

I put this here, not because it's pretty (it isn't) but to remind me not to plant tomatoes in front of my green beans ever again. It makes bean harvesting a major pain.


Garden amnesia strikes again. Surely that tiny little zucchini seedling won't turn into a huge monster, right? Ha! The poor broccoli has no personal space.


I mentioned in my last post that I'm growing a lot of new-to-me things this year. Here's one of them: birdhouse gourds. Why? Because I can. These are from those cheap American Seed packs you find at dollar stores and Wal-Mart. I got 'em last winter when the local Dollar General was clearing them out for a nickel a pack. I guess now I have to figure out how to turn these weird things into birdhouses.



They even have kind of pretty flowers, and they look cute twining across the top of the picket fence.





Another new-to-me plant: hyacinth bean. I thought it would get bigger and climb the trellis, but it didn't.


This pic has a cottage garden vibe (as opposed to my usual "mess" vibe). The zinnias are very happy, and I love the baby's breath in the lower right corner next to the fence.


And we're ready for Halloween--2 months early.


And here's one of my accidental plant combinations that kinda works: Hopi red and love lies bleeding amaranth with Shasta daisy. Too bad something is feasting on the amaranth leaves.


Here's more love lies bleeding. I love this plant! And it seems to do well here in spite of whatever is having its leaves for lunch.


4 O'clocks


And hollyhocks


And milkweed for the monarchs


And the giant sacred datura that survives anything and everything.


And this whole section of jungle



Geraniums and rosemary in the container garden (Yeah, I know, for you garden snobs they're pelargoniums. Go find a British garden tour or something and leave us unsophisticated plant people in peace.) Pretty soon I'll have to haul these in the house for the winter. *sigh*


Another new to me plant: pumpkin tree. I also got this one through a seed trade. They're actually a type of ornamental eggplant.


Here you can see the whole pumpkin tree (big green thing to the right of the pink and red thing, otherwise known as a coleus)


The mixed border along part of the south and most of the west side of the house. I've been gardening in these beds for a couple of years now, so they look a little less out of control than the newer beds.







Blackberry lilies, winter sown in 2017 and nearly eaten to the ground by grasshoppers last summer. To my great surprise, they came back this year and are lookin' good. Hopefully they'll bloom next year.


Another accidental plant combination that kinda works: chrysanthemum and garlic chives.


Last year's cosmos self-sowed, and this is the lovely result.


Phlox and Japanese morning glory



Double Delight rose


And Ketchup and Mustard rose


Sacred Datura right after a morning shower


Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (a wild cleome that is native here and fills the fields in our area with purple every summer). This one volunteered in the mixed border. It's way too tall for the front of the border and looks totally out of place, but it's beautiful, and the bees love it, so it stays. As the plaque in my kitchen says, Martha Stewart doesn't live here.



And I'll end on that rebellious note, because it sums up my approach to gardening quite nicely. "Rules" are more like suggestions. I want to learn from others, but ultimately, it's my garden. It will never be perfect, because I'm too lazy for that, but even in years when I neglect it terribly, it still has so much beauty and brings me so much joy.

Putting in the garden

I can’t remember the first time I heard the expression, “putting in the garden,” but it was a very long time ago. “I’m going to put in the garden this weekend.” “It’s almost time to put in the garden.” Once I got some experience as a gardener, that expression seemed weird. Yeah, I would, “put in a garden,” but that usually consisted of building another bed, cultivating a new area, or some similar activity that would significantly increase how much watering and weeding I had to do (Note to self: what seems like a great idea in March is usually a pain in the posterior by August).

What people usually meant by, “putting in the garden,” was, “planting the vegetable garden.” The entire thing. Usually in a weekend. Once I moved from Portland to Southern California, I stopped hearing this expression, since gardening is truly a year-round activity in SoCal (except when the outdoor temperature is approximately 1582 degrees, and you will spontaneously combust if you open your front door--but even then one gardens in the evening, once the porch cools off enough to not melt one’s flip-flops to the soles of one’s feet). But now that I live on Hoth in Flagstaff, I once again hear people talk about, “putting in the garden.” And now I understand why. I planted a bunch of stuff in March (first warm spell = delusional gardener), only to watch it freeze/rot/get buried in snow. I planted some more stuff a couple of weeks ago. Some of it froze. My poor potatoes--planted during the aforementioned March warm spell--have frozen twice. Yet they are sprouting once again, brave little tubers that they are. And believe it or not, we haven’t quite reached our average last frost date, which is June 15. I really need a giant hoop house to cover my entire yard.

Based on what everyone tells me, Memorial Day weekend is the official time in Flagstaff to, “put in the garden,” so that’s what I’ve been doing. Last year we started building a potager (note to self: what seems like a good idea in October will probably seem absurd the following summer, when the grasshoppers are eating everything and I’m watering 219 times a day). It’s not finished yet (obvious from the pic at the beginning of this post), and it doesn’t look like much, because it’s mostly filled with newly-planted seeds and newly-transplanted seedlings.

Photo 1: The bed on the left is seeded with winter squash, bush beans, sunflowers, and nasturtiums. The bed on the right contains peas (they’re the tiny green things at the base of the metal yard art covering the ugly satellite dish pole in the corner) and fennel transplants plus sunflowers, zucchini, and marigolds. The half-built bed along the chain-link fence has two hills of winter squash. Why wait for a bed to be finished to plant in it?

Photo 2: The bed on the left has purple cabbage, cilantro, and a lone fennel plant that wintered over, plus seeds for radishes, beets, more cilantro, and basil. The righthand bed contains my poor frost-nipped potatoes, seeds for bush beans and zinnias, and a lone calendula seedling, the only one of my winter-sown calendulas to survive the first grasshopper invasion of the year. The bed by the fence contains lettuce, chard, a currant bush, onions, blackberries, a boysenberry, and seeds for zinnias, cucumbers, milkweed, and basil. Oh, and I think I threw in some garlic too.

The delusion image in my mind is much prettier than the reality shown above. Imagine those beds overflowing with grasshoppers beans, squash, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, parsley, dill, basil, marigolds, sunflowers, chard, lettuce, parsnips, onions, garlic, blackberries, zinnias, and calendula. Hopefully some of that will actually happen, and I can post pictures here so there is evidence that it’s actually possible to grow stuff in this bizarre land of late frosts, grasshoppers, howling wind, grasshoppers, lousy soil, and grasshoppers. In the meantime, I will bask in the warm glow of sunburn accomplishment and enjoy my fantasies.

Does anyone have a flamethrower I can borrow? I think I hear grasshoppers...