We enjoyed our first, albeit small, cherry tomato harvest last week, sweet and perfectly formed orbs of goodness. The plant looks healthy, with clusters of green tomatoes just a few days away from another harvest.
Our second tomato plant is an heirloom beefsteak variety. The fruit is taking longer to form, given its size, but soon they’ll ripen as well. Eating garden tomatoes is one of the great pleasures of summer.
Our highly anticipated plum and apricot haul has been a bust, unless you’re a bird, an opossum, a tree rat, or a squirrel.
When the dog’s away, the rest of the critters play, moving through the branches, sampling the fruit, then moving on as the fruit loosens from its stone and falls to the ground. One of the not-so-great aspects of summer is sun-baked, rotting fruit and the fruit flies that love them.
Not for the first time, I’ve mused that since we’ve encroached on nature to a great extent, allowing the neighborhood critters to feast from the tree seems reasonable. There’s always a local farmer’s market.
Last week, I crawled along one of the pathways in the late afternoon and cleared most of the stubborn weeds that grow under the gravel and the stone path. I counted on the late-afternoon shade to get the job done.
Gorgeous pink Gladiolas came and went, spectacular while they bloomed. I’m still not burying the bulbs deep enough, so the plants lean as they get taller and heavier. I need to dig even deeper. That said, they were spectacular just the same.
A few weeks ago I discovered a praying mantis ootheca or egg case on the fence. The case looks like half of a walnut shell. These insects are coveted by gardeners, so much so that you can buy egg cases at nurseries and online. I’m delighted to have spotted it when I did, and pleased to have the resulting hatchlings in my garden.
We see several fence lizards this time of year. This one played an unwitting game of hide-and-seek with me, darting under a flower pot when I walked up the path, then returning to the sun when the proverbial coast was clear.
We would forget about each other, carry on with gardening and sunbathing, and then startle each other again.
A single sunflower seed planted itself not far from our bedroom window, and it’s now twice as tall as the tomato plant and quickly approaching the height of our house.
That corner is nearly impassable these days, between the sprawling bougainvillea, the expanding tomato plant, the sky-high sunflower, and the overhanging succulents. I like to think of it as my secret garden each time I squeeze through.
Here are a few parting shots of this summer’s garden. It never fails to delight.
Gardening Nirvana 