It’s hard to see the scale of what has happened to the garden but please keep in mind that is my 6 year old son standing there in front of the fava patch.
The paths have disappeared, engulfed by perennial greens, favas and garlic, just walking through the garden means wading waist deep in rain dipped stems, leaves and flower stalks. No matter how many times I try to stake the falling asparagus ferns now standing six feet tall the weight of the rain carried by each delicate fiber keeps them constantly slumping over the main path to my house, fine for everyday trespassing but surprisingly disappointing when trying to get to my car for work, not that getting to the car dry should matter after a few meetings I am generally soaked to the bone as I stand out in the rain waiting for clients(for anyone who doesn’t know I work as a realtor).
Instead of this being a fabulous month of gardening it has been an extreme frenzy of all things work related and all sorts of poor weather, the insistent grey drizzle did let up just enough this week for me to snap a few photos and think it was warm enough to plant tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Turns out it really wasn’t warm enough to plant any of that.
Busy times like these make me thankful for perennials, considering other than tomatoes, cucumbers and squash that probably won’t live, I haven’t planted anything this June and this is supposed to be the big month to plant everything. Right now I have more perennial greens than I know what to do with, raspberries are coming up in droves, cilantro has self sown everywhere and despite my lack of annual plantings I have plenty of mystery volunteers appearing that look like either rainbow chard or coloured beets, either is fine with me.
It’s another sad year for blueberries I must take some sort of drastic measures, all my plants were devastated by what I think is kind of blight or virus? My 20+ plants were literally covered in flowers and as the flowers gave way so too did the all the stem tips that should have been producing berries they just dried up and fell off, each plant only currently bears one or two berries each, its beyond disappointing, perhaps overcast only on the disappointment meter by my cherry trees which also were loaded with flowers but the immature fruits have all dried up and fallen off.
In happier happenings the fava patch is overwhelming, last fall’s plants are starting to fall over heavy with fava beans and this year’s plants are bursting with blooms.
Peas which should be loving this weather are not doing much at all, standing only a few inches tall, they do seem to be flowering and I even scored a few pods the other day right before I took this picture actually.