Growth and Decay

Here are some lovely photos from August 15:




Hard to believe this is just 5 weeks ago. The garden is a mess now. The tomatoes have something that is making all the leaves turn brown and limp. It looks like they were hit with frost, but it hasn't been at all cold. I need to keep up better. But it was a lovely summer, cool and green, little rain in July, but plenty after that. Too cool for tomatoes. Not many this year, even though we planted a lot.

Tomatoes on the driveway

Here are the tomatoes which line our driveway. There used to be small shrubs all the way along here, which we took out to make room. This is looking east from the driveway.Click here for an earlier view, looking west, about 6 weeks ago.

Full garden views

Here's the garden, freshly weeded, from the west looking east: Here's the lettuce bed:

Here's a close-up of our new little tomatoes starting. They are about the size of grapes, but I think this variety is one that gets to be about the size of a tennis ball.

Garden looking west from the deck. Note fresh straw between the rows:

Tomatoes and Peas, then and now

Progress--After (trellis is about 7 ft high) July 13th Before: May 25

Kid's eye view

Billy had the camera on Sunday while we were weeding, and took these pictures of plants in the tiered garden off the deck. I like his perspective. Tomato plant: Red Cabbage:

Nasturiums:

Lovely Lilies

For scale! Lilies and one 44 inch tall 4-year-oldbunches of beauty

So many blossoms

Up close and pink

Here is one leftover vestige of the previous owners of our house. He was a landscape architect, so did a lot of nice work, but most of it is in prime veggie growing areas, so we took a lot of it out to make more room for food plants. This bunch we left. They are so beautful and getting more abundant each year. We'll be splitting and planting these all over the yard and giving them to neighbors this fall. They have tomato plants on either side of them, up and down the driveway (see more recent posts).

Lazy gardener

I'm not sure what happened to the last 5 weeks--illness and injury (both minor) have taken up some time, but that's no excuse, really.

The garden is doing pretty well. The tomato plants are huge and starting to flower. We have harvested some small carrots, beets and some bad turnips. I guess planting the turnips and hoping they'll grow isn't going to work. Perhaps I'll read about it before fall planting.

The peas are growing extremely well. Too well, as we are also getting about 2 lbs per week from our CSA.

So we seem to be retaining our title of Tomato Pros. And that is saying something, so I shouldn't complain. Or work too hard on the rest of it.