Sunday afternoon garden thoughts

Most of the items in my yard are thriving. I love the bright lemon-yellow splashes of the sundrops (aka Texas primrose). While I am waiting to see them set fruit, the sundry peppers are all growing. I have been harvesting zucchini every few days and it appears that tomorrow morning I can gather a couple of yellow straight-neck squash. The cherry tomatoes are incredibly sweet, though I have given away more than I have sampled myself.

Last night I had a sandwich for supper: some middle eastern flat bread smeared with cream cheese and then some thin ham slices and one of my tomatoes sliced. Several grinds of black pepper and that was it. It was yummy.

Now some things have failed. several of my lavenders have simply not made it. I yanked a couple out and am about to yank a couple more. It is time to replace some things (as I replaced the gazanias with salvia a while ago). So I stopped at the Home Depot garden center on my way home from church this morning.

There is a spot where I had several lavenders and some coral carpet roses. Two of the lavenders are headed to the trash, now to be replaced with another coral rose (with the stunning single blossoms shading from rich coral at the edge to white at the center) and some double purple petunias.

To honor my ancestors, I picked up a small Thompson seedless grapevine. This was the staple of the vineyards around Fresno as I grew up, your basic table grape and the source of all those Fresno County raisins (one-fourth of the world's supply back then). My grandparents and my aunts and uncles grew them and I remember one late summer when we grandchildren were allowed to help roll the raisins up in brown paper. The fine dust of San Joaquin Valley vineyard soil perdures in my memory.

The Thompson seedless can join the flame seedless planted earlier.

Flame seedless gravevine

The two purple potato vines I planted earlier are doing well so I bought two more to replace a couple of plants in the blue border that did not do well. I hope that with the passage of time the potato vines will obscure vast swathes of the south wall. Expanding on Frost: Something there is that does not love a cinder block wall. It is an inexpensive and efficient material for exterior walls but I loathe it on aesthetic grounds.

And so I also picked up two white potato vines and two common trumpet creepers to help obscure and eventually cover more of the walls surrounding my back yard.

Climbing Blaze rose: the first batch of blossoms

Had I the wealth to live in a home with lovely traditional adobe walls, I would enjoy looking at them. Or stone walls, or some kind of rustic wooden fence. But given the situation, I am going for living things to soften and beautify.

Best wishes for an enjoyable, safe, and restorative summer to y'all. And tomatoes that taste like tomatoes!
--the BB