Early Summer Lushness

The garden is at that point where spring crops are mostly out, summer crops have gotten big and are beginning to bear, and everything looks lovely and lush.

I just love this time with the seedlings coming up,

Basil. I thought it wasn’t going to sprout.

the flowers blooming,

squash plants thriving,

beans climbing, and tomatoes looking happy

and producing fruit.

We gave our first couple donations to different food pantries in the past week, mostly beets and carrots from the dedicated garden, which is doing well, thanks to help from my volunteer Holly, who weeds like a Champ and my neighboring gardener Mike, who keeps an eye on the water needs of all the plants.

This garden has beets and carrots, summer and winter squashes, cucumbers, peppers, beans, blueberries, tomatoes, okra, and some stray turnips, as well as chard.

The work is pretty much under control, so some evenings after work, I’ve just been walking over there for the exercise, to check on things and to enjoy it.  Sometimes I see evil lagomorphs.

It was eating grass, and far from my garden, so I left it unmolested.

Other times there’s a flock of song sparrows.  I tried to get pictures of them, but gave up and did a video instead.  Excuse me whistling under my breath on it; it was the chorus to Stan Rogers’ Tiny Fish for Japan, but unrecognizable as half the notes were in my head.  That was brought on by talk of smelt over lunch with friends on Saturday.  But back to the sparrows–They would perch on trellises and the fence and sing like crazy.  And they are cute.

It’s so lovely to see the trumpet vine blooming.

And the rabbits did not eat my okra seedlings as they emerged this year.

All in all, I can say so far, so good.