Mid July Panorama and Bloom Day

I'm cheating a little, I decided to take advantage of a Sunday afternoon for my pictures and blog post for Mid July instead of trying to get lucky on weather on Tuesday evening after work.  We've been getting a lot of afternoon thunderstorms over the last couple of weeks, but today is bright, sunny, and hot.  So I'm taking advantage of the sun, and the excuse to sit in the air conditioning and post on the blog.

First, the mid July panorama:

There's a lot of green, but not a lot of color - but it's there if you look.  We talked to our neighbor about the tall spikey growths in the center (and all over really) and couldn't decide if they're weeds or not.  I'm willing to give it some time and see if it flowers and what any flowers look like.  Here's a closer look.

Against the back fence we are just in the last two days getting blossoms on the butterfly bushes.  There are four of them back there.  And with the blossoms I was able to get some pictures of a white moth checking out the blooms.

Over in the vegetable garden, we're still getting blooms as the vegetables are continuing to come in.

Tomato buds.

Zucchini blossoms

And inside the fence at the far right (over by the holly trees) we have a flourishing patch of phlox.

And there are still just a few of the June bloomers, the rose campion and the yellow primrose.

And we have a visitor who is growing under the fence from our neighbor's yard - a day lily.

I know that the lily is potentially poisonous to the dogs, but I haven't wanted to pull it out.  I've accepted that despite my professed intent to create a totally pet friendly garden, I'm not really ready to pull out all the plants I would need to.  It would mean getting rid of the big cherry tree, the azaleas, and enough others that I had to come to terms with my goal.  I will continue to try not to add any hazardous plants, but in 4 years here we haven't had any problems with the dogs chewing on the plants (running them down - yes; eating - no) Maybe I'll need to refocus and work on rescuing the garden from the dogs. 

The Garden Bloggers Bloom Day page is at http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/search/label/garden%20bloggers%20bloom%20day

June 29 panorama

I am continuing my project of taking panorama shots of the back garden at the turn of the month and at the middle.  Since June is ending on a Monday. I went out and took the pictures today.  I spent yesterday working on the vegetable garden, taking off the bird netting and putting in supports for the plants. Today I did some weeding, so the garden was ready to have it's picture taken.

TaDa:

I was talking to our neighbor, Pat, last night (we had her over for a barbecue) and she said she doesn't remember a summer when the plants got so big.  So these pictures may not be typical, but they do document the stages of growth and change through the summer. At the end of the summer I am going to put together a couple collages showing the development of the garden and print them off on photo paper and put them into my garden notebook.  So I'll have a record of the garden (as it is this year) and what blooms when and where in the garden. 

As I mentioned, yesterday we took the bird netting off the vegetable garden.  The tomatoes and cucumbers were growing through it, so we figured it would be more a hindrance to us being able to harvest anything than effective protection from the birds.  (We've already started getting zucchini, and cucumbers, and the lettuce is done for the season.  Tomatoes are very close.)

So, I was saying (twice now) we took down the bird netting.  What I didn't realize was how much the plants were using the netting for support.  Once I had the netting free, everything fell over.

That's a big pile of tomato and cucumber plants that's too heavy to support itself.

A trip to Lowes and a couple hours later we have this:

It wasn't quite the plans I had for the afternoon, but now the tomatoes and cucumbers are supported and have more room to grow.  We can also see and reach the tomato plants on the inside of the box. We found another ripe zucchini and Gloria made zucchini tots to go with the grilled chicken and pasta salad for dinner.

Now I'm just hoping that the raised bed is high enough to be out of reach of the bunnies.

Bloom Day

Last month I came across an interesting blog post.  The May Dreams Garden blog invites people to take pictures of what is blooming on the 15th of the month and write a post and share a link to show what's going on in the garden.  This month's post is at Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - June 2014.  So, I've taken some pictures (what a surprise.)  It also fits well with my project this summer to take panorama pictures of the back hill at the beginning and middle of each month to keep a video diary of what blooms and when.

So I'll start with a panorama of the back garden from pictures taken yesterday afternoon.

The flowers in bloom right now are Yellow Primrose, Rose Campion, and Cucumbers, Zucchini, and Tomatoes. 

I'll let the Primrose go first since they are the flashiest.

They are all over the hill, but they're so pretty that I'm happy to see them.  They are also accompanied by Rose Campions.

It's taken a couple years, and some help, to identify what the Rose Campions are, but now I know what they are so that I can call them by name.

Over on the far right of the yard (in the big square planter) is the vegetable garden. This is our first year planting vegetables so we're excited to see all the blossoms and nascent vegetables on the vines.  I didn't get pictures of the zucchini blossoms or the tomato flowers, but here is a picture of some cucumber flowers.

We've put bird netting over the vegetable garden to try and protect the veggies until we can harvest them.

And it wouldn't be a celebration around here (Father's Day this weekend) without food.  I butterflied a chicken and rubbed some garlic herb butter under the skin before I grilled it. We also had corn on the cob, roasted veggies, grilled pineapple and (not shown) cowboy beans, bread and brie, and a bottle of Far Eastern Shore wine - Lotus.

And some no sugar added blueberry pie for dessert.   It was a good day to enjoy the flowering garden and family gathered for dinner.