Our Thriving Gardens

Our own gardens are thriving in mid-June thanks to just the right amount of rain and just enough of the limited sunshine that filters through the big shade trees all around us.  The tomato plants are jumping out of their cages, and the ones that Martha planted up on the deck are as tall as she is.  This is the difference that six weeks of ideal weather makes:

The zucchini (left) and potatoes (right) are doing well, too, although the beans and peppers seem to be coming along more slowly.  The potatoes are especially bushy, and I wonder if they will produce a good crop.  It is always a mystery what is going on underground until you dig them, and I am remembering the old saying, “All plant, no potatoes” taught to me by my neighbor 40 years ago.

I checked the zucchini the night before last and found four large ones that seemed to blow up from blossom to full-size overnight.  There was enough to share with our neighbor, and the other two (see below) provided enough for a dinner of spiralized zucchini with grilled chicken one night, parmesan zucchini rounds the next night, and Martha’s zucchini lasagna the third night – delicious!  They are a prolific vegetable, and the joke is that in zucchini season, you have to roll your windows up tight when you go to church to prevent your neighbors from putting them in your car.

I have seen what looks like deer footprints between the garden beds, so I erected some deer netting around the beans topped with a strip of yellow tape.  I couldn’t find POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS at the hardware store, and besides I suspect (but am not entirely certain) that deer cannot read anyway. 

The perennial flowers are doing well, too, day lilies and clematis in full bloom along the walkway to the back door.

I think I mentioned that we were waiting for a second estimate for painting our house.  It came promptly and under budget, and when we asked the genial Lupe Gonzalez when he could start, he said tomorrow or the next day.  In four days time, two men painted the entire house and garden shed, working long hours.  

When that was done he came by and gave us an estimate on building a carport (also under budget), and when we asked when that work could start, he hesitantly replied, “Next week?” as if we might think that was not soon enough.  Sure enough, a team of men showed up early in the week, cut big square holes through the asphalt driveway for the footings (something I would have been unable to do) and poured the concrete.  The next day, work began on the carport, and in four days was completed except for the metal roof, which had been back-ordered.  What a work ethic these men have!  It is top-quality construction, and they worked long hours, one day working nearly 12 hours.  They walked gracefully around on the roof trusses like mountain goats, unafraid of heights, competently whipping out tape measures and circular saws and power nailing guns.  It is always a joy to watch the effortless motion of competent, skilled men at work.

Work stopped for several days until the metal roof arrived, and we were not sure when it would be installed after it appeared in the driveway one day.  Three nights ago, a Latino laborer showed up at 7:30 p.m. and worked until dark, and the next night he did the same.  He could not speak English very well, but we communicated, I think, our appreciation for his working so late.  Last night, he finished up, and in the dark started to carry my ladder around the house and hang it up before I went outside and gestured that I would put it away tomorrow.  Like the carpenters constructing the carport structure, he was fearless on the slick metal roof.

 We like to take photos of construction projects at our house, and it is always interesting to go back and look at them months and even years later.  Martha found a wonderful program on her phone that transforms a photo into something that looks like a water color, and she has been using it to record these new projects.  Here is the house after it was painted.

And here is our garden shed, which I constructed several years ago and which we normally refer to as a “folly” because it is more a place to sit and relax than a place to pot plants.

And here are two photos she magically transformed of the plants on our back deck – her garden, the one that is safe from predators and gets as much sun as anywhere in our yard.

One of the many things that Martha inherited from her Mom is a little sign that Jane Lewis always had in one of her gardens, and now it has been placed in one of the planters on the back deck.  It’s a famous quote, and I discovered only today that it is by the poet Dorothy Frances Gurney:

 The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.