An Eggplant is Just an Eggplant

Although this photo makes you wonder, no?  I took the photo in the Cedar Ridge farm for a handout I was writing on "How to Harvest," to show people when a veggie was ready to be picked.  This eggplant, though, did not make it into the handout.  Too ripe for church.

My own garden is also a story of fertility, but of fertility enjoyed by others.  The birds got to the breba crop of figs and also ate almost all of the blueberries.  Something seems to be getting to the raspberries before I do.  But there was a decent crop of peas, and the cukes are coming along now.  I pulled all of the garlic, and they were enormous (I should have a photo of the bulbs along side yon eggplant).

It is now very hot and very dry and my interest in the garden has gone as dormant as the grass.  It will perk up, though, as the main crop of figs comes in and the oriental lilies bloom next month.  At that point the eggplants will no longer be so suggestive, and maybe I will titter less and work more.  Maybe.

Peonies, Irises, and Roses

I really do love high spring.  That was all I wanted to say.

Strawberries

The strawberries are in.  About a quart today.  I ate my share standing in the garden, ripping their green tops off with my teeth.  Noah ate his for dessert, tossed with sugar.

Baby Bird

If you look closely you can see a nest among the roses, and in that nest are four baby robins.  They hatched today.  Who can know, but I imagine this is the same family of robbins that nested in the spruce tree next to the porch last spring, and lost their entire brood when the nest fell from the branches.  I watch this nest nervously, because it has a serious list.  The tilt means I can sit on the couch in the living room and look into the nest and the gaping baby mouths...but I wish the babies were safer.

Today my friend is delivering her baby boy.  Her beloved baby girl died about 5 months ago.  I am breathless, seeing this hope: life is good, life is joyful, life is worth trying again.  The birds know it, my friends know it, and I try to know it, too.

Tidy

I had to mark the moment: my garden looks tidy.  Not perfectly weeded or mowed, not bloomingly beautiful, but tidy.  As I am not by nature a tidy gardener this is no common thing.

Even the vegetable garden, that den of bindweed and blowing straw, is looking quite cleaned up.  Yes, yes, there are weeds in the paths.  There will always be weeds in the paths.  Today I am just glad that, from a distance, my garden has some order.

On High Spring and Tailoring

Peony from front bed

High spring, the time of peonies, irises, and roses.  The flower bed in the front yard is finally blooming, after a number of years of mulling and last year's work of weeding and planting.

Siberian iris

My two little clumps of Siberian iris are blooming, and I realize I love these guys - what have I been doing with those bearded irises all these years?  In this bed of buxom peonies the tailored Siberians perform the same function as a structured jacket does for a plump woman: they hold it all together.

The Bestest Garden

Noah decided he wanted his own spot of earth.  His own garden to do with as he would.  He chose this spot under the butterfly bush, where there was water and stone and earth.

Noah chose the plants for his vegetable plot - strawberries and spinach, transplanted from the big garden.  He watered them well, and now Elfie the garden elf watches over Noah's own private paradise.