I miss hearing about everyone's garden.

http://garden.therichards.org/gallery/2002

I'm playing with a new toy.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Answers

Oh, Lisa, it's beautiful. I've barely seen my garden lately, but I know the dahlias are amazing and the roses are entering into another big flush of blooms. Jeremy has a new digital camera but I'm afraid to touch it -- maybe I'll drag my old one out later today.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Lisa, your garden looks so good.

Mine, on the other hand, looks like shit. It looked wonderful up until a few days ago - I was so happy that the roses were all going through second flush and lots of other flowers were out while Anna was here, but a few days ago a deer or two broke into the "protected" flowery back bit and ate everything.

Roses, tomatoes, cosmos, poppies, succulents, begonias, etc. all gone. Fuckers. I need someone to kill these these deer and feed them to the poor.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Here's mine. I particularly love the salvia and the agastache in the front garden. http://homepage.mac.com/lisahoulihan/PhotoAlbum6.html

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

It sucks. The weather has been awful - cold, wet and rainy. The tomatoes - all two bushels of them, refuse to ripen. Instead they are just growing bigger and bigger. Some of the have split. Still, they do not ripen. The squash will not set fruit, even with hand pollination. The onions are basically sitting the ground doing nothing.

And today, we had a huge rainstorm/windstorm. My tallest sunflower is - was - about 10 feet tall. All of the sunflowers blew over in the night. The stalks aren't broken - they tipped over roots and all - but I'm still very worried about them. I staked up the ones I could. The ground is totally saturated.

Bleh.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

I was very pleased today -- my contribution to a big potluck picnic (all the lindy hoppers are in town) was a polenta salad, in which I made the polenta from scratch. I also added some juliet cherry tomatoes and fresh basil, both from my grow-bag vegetable garden. People liked it, even (especially?) those who hadn't had polenta before.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

I have neglected my garden so badly this year that I keep expecting Garden Protective Services to come to my door and arrest me.

I do have a record breakingly tall thistle however - sucker's pushing 12 feet.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

Wow, LisaH, real pears! And rosemary! I'm so impressed. Was the rosemary hard to grow? Would it work in a container?

Your Lavandula indecisivii are so cool. What a difference a month of growing has made on your vegetable garden! Wah, I want a garden. I have some insanely tall basil, however: Italian, lemon and cinnamon "flavours".

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

Rosemary is very easy to grow. You can just break off a piece from another plant, stick it in the ground (or container) and you'll end up with a ginormous bush.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

The rosemary came fairly large in a pot and after planting it I pretty much ignored it. I haven't been diligent about weeding, either, because I figure whatever grows on its own in Denver's drought, belongs. The tender little three-lobed leaves grow like weeds, but their shape is exactly that of the remaining daisy or daisy-relative that I ripped out the year before in a fit of insanity. Roto-tilling might have killed its competitors and let its seeds prosper. Or it might be a dreadful weed I'll regret next year.

I am really pleased with how much the front garden's grown--thank you--butit's a difference of two months, not one.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

And you were joking about the lavender, weren't you? Because I was, in its name. There's no difference in it between now and three months ago when it was planted. That's why I called it indecisive--it hasn't keeled over and perished yet but it hasn't grown at all either.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

I think the lavender looks cool. And I totally didn't register the joke about "indecisivii". Duh. Off to stick some rosemary in a pot, then.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

Viv, you have my deepest sympathies. That's awful. I experience a tiny bit of that anguish when I see the vast difference between my huge back yard (where the dogs play) and my tiny front yard (where the dogs aren't allowed). Things actually grow in the front and they don't die from being peed on or eaten or trampled or torn out by the roots.

But dogs aren't anywhere near as bad as deer. And the possum that ate every single pear on our tree doesn't even register on the badness scale.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

Wow. I'd be so upset if I had an actual pear tree with actual pears and then animals ate them. I love the way pears look on a pear tree so much that I doubt I'd even let any humans eat them.

If I could have a pear tree, which I can't. Sniff.

Meanwhile, the Cosmos and poppies - good little troopers that they are - are already blooming again, so there is one spot of color in the garden. And deer don't really like abutalon, so the variegated maple tree is still pretty and intact. No tomatoes for us this year, though. Only four had ripened on our big patio plant before the Bambi Gang Attack.

-- Anonymous, August 19, 2002

Viv, please send your deer over to my garden to eat the squirrels. I will then have my lynx eat your deer.

-- Anonymous, August 19, 2002