Fall is on the way. During our last weeks of hot weather, I got into the habit of going for walks early in the day to avoid the shingle-irritating bright sun and heat.
I noticed that Laurelhurst Park is very different early in the day. The cool damp of night is still in the air. Tai chi groups perform their slow dance among the trees.
Firwood Lake is a perfect mirror… until the ducks wake up! Then, somehow, the ripples make the mirror even more beautiful.
And passing the Blair Community Garden, I see the raspberries getting ripe.
I am happily awaiting the day when I will need a second layer to be comfortable. J’aime sweater weather!
As well as cleaning up and tucking in my own plot for the winter, I had a few hours of service gardening to do at the Blair Community Garden. This is how the garden is kept in good repair; everyone does a few hours here and there.
My back has been sore from too much lifting of wheelbarrows, so today I sat right down to pull weeds. And, as so often happens, I found beauty I hadn’t expected.
This tiny mushroom was perched in the middle of the path. I didn’t pull it, because it’s not a weed. I just admired it.
These statice flowers are small, and the dew drops on them are even smaller! How pretty is this?
These spurge plants, lovely as they are when sparkled with dew, had to get pulled. They will just get bigger over our warm-ish, wet winter.
After half an hour of weed pulling and picture taking, I was wet, muddy, and ready to head home. I still have a half an hour before my service hours are fulfilled, but not today.
My veggie garden grew like crazy while we were visiting you! Auntie Bridgett kept it watered and weeded and Mother Nature did the rest.
Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are as tall as I am and have a couple dozen blooms. The bright yellow blossoms are fat and ruffled and almost as big as our dinner plates. I cut some to decorate our table and left some others for the bees.
And speaking of bees, they have been busy pollinating my zucchinis! We picked one, cooked and ate it before I remembered to take a picture of it. But I did paint a picture of the dinner for my garden journal! The corn on the cob was from the Hollywood farmer’s market and the chicken meatballs were from Trader Joe’s. Yummy!
And last but not least, my tomatoes are beginning to think about, maybe, someday, getting ripe soon. The Chocolate Cherry tomato plant is slowly getting red!
And that’s all the news from my plot at the Blair Community Gardrn.
Wouldn’t you know it, just as I am coming to visit you for a few weeks, my garden is getting into high gear! Fortunately, Auntie Bridgett will be staying in town, so she can water and harvest.
The 24 lettuce starts I out in have all done well, giving us enough lettuce to have big salads every day. I only pick a few leaves from each plant every few days, so they just keep making more!
The Black Beauty zucchini plants are coming up, and may be bearing baby Zukes by the time I get back.
Our three cherry tomato plants, (Chocolate Cherry, Sweet Millions and Isis Candy) have doubled in size, and the Chocolate Cherry has three blossoms!
Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are two feet high and very fat and bunchy. They are going to give us some big blooms later in the summer.
And, of course, the lavender is big and blooming, smelling fabulous, and trying to take over the joint.
I hope Auntie Bridgett will enjoy watching the garden grow as much as I do, and share our harvest with our lovely neighbors!
It seems like this time, our warm weather is here to stay. Summer has begun, and I’m here for it!
I added twelve more lettuces to my plot, since we have already started harvesting leaves off the first ones I put in last month. My lettuce plot is near a big camellia bush and in shade until noon, so it is protected from too much sun as well as any heavy summer showers that come by.
Our dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, are growing strong and chubby.
I put the tomato cages around them because they grow REALLY tall and won’t be able to support themselves. Here is a picture from LAST September.
I have some extra space for flowers this year, since I’m growing fewer tomatoes. Black Eyed Susans are a favorite of local bees. I sprinkled some seeds in with the irises and lavender.
Once I was home and got the mud off my hands, I decorated some pages in this years’ garden journal. I will tell you about them when they are done.
We headed over to Portland Nursery the other day and fetched six lettuce starts and a packets of zucchini seeds. The seed will wait for this weekend, but the lettuces are in and very happy. Look at that color! It is a variety called “Merlot”.
They will start giving us lettuce in a few weeks.
And in Tiny Green Gals news, our dahlias are coming up! Laverne and Shirley, as Bridgett has named them, are growing from rhizomes I planted last spring. They are just a few inches tall, but I have already put tomato cages around them. Last year they got too tall to stand on their own.
The bearded irises I picked up in a FREE bucket haven’t done much yet, but I’ll be patient. Near them, the lavender we planted years ago is getting lovely and green.
Spring hasn’t really come to Portland yet, but last week we had a perfect day. Sunny enough to make sharp shadows, warm enough to be out in but cool enough appreciate going inside, and full of things to do.
First, Auntie Bridgett and I headed north to Bolt Fabrics to get some backing fabric for the Crazy Quilt. We were early, we stopped in at New Seasons for some bee pollen and horseradish. We walked around Alberta Street, looking in windows and seeing what was going on.
We saw some happy folks painting new trim on a store that will open soon called “Golden Pliers Bicycle Repair.” I love to see new businesses opening up!
The murals of Alberta are always beautiful, but the sunshine really makes them smile.
When Bolt opened, we hunted around for the right color to back the super-busy super-colorful crazy quilt. Our friend Cynthia joined us and added her ideas. Black? Too strong. Bronze? Not enough. How about this purple?
Perfect! It will get washed and ready for the quilt very soon.
We headed to The Great North for a snack, but they had nary a chair available. Cynthia suggested “Just Bob”, down the street. It was stunningly friendly, funky, and comfortable.
A delightfully retro mix of chairs and sofas had room for us, with chai and coffee and even a light lunch for me. We chatted and ogled all the decor.
“Bob” seems to be a unicorn, and his likeness was everywhere. Small statues and figurines filled every shelf, and Bob the unicorn had been added to several old landscape paintings.
After our snack and seeing Cynthia home, the day just kept being busy.
I met MJ at the Blair Community Garden to do some early spring weeding. The Lesser Celestines are invading the parkway outside the garden gate, and need to come out with all their roots, so they will stay gone.
An hour and a half later, I was done, done, done. Home for a rest and a chat with Grandpa Nelson, who had been out walking in all the pretty weather and was home to crash, as well.
And after a nice dinner at Ankeny Tap and Table, we watched a very silly Alfred Hitchcock movie and fell happily asleep.
I’m glad I had this perfect sunny day…. Next week we get more winter!
It has been such a busy summer, I feel like I am squeezing gardening in between everything else! But veggie plots are relentless, both in the care they require and the joys they give.
This week, I have good news and bad news. Some of my yellow squash are being hit with a blossom end rot. I have looked it up and the solution seems to be ‘maintaining a consistent moisture level’ in the soil. Easier said than done, but we’ll try. We have harvested several of the tasty squash and want more!
The good news is that we are having free salads every day from the curly lettuces and raddichio, which we combined with that lovely squash and some basil from M.J. down the way. The currents and anise are from the community plots of the Blair Community Garden.
Our first tomato, “Isis Candy” by name, came ripe and was delicious.
We are finally seeing success in pumpkins, with “Ribsy”, our fourth named pumpkin. His predecessors (Beezus, Ramona and Henry) shriveled, but this fellow is resting on a step of the ladder and seems happy. The newest pumpkin, “PickyPicky”, had started forming four feet off the ground and needed shifting to the top of the ladder. We’ll see how he adjusts.
And finally, the two gigantic dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, are ready to pop! They are both nearly four feet high and were threatening to topple over last week, until we improvised a support from an old tomato cage.
Now, it looks like they will stay vertical long enough to bloom, feed some bees, and recharge their roots for next year.
I have been distracted by all sorts of activities since the beginning of the month, but my garden has been growing like crazy anyway. I went over Tuesday and had a good time getting my hands in the dirt and pulling a box full of weeds.
It sure cleans up pretty, doesn’t it?
The yellow summer squash are getting tall, and I put a loop of yarn on the pumpkin to encourage it to climb on the ladder rather than the tomato cages.
All the tomatoes are above their cages and in need of extra support.
We are eating lettuce and radicchio everyday from the plot, laughing at the cost of organic greens in the market.
Auntie Bridgett has named our two dahlias Laverne and Shirley, and they are both doing well! No buds yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
So Huckleberry Finn and I are spending some quality time in the garden. All in all, summer is here and the gardening is lovely!
We are now in June, with cool mornings and bright warm afternoons. Everything in my vegetable plot is up and growing.
Most of the tomatoes are as tall as their cages, both dahlias are up, the squash and pumpkins are well, and the lettuces continue to save us a fortune on salads.
I got an email this week from the people in charge of the community gardens, asking that I tidy up my plot. It is growing well, they said, but the mint along the fence was getting out of hand.
They were right, so I spent a tiring hour pulling and tugging and getting very minty-fresh! The fence was neater, for sure…. But not as pretty, in my opinion.
I also put in six new radicchio starts we got from the Portland Nursery. It was such a hot day I soaked the ground, put them in, and then moved the ladder sun screen over to give some shade until they get settled in.
It looks silly but does the job. Good luck, little lettuce dudes.
By 2:30 the edges were clear, new plants in, and everything thoroughly watered. I piled all the weeds and miscellaneous trash in my red wagon and headed home, sweaty but victorious.
Dear Liza 