SummerColour

 

My San Marzano plum tomatoes, ripening on the vine. I like this combination of just-about-ready red, just-starting-to-ripen yellow, and leave-me-alone-right-now bright green.

Roadside Queen Anne's Lace. I think they look like snowflakes magnified. I've said it here many times before, but these are also wild carrots. When you break a stem, they smell just like carrots, and if you pull them up, the tap root looks like a big, beige carrot.

I have six sunflower plants this year. They're in the vegetable garden where I can wire them to the fence as they grow. This is my smallest one, barely 4 feet tall, but with this perfect bloom.

Wild snapdragons, also known as Butter-n-Creams. They're adorable flowers, not very tall. I've moved a few into my flowerbeds, but they seem to prefer the sandy and dry roadsides.

My thistles continue to attract "wildlife" to Pink Gardens' yard. Here, a honeybee partakes of the thistle's sweet nectar. Hummingbirds love them while they're flowering like this, and finches and other small songbirds like them as they dry out and their seed "fluff" escapes from them.

One of my very few healthy Zinnias. I planted several flats of them this year, in both the cutting garden and the flowerbeds, and most of them were gobbled up by chipmunks and rabbits. What few remained outside of the fenced in vegetable garden, where my small cutting garden is located, were moved there, but they're not flourishing. I'll have these bright orange ones, yellow ones and a few pink ones, but I bought about nine different colors to begin with. Very frustrating!

"Sun King" yellow cherry tomatoes. These are incredibly sweet. I've enjoyed these the most this year. Of course, with the exception of the San Marzanos, I've only had ONE other tomato ripen, a small Purple Cherokee. I've lost six entire plants so far to chipmunks or what-have-you, even though they are in a fenced in garden. Others have just withered and died, while others have thrived and reached six feet all but aren't really producing flowers or fruit. Not a good tomato year!

Wild morning glory! These grow in the same place as the wild white beach roses all around the yard. They're a bit smaller than the cultivated version, but they require zero care, lol. They also don't have as many flowers, but on the other hand, they bloom earlier than the "regular" ones. I won't have any blue, pink or purple glories until September, and these white ones are blooming now.

One of the many dragonfly varieties in the yard. I think these red ones are the most friendly. They'll land right on my arms and hands as I prune my tomatoes or weave my morning glories. Above, this cutie is resting on a sunflower leaf.

Neighbor Rick's bright red cherry tomatoes. These are nice and sweet, too.

Cross your fingers! This is a really nice and plump Cherokee Purple ripening on the vine. This heirloom variety isn't very bug-resistant, and being organic, they seem to be weaker overall, too. They tend to get soft spots which then rot. Chippies love to munch on them, and I've tossed five or six into the compost heap so far, while only picking one to eat.

One of my most classic "pairings" in Pink Gardens' yard, and one I'm most proud of, is this old-stock sedum next to those 250+ year old granite steps. I found these sedums struggling in the woods where there must have been flowerbeds decades ago. They were only about 6 inches high, and I wasn't actually sure they were sedums. The leaves looked like sedum, but it was fall and there were no flowers or dead flower stems. I dug them up and moved them into the sun and now I have about two dozen very healthy dusty-rose colored sedums. I love this old plant next to the ancient stones carved into steps so many years ago. The steps are five feet long by three feet deep and roughly handhewn. I'm positive they're remains from an earlier house on this property. New Englanders are famous for reusing whatever they can. And so do I!

This is my tallest sunflower, so far. It's eight-nine feet high with this foot-wide flower and almost a dozen more buds to come. It's leaning against the recently vacated wren house. Several wrens fledged two weeks ago, and it seems odd to go into the veggie garden without hearing their squeaks now!

Our granite peace bench, or "piece" bench as we pieced it together a few years ago from items found around the property, is now my "triage" bench. Those four terra cotta flower pots are nursing plants back to health... I have spearmint in one, pinched from a friend's plants. I brought a few small stems home for iced tea, but they rooted in the glass before I could use them so I planted them and they're doing really well! I also have a small dahlia in a pot—chewed off right above ground earlier this summer by the chippies, but now thriving again in that pot. Next to that, the tallest spindly plant is a dill "volunteer" that just appeared in the veggie garden this year. I had a few dill plants last year, but they all died before I could cut them and dry them, so I really didn't expect them to drop enough seeds to come back. But this one did, right where I was going to plant tomatoes, so I potted it and it's doing OK. And I also have a small geranium in the far right pot. I winter my geraniums in the attic and they've gotten really big. But first thing this spring, the damn chipmunks started mowing them down. Just stem after stem after stem. I've never seen them do that before! This is the top of one of my old geraniums. I rooted it in water and planted it in this pot and the critters have left it alone. I suppose most people would just toss these things in the garbage, but I love a challenge and love to "bring back" plants most people wouldn't bother with. It's really one of my favorite things to do.

This yellow zinnia plant is one quarter the size of the bright orange one, and the orange one is half the size my zinnia plants usually reach, but I'm hoping to have a few nice arrangements by mid September anyway.

One of my favorite wildflowers, Goldenrod. This one is near the boardwalk in town. It's not quite open yet, so it's this lovely chartreuse color. When the small buds pop open, it will be that beautiful bright golden yellow they are known for. I'm going to have a banner year with the ones in my yard. I've been dutifully pinching them back every two weeks since spring. They are about three feet tall now and VERY bushy. If you don't pinch them, they get about six feet tall, but the stems only have one flower cluster, like this one leaning over. Mine have turned into "shrubs" and will be very thick with flowers. Best part is, since they're technically wildflowers, and I've dug them up from the woods and roadsides, they didn't cost anything and because they didn't cost me any money, the chipmunks and rabbits won't touch them, lol. They only go for the new "store-bought" perennials and annuals!

Finishing up today is this pretty planter in the center of town. I believe those are the newer variety of petunias known as "wave" petunias, and don't require dead-heading like the old tried and true species. They flower profusely, too. It's paired nicely with white Alyssum here.