The Frugal Haps with Photos!

The garden is still chugging along in early September.  The zucchini and cucumber are still producing, albeit they are scraggly and so pitiful looking they seem as though they are begging for mercy (pull me you wicked woman!).

Yesterday's snack all from the garden.

Tomatoes are in fine form, and if you can believe it, strawberries are still coming.  Large and red berries and healthy green plants.  I hope to expand to an entire bed for them next year next to the raspberry bed I hope to have. Oh garden dreaming...

My sweet neighbor Marianne gave me lots of spicy lettuce to transplant, and I hope they survive my ineptitude (I replanted them yesterday in full sun). 

The pumpkin patch was overtaken by the blight, but we were able to get a great haul of sweet round pumpkins.  We gave away several to the neighbors, and will save two for my niece and nephew. The few remaining will be part of our fall decorating.

We will keep a few.  One for me, the girl, and our kitty Charlie.

If the weather is nice and I have good energy I tend to go hog wild on my day off.  I take off every other Thursday without pay so I can take my daughter to school and take care of home necessities.  Yesterday was a blissful day of good health and lots of yard work.  Those are my favorite days. It also happened to coincide with the local nursery's fall clearance sale.  Can anyone say FRUIT TREES?!  I was able to pick up a Dwarf Fuji for $10, a peach tree for $10 (we will see how that does in this climate), and a beautiful ornamental somethingerother.

Which reminds me something I haven't shared! Because of my neighborhood's issue with sewer runoff into the Puget Sound, I qualified for a free rain garden from the city! Well, almost free.  I did have to pay $384 for the 200 gallon cistern, but I had wanted one of those for years.  I was able to water the yard with it yesterday. 

The garden is gorgeous and between labor (lots of digging underground pipes) and plants, it was nearly $2,800 FOR FREE!

I really love my time in the garden.  It feeds me (both literally and spiritually).  I love sharing my bounty with neighbors, and they in turn are so gracious in sharing with me.  In fact, yesterday my neighbor Suzie invited me to pick tons of plums from her yard as they are dropping like crazy.  And my sweet next door neighbor Mary shared several different kinds of tomatos!

Thank you Mary!

Along with the photo of the yummy plums, I'll leave you with the classic William Carlos Williams poem on that very subject...

Thank you Suzie!

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Garden Delights and Wise Words from John Updike

My only potatoes of the season, some zucchini, purple beans, and the last of the snap peas.

The garden is full of delights this time of year.  Some things, like lettuce and snap peas which burst onto the scene with reckless abandon, have drifted off into a slumber in the summer heat.

Still growing like mad are zucchini, cucumbers, purslane, kale, tomatoes, carrots and pumpkins.  I've probably got at least 30 pumpkins growing at the moment and I'm hoping there will be enough for the neighborhood and family kids to all get one for Halloween this year.

Just three pumpkin seeds in a little mound of dirt is all it took this year,  The bees have been busy pollinating the large blossoms. 

I had not anticipated the success of the pumpkin patch this year!

While I can't always count on her help in the garden (except for the harvesting part!) my daughter loves to make "fairy houses."  She will spend considerable time on making these homes pleasant for the fairies of her dreams.  Sometimes the fairies leave little gifts.

It might be hard to see, but this has everything a fairy might need!

So much growth and so much wonder takes place in the garden.  Lessons are learned in both patience and acceptance.  What becomes merely a memory of hard work, gives so much in the growth of plants.  That is, until it is time to work again.  The time in the garden rarely does feel like actual work to me for some reason.  Even sore muscles and sweat translate into joy.

Here is a poem I love from John Updike about hoeing in the garden. 

Hoeing

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived 

of the pleasures of hoeing;

there is no knowing

how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise. 


The dry earth like a great scab breaks,

revealing moist-dark loam--

the pea-root's home,

a fertile wound perpetually healing.


How neatly the green weeds go under!

The blade chops the earth new.

Ignorant the wise boy who

has never performed this simple, stupid, and useful wonder.


~John Updike

In Bloom

These are some of the sights currently in the yard and garden. Photos were taken by my friend and neighbor, Deborah. Close-up pictures ensure you don't see my weeds! 

Azalea in full bloom

“They blossomed, they did not talk about blossoming.” 

― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

Kale gone to seed. We like to eat the flowers in salads.

“The yellow glistens.

It glistens with various yellows

Citrons, oranges and greens

Flowering over the skin.” 

― Wallace Stevens

A rhodie on a newly made-over tray.

“The time came when the risk it took to remain tight in the 

bud became more painful than the risk it took to bloom.” 

― Anais Nin

Snowball tree

“All our wisdom is stored in the trees.” 

― Santosh Kalwar

Volunteer Calendula

“since the thing perhaps is

to eat flowers and not to be afraid” 

― E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Crimson Clover

“A weed is but an unloved flower.” 

― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

May

She's little, but full of promise: Our first strawberry of the season.

"The world's favorite season is the spring.  All things seem possible in May."

-Edwin Way Teale

Promises

Chamomile grows atop

the pretty clay pot

found discarded

on the roadside

near a church.

Healthy dirt,

cradles rooting plants

The berry beams.

Lean in,

can you hear her?

"promises"

"promises"

She whispers.

             n.l.

Pictured is our first strawberry of the season.  We've been watching it daily to see how it ripens.  My daughter, who is usually quick to pick a berry, has been very patient, waiting for it to reach it's full potential. Few things make me happier than these simple sights in the garden.

The beautiful strawberry pot is one of three my daughter spotted on the side of the road with a free sign (she inherited side of the road shopping from her mother). So far our new strawberry plants have been really happy in these pots.