Sunday, June 3, 2007

I heart nasturtiums



It is a fantastically beautiful day, aided by the fact that I got to sleep in until nine, enjoy a leisurly breakfast, and then lounge about in my little garden snapping photos. The wather is perfect, 79 degrees, the faintest kiss of a young summer breeze swaying the leaves.

My clematis has climbd 8 feet up a dead branch I planted, and is now covered in more than 20 buds. I am so excited about the impending bloom! The plant is 3 years old now, and last year barely managed one purple flower due to the cats tearing it off the tree it (and they) climbed. The year before it had bloomed plenty, but after all the feline trauma I was afraid it might be dead. It sprouted vigorously this spring though, so yay!

My nasturtims are growing quickly, apparently a trademark of the plant, and I hope they will flower too, but if they don't their leaves are beautiful by themselves.

I also have some onions and potatoes for practicality, and some cucumbers and squash too (yum yum squash).

My morning glories are finally moving past their seed leaves too, hopefully they'll take off this summer. I'm afraid it may be too warm for the sweet peas, but we shall see.

Oh, and today, a wonderful suprise. Last summer I collected some seeds from these beatiful flowers along the road to my work. They bloomed for months, in every color a flower can be, some multi colored striped. And they smelled like hawaii, kind of like bell pepper mixed with flower perfume. I have no idea what they are, but those seeds were pinned to a board on the wall for at least seven months, with no name, only "plant in spring" written on the envelope. So a month ago I took half of the seeds and soaked them overnight, then planted them in some good soil and manure. This week I was beginning to think that either the seeds were no good, or maybe needed more soaking (they had quite tough shells, like the morning glory seeds) and luckily I had saved some just in case. I decided I'd wait till the weekend, because some of the other things I'd planted took a month to sprout, but what do you know, this very morning when I went out to water, there was a baby plant pushing up through the dirt of the "mystery" pot. Joy! I cant wait to see what color of flower I got, because I picked seeds from every different color plant there was.

I may live at the bottom of a north facing slope, and have only maybe 20 square feet of extremely clay soil to work with, but I have managed to have a garden. It even smells sweet already, and the season has only just begun- due to my location, I'm about a month behind the rest of the area! As soon as I have some flowers I'll share pictures. If only seed packets and gardening books mentioned the tool (and how to obtain it) that is invisible yet ultimately neccessary to a successful garden- patience!!!

3 comments:

Sandra Smith-Dugan said...

Your clematis photo is beautiful - equisite! And the little web dangling from the nasturtium is splendid. i am so happy you have created a garden for yourself. It has been a pleasure to read your writings!
love,
Aunt Sandy :)

Tree-Vor said...
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Anonymous said...

Your photos are amazing. I'm so glad you started this blog. Good for you. You are truly the hermitest hermitgirl of the mountains. (I don't know where you got that from.) Hugs, D.