Advent of summer evenings

It's not summer yet, but it's sounding like it; the warm evenings are bringing sounds of crickets and tree frogs.

There's a bullfrog calling from the small pond in the Terrace Garden near my office as I leave work, and other frogs in another pond near the parking lot.

The evenings have been delightful; maybe a little humid, but yesterday was downright cool for mid-May. Our garden is lush with green; it's a wonderful respite from the droughty springs of most of the last decade, especially last year, and the year before.

In the Satellite Garden, garlic, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and squash of all sorts are growing rapidly. The planted hay bales are an experiment -- they'll definitely need more watering than I'm used too, and more additional nutrients from slow-release organic fertilizer.


In the main vegetable garden (where the nematode experiment is still underway), a huge butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) has defied my rooting-out efforts, and is about to start flowering.

I had heeled it in there, just providing a (temporary) home for a young plant. Little did I know that it would become gigantic, thanks to abundant water and nutrients, crowding out whatever else I'd like to plant in that block.

Oh well, it's quite striking, and a great source of pollen and nectar for a wide range of flower visitors. In flower, it's remarkable.

Comments

  1. Your garden looks lush and green and quite nice. When we were in Massanutten there were some tree frogs ( I suppose) that chirped all night long! Amazing.
    I know Asclepsia gets a long tap root and is hard to transplant, didn't realize it was hard to move as well.

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  2. It smells like summer today...the air is humid after a thunderstorm and I can smell the season morphing into hot times! In the meantime all the rain has made your garden lusciously green. gail

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  3. Those two white chairs have been calling me for almost a year. It looks so peaceful in your lush back yard.

    Your corner of SC looks so much better this spring that it has in recent years. What a blessing the rain has been this year.
    L

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  4. Hi,

    Your garden looks amazing!

    Can I ask what the planted hay bales are and how you grow plants in them?

    Thanks
    Mike

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