Garden wonders II

Weeks of warm sun. Scattered days of rain. A daily one-sided chat. It’s the right recipe for a happy garden.

Tomatoes are setting fruit and onions bulbs are bursting from the earth. Basil, cucumbers, bell peppers in red, yellow and green reach for the sky.

Seedlings are swelling past all expectation. A row of zucchini promises stir fries, casseroles and breads through the summer months. They’ll be secreted in spaghetti sauce and meatballs and lurk in chilis and stews.

Heirloom seedling tomatoes emerge – not one or two but, unexpectedly, dozens. The garden – and our appetite – isn’t big enough.

A neighbor gifts us a tomato plant he has lovingly grown in his greenhouse. We can’t refuse. What’s one more when you have thirty.

I turn my back and the beets have grown a foot high, thick stalks bright red and green. Asparagus that I gave up on weeks ago have popped up and wave their green fronds. Fennel is frothy and elbowing its way out of its bed.

Soybeans – more popularly named edamame – stay low to the ground and, unfamiliar with this crop, I’m ready to pull them out in frustration. Produce or be purged. Room is needed for tomatoes, after all. On closer look, the plants have set a full harvest of tiny pods. A reprieve is given.

The season has just begun but the garden is well underway.

Garden wonders

It’s shocking what some people will put in their gardens.

Dinosaurs, 8-foot tall chickens, life-sized armored soldiers, naked mermaids. 

Exploring nurseries is entertainment on many levels. I told my husband I’d love him forever if he brought home that chicken but, thinking I was joking, he just laughed.

We browsed rock ants circling on a Ferris wheel, a bobbing peacock and Buddhas of all type – old, young, laughing, stern – even one who appeared to be doing jumping jacks.

 There were stone dogs, deer, alligators, hippos and fountains featuring a child peeing. Before I knew it, we had loaded up a giant concrete sea turtle.

Like others who have the gardening bug, for us, visiting nurseries is like shopping in a candy store. So much looks good. We want to load it all into our bag. But overdoing it is bad (diabetes, visits to the dentist, stomachaches, if we’re continuing that candy store analogy), so sometimes looking has to do. Otherwise our backyard will turn into a crazy mixed up zoo.

Sure, nurseries are about the plants. We browse those too. Some make their way into our yard, tucked next to a boulder, sheltered on the patio, or planted firmly in the vegetable boxes. But we always savor the “hardscapes” – pig chimes, butterfly trellises, giant pottery galore.

It took two days for my husband to discover my latest find. My reasoning is that if we are going to continue visiting nurseries, our garden needs a little serenity.