[gardeners] Sunday in the garden
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 05 Dec 1999 15:40:35 -0600
Nice cool, crisp weather out today. The previous two days we got a
couple of inches of much needed rain so today was truly a joy.
Nothing much to do in the gardens other than the odd weed, harvest a few
veggies for dinner, check the health of the fruit trees, etc. All the
mulching was done a few weeks ago and there are only a few weeds.
Today we harvested a little lettuce and some radishes for a lunch salad
and then got about a pound of sunchokes for dinner tonight. It's a bit
early for broccoli and the cabbage and cauliflower have just started
heading up. There were some petunias, calendula, and violas to put on
top of the salad for beauty's sake and for eating too. The scallions I
planted from seed back in the early spring are fully ready for use now
so I anticipate chopping a goodly mess of them tomorrow to freeze for
use in cooking. The chiles are still bearing but have slowed in their
fruiting due to the cool weather. The chiles and the tomatoes we moved
into the greenhouse last month are blooming so Miz Anne pollenated them
with a cotton swab today.
The fierce winds of the last few days managed to blow down a large
hanging basket of angel wing begonia so many new starts are now in 4
inch pots in the greenhouse. Since it landed on a pretty good sized
night-blooming cereus and knocked off a few of its leaves they, too, are
now potted up in the greenhouse. I am continually amazed at how easy
such plants are propagated. Miz Anne must have a green thumb up to about
her shoulder. Of course I do well with the herbs in the same manner but
am rather cavalier about them. I look after them but don't mourn them if
they don't make it.
Miz Anne is decorating the house and grounds for the holidays at the
moment and the dog and I are in hiding. Bah! Humbug! The whole house
will stink of cedar and holly for the next few weeks. She's even got
some tallow tree limbs with the white berries on them to mix in with the
other stuff and there's some sort of plant in the front with red
berries, not a holly, that has lost its berries now. I can say that I
prefer her natural decorations over the many lights and plywood cutouts
of some of our neighbors.
Hope all are enjoying the weekend and their gardens. Life is good.
George