Garden wanderings

I find great pleasure in wandering through our backyard after work with a glass of wine, looking to see what's new. It's still relatively pleasant, although the temperature has gotten up into the 80s already, and it's pretty windy today.

I love strawberries, but we've been pretty unsuccessful with them so far. We have them planted in three new places this year that have lots of shade so hopefully they will survive the summer- under the orange tree, behind the gazebo, and in a hanging "as seen on TV" contraption on the east side of the house. The ones under the orange tree haven't done much, and I wonder if it is too shady. Dollarweed and nut sedge, unfortunately, are thriving there. The ones behind the gazebo look okay and have a few green strawberries. The problem there is the Mexican primrose that would take over if it could. The ones in the hanging basket seem to be doing the best. No competition, maybe?

The daylilies I dug up from under the orange tree, where they did nothing, and moved to one of the new raised beds, apparently survived the process, because they are putting up new shoots. There are lots of seedlings coming up in the beds at well, at yet unidentifiable. Hopefully they are the seeds I broadcast, and not more of the cursed Mexican primrose. More hollyhocks are blooming, although so far they are all yellow ones. Yellow must be dominant over pink. (I started with mixed colors several years ago) Nasturtiums still look great- some are climbing the trellises intended for vines. (as are the Mexican primroses). The roses aren't as showy this year as some years in the past, probably because we didn't prune them back in January as we usually do.

Tomato and pepper transplants aren't doing much. The grapes are taking off and we are trying to do a better job of pruning them this year, so that hopefully will have grapes larger than a match head. It looks like the two planted on an arched trellis in front of our hide-the-pool-equipment wall may actually cover the trellis this year as intended.