May 1 Overview

As the peak gardening season begins in other parts of the country, it's winding down here. I removed the last of the broccoli and cilantro yesterday, and planted another melon in their place. I've stopped harvesting asparagus and let the ferns grow to provide food to sustain the plant for next year's crop. Very few lemons remain on the tree, the first flush of rose blooms have come and gone, and nasturtiums and petunias are pretty scraggly looking. In their place, zinnias, marigolds, alyssum, coreopsis, and galliardia are appearing. Hollyhocks are still going strong, and sweet potato vines are spreading into the streambed and the floor of the gazebo,

I harvested the first of the green beans, tomatoes, and eggplant this week, and should be picking yellow squash in another week. I've picked the half-dozen apricots our young tree produced, along with about two dozen smallish peaches. The remaining ones are even smaller, so I think I'll let the birds enjoy them. There are about a half-dozen green plums on our Santa Rosa plum, which is somewhat of an improvement over most years, and dozens of developing Asian pears. The apple tree is, surprisingly, still alive, but unlikely to produce any fruit.

The black metal structure in the upper left is the framework for one of our two portable gazebos that we use to shade the side patio in summer. We have to take down the canopy when the wind kicks up, as it has been doing for the past week. One of our future projects will be to replace these with a permanent pergola, which should be more functional, attractive, and stable.

Flower mash-up

I noticed that one of our older rosebushes has two kinds of roses blooming on the same bush. The cream colored rose is what I planted....I think it is the "Peace" cultivar, and this year there are also red roses growing from one of the spurs. I assume the red roses are from a rootstock onto which the cream roses were grafted.

To add to the flower mash-up, larkspur and coreopsis have come up on their own in the middle of the rosebush. So far the rose doesn't appear to be suffering, so I have left them alone. The larkspur probably won't last much longer, but coreopsis will keep growing through the summer and into late fall, and can get quite large. I might have to extract it from the rosebush at some point, which could be a painful undertaking.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

We returned from a weekend in cool San Diego to find that the Phoenix summer heat has set in in earnest. 110 degrees, according to our outdoor thermometer. There's not much that can be done in the garden this time of year, other than try to keep things alive.

We're still getting lots of tomatoes from fruit that set before the heat arrived. The new varieties seem to be a definite "go", with larger tomatoes and less evidence of fruit splitting, blossom end rot. Cilantro is dead, but basil is healthy. The zucchini, yellow, and winter squash plants, as well as the melon plants, are still disappointing small for this late in the season. None of the eggplants I attempted to start from seed have survived. but the lone Japanese eggplant planted as a transplant is fruiting prolifically. I'm not too bothered, because I still have eggplant and squash in the freezer from last year's bumper crop. The Armenian cucumber, yardlong beans, and the few zipper cream pea vines that came up look fairly comfortable in their semi-shady location under the lemon tree. Nectarines are beginning to ripen, although the fruits are rather small, and watercress has virtually taken over the streambed between ponds. Zinnias and coreopsis are seemingly unaffected and look great; the marigolds are wilting a bit.

At this time of year, I garden in five-minute intervals. I used the time today to cut down hollyhocks that had ceased to bloom and set the plants aside to dry and become flower mulch. This year we had one deep-red plant that I hope will appear again next year.

More listening to flowers

There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

     a time to be born and a time to die,

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

     a time to kill and a time to heal,

    a time to tear down and a time to build,

    a time to weep and a time to laugh,

    a time to mourn and a time to dance,

     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

     a time to search and a time to give up,

    a time to keep and a time to throw away,

    a time to tear and a time to mend,

    a time to be silent and a time to speak,

     a time to love and a time to hate,

    a time for war and a time for peace.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Most of the time I really enjoy Facebook; it allows me to keep up with friends old and new in ways that were never possible in the past. Among my Facebook friends, I have classmates I haven't seen since elementary school, friends (and a few former enemies) from high school, people I knew in college and seminary, former coworkers and church members, long-lost relatives, and many of my former students. It's usually fun to celebrate joys and sorrows with people I've known over the years; it's fun to see where life has led and is leading them; and it's interesting to be updated on their thoughts and what is important to them.

But some of the time, I'm saddened and bothered by what I read. People change, and grow apart, and sometimes you never really knew someone you thought you knew. I know some things about some of my Facebook friends that I wish I didn't know. (To be fair, some of them probably think the same about me!) When I see posts that are illogical,  intolerant, deliberately inflammatory, and/or designed to invoke fear and loathing of "the other", that's something I wish I didn't know about the person posting it. So, as I often do, I decided to walk away from the computer and work in our garden.

I started out deadheading coreopsis. Coreopsis is a large plant that thrives in our heat, and each plant has dozens of vibrantly yellow flowers on long stalks. Even after the flowers have faded and gone to seed, they're not unattractive, but I cut them off in order to extend the blooming period. I also throw the cutoff blossoms in places where I'd like for new plants to come up next spring. Since I hadn't deadheaded for several days, there was a lot of it to do, and as I cut back the stalks to a leafy part of the stem, I wondered if it would be a good idea to deadhead my Facebook friends list. There are people who I once knew who no longer bring joy to my life, and perhaps it is time to remove them.

Then I was surprised to see this yellow water lily. Possibly because of the aggressive way we went after the cattails that had taken over the pond, we haven't seen nearly as many blooms this year. Part of the reason we tried to remove the cattails was that the water lilies were being crowded out. However, since the cattail roots and the waterlily roots were intertwined, it was impossible to remove the cattails without disturbing the waterlily rhizomes. We've seen a few white blooms, but no pink, magenta, or yellow ones, and I wondered if those varieties were still alive. In the case of the waterlilies, the correct gardening technique as just to "let things lie".

Deadhead or let it be? That's always the question. There is a time for all things.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Larkspur, snapdragon, hollyhock, petunia, bachelor's button, and coreopsis. There are some nice yellow pear tomatoes setting fruit inside the tomato cage, too.

The language of flowers

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Some people are convinced that talking to plants helps them to grow. I don't really talk to my plants nearly as much as I listen to them, and sometimes they say things to me that help me to grow.

The yellow flower in the foreground is coreopsis, a member of the sunflower family, and it's just beginning to bloom.  Coreopsis is a great choice for summer gardens here because it is one of the the few flowers that seems unaffected by our 100+ degree temperatures. When everything else has wilted or died, it keeps blooming and will do so throughout the summer and fall. Like many members of the sunflower family, coreopsis is phototropic....its flowers turn to face the sun.

I always thought gardening, unlike some other topics, was a fairly safe topic for conversation. But recently I was stunned and hurt to learn that there are some people who think it is morally wrong to have a garden like ours in the desert. I've always considered myself rather environmentally conscientious, and I don't agree. Green spaces help mitigate the urban heat island effects which are a significant problem in Phoenix. The evaporative cooling effect of plants located near buildings means less energy is needed for air conditioning. Green and growing things help remove pollutants from the air, and provide food and habitat for wildlife. Home-grown fruits and vegetables don't require transportation from a distant location to get to the dinner table, and less in the way of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are used to produce them. I know what I think, and what I believe, yet I was still bothered by the judgement of others.

Then I listened to what the coreopsis had to say. It sends its roots down in search of water and nutrients, and  keeps its face to the sun. Plants don't worry or obsess about what others think of them. They just go on doing what plants are supposed to do, and in the process share their gift of beauty with the world around them.

Planting, interrupted

We've completed clearing out the raised beds, for the most part and for now. The grass may fade and the flower wither, but Mexican primrose is forever. Once it warms up, we will also be battling Bermuda grass invasions. We got some of our spring plantings completed before we were interrupted by rain, which is always nice, but it would have been nicer if it had waited until we'd finished planting and mulching. Some areas of the Valley actually got a light dusting of snow and/or hail, but not here. It really didn't get that cold, which is also a good thing.

The bed in the foreground, which adjoins a pavestone patio, will contain mostly flowers. Coreopsis, larkspur, and snapdragon seedlings are already coming up, and I added petunia transplants as a border on the patio side. I also planted one hill of yellow squash and one hill of zucchini in this bed.

I planted tomato transplants and bush beans in the left rear bed, and plan to border it with marigolds. In addition to my favorite Early Girl, Roma and Yellow Pear tomatoes, we're trying some new varieties that are supposed to be more heat tolerant- Phoenix, Solar Fire, and Summer Set. The new asparagus trench is in the rear of this bed. The right rear bed contains strawberries and a small fig tree.

For now, I'm waiting for things to dry out a little bit so that I can get back to planting!