And the race is on!

We're still waiting on peaches, but these Katy apricots may ripen first! This is a relatively young tree; we put it in when we added the raised beds three years ago.

In other news, we hit our first 100 degree temperatures yesterday afternoon...the long hot summer is upon us!

Waiting for peaches

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary; they shall walk and not faint."

We're eager to taste our first summer fruit, peaches from this tree which I think is the Desert Gold variety. The fruit is usually ready to pick in early May, so it shouldn't be but a couple more weeks before we can enjoy eating them. This is our oldest fruit tree and although it didn't set as much fruit as it usually does, we took special care to thin it properly for its overall health, and in hopes of larger, tastier peaches. There are about two dozen peaches on it now, and they are sizing up nicely.

I'm an impatient gardener. I don't like to wait in general....I like to finish things. For those of you familiar with the MBTI, I'm a "J", meaning patience is not my strong suit. This can lead to gardening mistakes, such as this honeysuckle/rose arbor. However, gardening is also a great way to learn patience. I know that the peaches won't be as sweet if I pick them in their current hard, green stage, and so I wait.

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.

Pond remodel

Here's a picture of the completed (well, for now) pond remodeling project, following The Pond Gnome's advice to replace the sandstone with rip rap. We think it came out pretty well.

There are some people who believe that ponds in the desert are a wasteful extravagance. Actually, ponds use less water than lawns and provide habitat for wildlife, including pollinator insects that help our garden produce. And pond sludge makes great organic fertilizer!

Our next project will be to remove the small patio to the left of the pond, and merge the two raised beds so that plantings will come all the way up to the pond and streambed.

Thoughts while apple thinning

"For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Yesterday's impromptu garden tour reminded me that it's past time for me to get serious about thinning the apple tree. One of the first non-citrus trees that was successful in our poorly draining, heavy clay soil is this Ein Shemer apple.tree. It always sets more fruit than its branches can bear, and this year the fruit set was particularly heavy due to the increased number of "chilling hours" it received. There are hundreds of marble-to-half-dollar size apples on the tree, and a large percentage of them need to go. So I need to go to every cluster like this and remove all the apples but one, and there are a lot of clusters!

Thinning fruit is less enjoyable than weeding. When I'm weeding, I'm generally in attack mode, feeling totally justified in ripping out the unwanted invaders by the roots. When I'm thinning fruit, I'm forced to remove something desirable, just because you really can have too many of a good thing. Plus, I'm often looking into the sun and being poked in the face by recalcitrant branches.

I thought of some people I know who try to do so many things that they become stressed and overwhelmed, like the apple tree branches that sag and break under the weight of too much fruit. The apples don't grow as large on an unthinned tree, and sometimes people who try to do too many good things wind up doing none of them well. Then there are those people who seem to never have enough in the way of things, want to hold on to everything they have while grasping for more, and wind up losing something more valuable.

Just as it's easier for me to see the faults of others rather than my own, it's easier for me to write about thinning the apple tree than to get out of my comfortable chair in front of the computer and go do it. Time to go back to work!

Friends are the flowers in the garden of life

 "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold"

I'm part of a group of retired educators who worked at the same school for many years, and now meet once a month for lunch and conversation. We usually meet at a restaurant, but this month I was delighted to have them come to our Arizona Backyard Eden for a garden tour and al fresco potluck lunch on the patio. I've known most of these ladies for more than twenty years, and they are my very dear friends in too many ways to enumerate. They're all really good cooks, too!

I've mentioned that I like to experiment and try new things in our backyard. Some plants and ideas are successful and some are not, and what works one year may not do so well another. I haven't been particularly successful with daylilies, for example, and the zipper cream peas I brought back from Alabama have apparently failed to germinate. Yet there are some I can always rely on for an exuberant show of color: nasturtiums, hollyhocks, and larkspur in the spring, and coreopsis, blanketfower, and zinnias in the summer.

Many people have come into and gone out of my life over the years. Some have disappointed me, and some have hurt me. But some have always been there for me, and those people really are flowers in the garden of my life, beautiful and sweet smelling.

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.