Here are Nancy’s Hydrangeas in bloom again this year.  I love that they are somewhere between pink and blue.  The pink ones are telling us that the soil is alkaline, and the blue ones say acid soil.  It looks to me like this soil is somewhere in transition between alkaline and acid.  Because when the soil is neutral the flowers are white.

 

Hydrangeas always make me smile and think of the blue ones in Nanny’s backyard.  One story is that Granddaddy hammered rusty nails into the ground near the hydrangeas to make them blue.  And Linda tells the story of her little girl self pretending to be a bride and those made beautiful bouquets.  

 

Happy birthday and lots of love to sister Linda.  I would deliver them in person if I could.  

 

 

HAPPY SUMMER!!!

 

I love it when the persimmons on the tree are big enough to see.  This tree is loaded with these little green persimmons.  Right now they are about the size of bing cherries, but they will grow to be more like ping pong balls by October.
 
When they are ripe, they will be bright orange.  I’ll show you the tree again then, so you can look around and maybe find some in your area.  I think it is so exciting to find a persimmon tree.  You know, they don’t move, so you can eat persimmons every year once you find the tree.
 
HAPPY SUMMER!!!

 

Here are the eggplant plants in the garden.  They each stand about 3-4 feet tall, with baby eggplants growing.  The ones I grew from seed have caught up to the ones I bought at the garden center.  I need to rethink the eggplants for next year.  

 

And, yes, that is a stalk of dill growing right next to the eggplants.  Not sure how it got there, or why I would have planted it;   but there it is, and I’m ok with that.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

Look at our beautiful eggplants.  

 

The dark ones on the bottom are from The Basket Barn in Blairsville.  In April when we were getting ready to transplant our tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings into the garden, the eggplants that I had grown from seeds were so tiny.  I panicked, thinking we wouldn’t have any eggplants this year, so I bought a 6 pack of plants from Jessie.  Meanwhile, I kept nurturing my baby seedlings.  

 

The lighter purple ones are the ones I grew from seeds.  The heirloom variety is Ping Tung.  All the plants are growing beautifully in the garden, and giving us enough eggplants to make some really fine dinners.  These are going to become eggplant rollotini.  With tomato sauce that we made ourselves.

 

HAPPY SUMMER!!!

 

Here is Queen Anne’s Lace growing beside the steps going down to the lower deck.  Earlier in the summer, the deer ate the top out of this one, but it has grown back twice as strong.  We guard it now with a fence.

 

Queen Anne’s Lace is in the same family of plants as celery and dill and fennel.  It is easy to see the resemblance, isn’t it?  Think umbrellas with spokes.  

 

We have seen it all along the highway, tall and pretty.  I hope you see some in your travels.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

On our walk in Meeks Park last week, we resighted the Carolina Lily that we saw last year.

 

Honestly, I’ve been looking in this spot ever since we saw it the first time.  

 

I love seeing these beautiful flowers in the wild.  It feels like a special treat, just for me.

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

 

 

This is the Black Gum across the road from our house.  It is always the first tree to show fall color.  Seems odd, though, in August.  

 

Look around and you may start to see other trees showing their fall colors.  It won’t be long.

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

 

 

Here is my Fennel in bloom.  If you think it looks a lot like dill, you’d be correct.  They are in the same family of plants:  Umbelliferae.  This family includes: anise, caraway, carrots, celery, chervil, cilantro and coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, lovage, parsley, parsnips, Queen Anne’s lace, and wild carrot.

 

The flower, which becomes the seed head, is an umbel.  Just think of an umbrella and its spokes.  That’s what these plants all have in common:  their flower heads are shaped like little umbrellas, and their seeds grow at the ends of the spokes.  

 

This is Bronze Fennel, and the feathery leaves and seeds taste just like anise.  These plants are easily 5 feet tall, and loaded with seed heads.  It is an annual, but readily reseeds itself, so we have fennel growing in almost the same spots every year.  I brought some fennel seeds with me from Virginia in 2004, and it has been growing here ever since.

 

Another benefit of the Umbelliferae:  they are host plants for the Black Swallowtails. That’s really why we grow fennel, so we can host butterflies.

 

 

HAPPY  GARDENING!!!

 

Can you believe this?  Right when I thought they wouldn’t, somebody ate my pepper plant.  You can see that they left the cayenne peppers, and just ate the leaves.

 

They didn’t touch the basil, marigolds, or lemon grass, but they sure made a mess of the pepper.

 

Oh well;  live and learn, again.

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

We have finally found some plants that the deer won’t eat.  Here is my proof.  These pots spent the spring planted with dill, and when the dill went to seed, I replanted them with basil, marigolds, and one cayenne pepper plant.

 

That was a month ago, and they are all still here.  These pots are not fenced, or caged, or protected in any way.  And they haven’t been eaten…yet.

 

Around the corner to the right there is a pot of lemon grass and one of lovage, and they haven’t been eaten either…yet.

 

All these plants have something in common:  strong smell and taste.  Maybe that’s the trick:  plant strong smelling stuff, and the deer will leave them alone, and go eat your neighbors’ azaleas.

 

 

HAPPY  GARDENING!!!