My Garden

This is the one quadrant of my herb garden that has herbs in it so far. The thyme on the right and garlic chives in the middle have been there for about three years. The cilantro in the back, which is pretty much finished, reseeds itself each year. I also set out parsley (I think it has died), lavender, camomile, oregano and stevia this year. In the pots, the basil and rosemary are doing well. I thought I had killed the rosemary last year by not watering it enough, but it's looking great this year. In another place I also have regular chives in a large pot. The chives and rosemary have been in those pots for about four years. The marigold plant is one Lexi brought home from school for Alyssa for Mother's Day.

In the background, you can see the yellow patch in the lawn. That was caused by the solar cover for the pool. Someone removed the cover from the pool one night and also let a lot of water out of the pool - over the side. When Alyssa and I picked up the cover we had to let a good bit of water run off it. Then I spread it out on the grass to dry. It was there no more than five hours, but it sure browned-out the grass.


If I sit in the right chair on the back porch, I can look across the herb garden and a section of lawn and see my day lilies, which were here before I was. The flowering crab apple tree doesn't look very healthy, does it. The leaves are supposed to be sort of rusty looking, but it seems to have lost a lot of them. Lexi calls this her climbing tree, because it's the only one she can climb a little. All of the others that are big enough to climb do not have branches low enough for her to reach yet.

I was sitting on the back porch yesterday and noticed that the cypress vine has started climbing up a table leg. It's a plant I want in some places, like on the fence and climbing the rough 'trellis' I made for it out of tree limbs and twine, but it self-sows so readily that I have to keep pulling it from the rocks between the porch and garden and in the paths of the garden. Some people call it hummingbird vine, and the hummingbirds do like it. It has small red flowers in the shape that hummingbirds like. When it fills the fence and blooms, it's really quite pretty.

As I was sitting out there, I was also watching the clouds. It looked like we were really going to get a lot of rain, but I think it was only about a quarter inch.