More Garden Turbulence

When I returned home to Vermont the other day, I encountered this sorry mess:

Yes, this is one of the risks of mail-order gardening. These tomatoes arrived shortly after I left for Long Island. I asked Pete to put the box in the garage for me (the garage stays cool) Clearly I should have asked him to take the plants out of the box as well. They frigging rotted in there! Total loss.

This is one of those little things that Life is pissing me off with. If there weren't other, larger things going on as well then maybe this wouldn't have been quite so irksome. Maybe.

I have such gardening guilt. I try to talk myself out of it. So often I've had to be away at key gardening times. Still, I keep trying. I'm not a complete failure at it, I just wish I could do better.

This morning I woke up before five AM after dreaming that my mother and I were homeless. Funny thing, I couldn't get back to sleep. Maybe because I couldn't stop pondering the reasons why the dream was not entirely far-fetched?

It's been hot lately so I figured I might as well get out there and finish watering the roses and weed out the lettuce and see if I could find the pea vines which still need to be given supports.

So that's what I did and boy did it make me even surlier. First I was cursing myself for never being around. I was also cursing the many, many weeds sprouting up in my lettuce and in the paths between the beds (The beds looked more like paths than the paths did) I also cursed the lettuce that had already bolted. I did find the pea vines but it wasn't easy. 

I got three mosquito bites through my bug shirt. I worried that it was getting too hot and that the lettuce would dry up and expire because I'd unsettled it. It was ten AM and already too hot for me to do any more. I didn't get the pea supports set up.

I dumped a little water on the lettuce beds and hoped for the best, then I went in and had second breakfast.

That, to me, is a great color to look at when you're feeling pissed off or down in the dumps.

The front walk looks pretty nice. I've never had pink lupines before. I love lupines.

I love garden photographs because it's so easy to make them look so beautiful: just don't put the bad stuff in the photo. Also, all the green stuff kind of looks alike. The weeds just blend away into the verdure, as illustrated below:

There are some big honkin' weeds in the front of this photo but even if you click on it and see it in a larger size the weeds are hard to spot.

I wasn't planning on posting this photo. I just took it for myself two days ago to have a record of the peony. It's called "Paula Fay." (I'll buy anything with "Fay" in it) 

It did delight me this morning when I was fortunate to see it wide open, its bright, golden anthers contrasting beautifully with the deep pink of the petals. Then along came a giant bumblebee to roll around in there and make it look useful and even prettier.

It got to be over ninety degrees today. Those kind of temperatures make me furious - not that I needed any help with that. The sun's setting now though and things have cooled down. I'll probably put my BuzzOff clothing on and have a Cuban Mint Julep on the patio. I cooled myself down earlier by going out and getting three pints of ice cream. No, I didn't eat them all. I did have plenty though!

But it was so hot, look what it did to those peonies pictured above. These are the same flowers but this photo is from this afternoon:

So bleached out. It looks like a completely different bloom. Still pretty though. The deep pink bloom that opened today is a better example of the color it would normally be.

Also, I went and checked the lettuce. One bed has some survivors, the other is pretty much decimated except for the lettuce that bolted. Go me! Oh well, what's done is done. It's supposed to be in the nineties again for the next two days. Maybe when it mellows out I'll plant some more lettuce. Or maybe I'll move on to some other plant. I wonder if it's too late to buy some zucchini pants? I've never grown them.