There are new annuals in our flower beds this year. The colors of yellow, purple, pink, maroon, white and red are still prominent. We expanded our garden to include more space for vegetables and lettuce, beets, beans, cauliflower, carrots, potato, squash and cucumbers, garlic, peas and tomatoes are all soaking in the sunshine and growing inches overnight. Our pink peonies, iris and day lilies have bloomed and gone for the year like they usually do around Independence Day. On the edges of it all the milkweed that has been patiently waiting underneath the soil has now surfaced into half a dozen hearty plants that the Monarchs have begun to notice.
We’ve had rhubarb, and still have giant bushes of it, for a while now. Our strawberries have been producing handfuls every couple of days or a few each afternoon still. The raspberries and black raspberries are full of bees and the tiny green fruit is getting bigger by the second. Our two different grapevines are full of clusters. My favorite Thai basil plant is growing new pungent green and purple leaves. Man do they smell fantastic.
Two days ago, our first red poppy bloomed and now there’s over a dozen of them waking up early with me on this rather gray Wednesday. They brighten up the corner and my morning. I snapped this picture a few days ago of the shadow of my Poirot cat sitting on the porch bannister against our white storm door. He’s watching a couple of larger birds and listening attentively to the new cache of song sparrows and chipping sparrows that chirp incessantly every morning seemingly at him and his sister.
