How Doth Your Garden Grow

The recent rains have made the garden explode, and now that the hot weather is here,  it's even lusher than ever.   The baddest news is that my hummingbirds have disappeared.  Where can they have gone?  No one has visited the feeder or perched on the trellis for a week or more.  Have to admit that I am distraught.

Meanwhile, on the suet feeder, scads of baby woodpeckers, chipmunks and the little red squirrel are gobbling up a dollar's worth of suet every day or two.  Greedy ones.

The clematis has been spectacular.  Maybe because I actually dosed everything with fertilizer this year.   

Here is the sneaky squirrel.  So cute.

The verbena, nasturtiums, sage, and marigolds are all doing well.  Chives went rampant this spring.  Garlic has long whatcha-ma-callums.  Can't think of the name.  Scapes!  That's it.  I planted nicotania instead of impatiens this year, and it looks good, but still no hummingbirds, sob!

How is your garden doing?  Don't forget to put out water for the critters as well as food.

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The tomato blight

Sigh! This was the year that I would have tomato soup, tomato bread salad, home made salsa, gazpacho, tomatoes provencal. Well, you know.

Instead we had 6 weeks of rain and now the blight. I still have three plants in pots, but the tomato plants in the garden have been destroyed. The best laid plans of mice and men, but I don't think mice actually make too many plans. What they make is nests in the garage. Even in the doll house. Bad mousie!

The last houseguest left today, and except for a mountain of laundry, yea, veritable alps of laundry, we're all set. I've been away from my book for so long that I printed it out to read and discover what I had actually written. So far, I am impressed with the beginning. Did I actually write that? Not bad.

The papers have had stories about information warfare and I always wonder if it really happened, then would The Shadow Warriors take off? Who knows?

I watched the finals of The Next Food Network Star, and like both finalists, even tried the winners 4 step dinner plan tonight and it was a winner, too. Of course, after the pasta and the ice cream and all the meals out, we will have to go into serious diet mode. Summer salads beckon. Hey, it can't be THAT BAD. Well, can it?

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A Style Mis-Statement

At the Pawsox game on Saturday, a young man with his shirt on wrong side out. Very obviously wrong side out. What was he thinking?

For the national anthem, the announcer told the men to take their hats off. This used to be an automatic thing.

Four guys going down the row four different times, each carrying two beers. Discovered they were giving half the beer to their girlfriends, so they drank 4 and not 8. Awful in the stands when adults get sloshed and misbehave around kids. This was a well-behaved Sunday crowd, and of course, no one gets dressed up for a baseball game, in fact I always feel sorry for the guys who come straight from work still wearing suits.

I took the train into town today, and almost missed my stops because I had my nose in a book, as my mom used to say. The Warlord's Son, by Dan Fesperman, very exciting.

I noticed he used half the book to set things up, normally a no-no, but it does build tension and it seemed to work. Always looking to improve my craft. Fesperman has obviously been in the area he writes about (Pakistan and Afghanistan) and the descriptions of the smells and sights really take you there. Always a good thing, taking the reader there.

The tomatoes are really coming in now. If you have this delightful "problem," I recommend tomato-bread salad. Delicious. How about some home made tomato soup? Also wonderful with decent bread and read butter. Cherry tomatoes provencal are always good and anything that uses all the fresh herbs from the garden and the tomatoes is a good thing.

Tomorrow we are having a cauliflower-pasta entree. I know it sounds weird, but it was really a nice vegetarian dish. Lots of parmesan and olive oil. Parsley gives it some color. The Globe this morning had a blueberry pie recipe. Wards Berry Farm has ripe blueberries now, and I'm really tempted. Need to make a from-scratch pie once a season or 4 times a year.

I rewrote (again, yet) the first chapter of Festival Madness, and it's getting there. Starting draft five after the edits for draft four are done. By this weekend, I hope.

Never a dull moment in the writing life, except of course, having to suck it up all the time which is maybe not so much dull as depressing. La-di-dah.

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