Thank you, Neko! I love that orange-yellow rose!
Daaammn...
May I ask how many acres, Francis?
My hanging basket million bells are kaput. Sigh. The urn ones are doing great. Piffka mentioned they don't like drying out, and I think that's what happened. They dried out a few times (hard to keep a shallow terra cotta basket moist) and each time they got sadder and sadder and now they don't look good 'tall.
The asparagus fern is happy though, I have enough flowers and color out there now that I think I might just take out the million bells and replace with another asparagus fern (still have two in pots that I haven't planted yet.)
Lovely, Francis. Glorious, actually. I love the view through the (well maintained) roses.. exquisite.
The roses and the bricks remind me a bit of Dunbarton Oaks, but it's just a wisp of a memory.
Could you take on a gardener for room and board for the season, Francis ? That's a lot of garden you have there.
Aphids!! Hiss! Boo!
I'm pretty sure, anyway. Was watering the baskets and noticed weird spikes -- then I noticed the little bumps all over them. Turns out the bumps were tiny bugs. Also turns out the spikes are asparagus fern shoots with tender little nascent asparagus fern fronds that have been (mostly) gobbled up. (Gobbled up 3 spikes pretty much completely on one plant, one spike about halfway on the other.)
I cut the spikes at the bottom and gingerly lifted them out.
Advice?
neko, If you attend one of those a2k gatherings, and Francis is present, he'll invite you to his place. I might take him up on it next year.
Actually my back and front yards are almost too much for me to maintain these days. It's main season for peonies now:
sozobe, keep that basket out of the house. Better still, don't even keep it.
The balloon crop looks promising.
George, George, George of the jungle watch out for that...
after the long, hot dryspell we are finally gettinga bit of rain and everything is greening up.
our small vegetable patch - purple, yellow and green beans, carrots, tomatoes , kohlrabi and some herbs - are doing just fine. mrs h and i are watching the patch like a pair of hawks, shooing away the sqirrels whenever they come close . rasberries doing not too badly, but we won't have many currants ths year - last year's bumbercrop and the cold, long winter without proper snowcover have been hard on the bushes. hbg
we have this morning about 2 dozen little tomatos (1" or less)
our tomatoes have just started to bloom. it's difficult to have our own tomatoes ready before the end of july/early august. if we put any tomatoe plants out before the end of may they'll usually be hit by a late frost and all the effort is in vain.
we used to grow our own strwberries but have found it to be too much work. we just go to one of the nearby farms to do our pickin' . by next week the strawberry farms will probably open up for pickin' - can't wait for the taste of strawberries fresh from the field. hbg
And, dys and diane and other albuquerquians see balloons a-ballooning on too. No balloons here in north north, at least that I know about. (Picturing balloons tangled in sequoias...)
