The most wonderful time of the year

I have ripe tomatoes on the vine! (Not many, granted, because of weather, but still! Ripe tomatoes!) The basil is thick and lovely, and I see bruschetta and BLTs in my near future.

AND Colorado peaches are in season and at Bob's. Puck went grocery shopping, saw them, and bought me half a dozen. That oughta last until Sunday or so. Mmmmmm, Colorado peaches. *slurp*

Beans or peas...

Time to put in a mid-season replacement for the sugar snap peas, which are, because of the very cool summer we've had, only just now starting to fade.

Do I put in more peas, because I like them better? Or beans, because I love how tall and wild the vines get? I do like beans, just not as much as I like snap peas. Hm.

The city has started work on our water line, which means we're currently getting our water from temporary pipes and hoses that put the water into our house through our external faucet — water pressure is actually better than under our usual system, which I hadn't expected. Parking on my block may soon become uncertain, they'll be digging up the easement and eventually replacing it with crap soil and sod, and I still haven't started prepping the space where I want to move my acid garden this fall. I also still haven't torn out the yews or decided what I want to plant in their place.

West side, near the foundation, flanking the front steps. At least on the south side of the steps, if it's an evergreen it has to be either less than three feet tall or very narrow, because Puck quite reasonably doesn't want shade to keep the ice from melting off our front steps. Anything formal would probably look rather silly given the increasing chaos of the rest of the yard. I don't know why I'm at such a loss for ideas.

In which my brain explodes from too much awesomeness

One of the blogs I read regularly put this up. It's Iggy Pop, circa 1977, on ... get this ... "The Dinah Shore Show".

Did your brain already just short circuit a little bit? Just wait until you get to Dinah Shore's reaction to Iggy explaining how he lost his teeth. And the part where a chain-smoking David Bowie, who's sitting in on the keyboards, almost falls off the piano bench laughing is extra win.

God I love the Internet.

Plant tags are lying bastards

Not just because of the dark red lilies Temp & I tried to give to Syl that turned out to be orange (okay, one of those tags did say orange, but the one in front said dark red and they were all grouped together and I've never been a careful shopper).

(Also, Syl? Speaking of those lilies, can't find a dark red to save my life. Come fall I'm buying you bulbs.)

Specifically, though, I'm talking about my geranium "Johnson's Blue" in the front yard. Love this plant. But I'm going to need to take a picture of it with a person for scale. The tag says "Height: 15-18 inches; Spread: 12-15 inches."

Hahahahaha! 15" spread? Try 60". Mine is three feet high, five feet wide and sprawly as all get-out. I really should cut it back, but it's still in full bloom and the bees love it, so it's just going to continue to dominate the front until it stops pumping out flowers. (It's been going strong for well over a month. Did I mention that I love this plant?)

Vacation pictures

I finally got around to throwing a few vacation pics up on Flickr. Lucky for you, I only have the free account, so instead of 400-some, you'll only suffer through 34.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7369198@N06/sets/72157620904465576/

Once more, with feeling

Last weekend I finally cleaned up an old mess. I'm talking, of course, about the aborted attempt to prune my lilac: the one that looked like some giant creature had come and taken a chomp out of it, the one that served as an object lesson for my fellow new-to-gardening friends on how not to do something.

I'll admit, I was dreading it. I'm afraid of pruning. I don't like cutting up trees and shrubs (but better that than cutting them down). I don't know what I'm doing, and what looks so clean and simple in how-to books is a lot more confusing and daunting in real life. But clearly the poor shrub couldn't go on looking like the victim of a wayward brontosaurus,* and besides, NoNick was having Yeti take down his maple tree, so I had access to a wood chipper.

So I grabbed my pruning saw, gritted my teeth and went to work. (I had, as my mantra, a quote from Macbeth. Fifty of the imaginary currency of your choice if you can figure out what it was.)

It's done. It's shorter, which was the plan. It no longer looks like something large took a bite out of it. It does, however, sort of look like something large decided to sit on it. I'm hoping that new growth will fix that.

I'm also hoping I don't have to prune anything else around here for a good long time.


*Yeah, yeah, I'm spreading bad science. I hardly think the name matters when we're talking about one chomping on my lilacs.