Lazy Summer Days
August 5 - August 11, 2024
Monday, August 5, 2024
And just like that, it’s hot again, and gardening is most assuredly pushed to early morning, if any gardening is to be done at all. This morning, I deadheaded all the resurrection lilies.1 It seems like just yesterday I was admiring them all in full bloom, but I think that was really two weeks ago. Then I noticed the first tiny bloom of a little late bloomer called Japanese jacinth, aka Barnardia japonica, just showing its first few florets. I think I’ll dig up a few of the Japanese jacinth bulbs next spring and move them to the front where I can tuck them into a little spot by the front walk. It will be nice to have them growing and hopefully multiplying in two different areas of the garden.2
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
I watered the Vegetable Garden Cathedral early in the morning because we haven’t had any rain for at least a week. Then this evening, we had a downpour of .25 inches. Again, am I making it rain by watering? In other news, while weeding and tidying up the borders on the utility side of the house, I found a dried-up turtle. Poor little guy was sitting in the funnel part of an old metal rain gauge that used to be my dad’s.3 I have no idea how he got up and in there, but once he was there, he couldn’t climb out, obviously. But I am happy that my garden is a place where turtles live, except for this one. I’ve also spotted a few toads through the years, and they, too, make me feel as though my garden is a good place for wildlife. Thankfully, I’ve never seen a snake in my garden.4
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
The hot summer days didn’t last too long. After two or three days of reaching 90F, I bet we don’t even reach 80F today. You’d think a gardener would get a lot done on a day like this—skies overcast but not raining, and cool enough. Nope. I went out early to check the rain gauge (.24 inches) and saw where the raccoons had “harvested” and eaten a bunch of sweet corn, leaving me a mess to clean up. I shook my head, turned around, and went back inside for breakfast before getting cleaned up and heading out to have lunch with my sister, niece, and great-niece.5 Once home, I didn’t want to get all dirty, so I left the raccoon mess until tomorrow when I pinky-swear I’ll clean it up.
Thursday, August 8, 2024
I headed out early to clean up the mess the raccoons made of the sweet corn.6 The corn is still standing, but I’m contemplating ripping it out since I won’t get any more corn from it. I also picked peppers, squash, and tomatoes and pulled a few small onions. I checked the green beans. They look pretty tough and weather-beaten, so I’m also thinking about pulling them out unless I decide to let some go to seed for next year. We’ll see. I have two small rows of green beans I planted for a late harvest and they are looking pretty good. The ‘Concert Bell’ sunflowers7 I direct sowed in May are also blooming. The only problem for me is they face the fence when in bloom! Turn around and look at me, sunflowers!
Friday, August 9, 2024
Social media tells me this is National Book Lovers Day. I celebrated early by buying some used books yesterday. Today I mowed and trimmed the lawn while listening with my new headphones to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. Of course, I know of the Chronicles of Narnia, but I don’t recall actually reading them as a child. I guess I was too busy reading How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method.8 Anyway… the lawn seems dry again so I’ll water it early tomorrow morning. This afternoon, I’ll run a few errands and then return to reading Island Magic by Elizabeth Goudge (the August pick for the Elizabeth Goudge Book Club) which will transport me to the Channel Islands and the late 1800s.
Saturday, August 10, 2024
I’ll admit it has been a more relaxed week in the garden. Other than picking some cherry tomatoes and a small cucumber for my lunch salad and the usual watering, I didn’t do anything in the garden today other than have a look around. I noticed the hardy begonia, Begonia grandis, is in its full glory with pink flowers and dark green leaves backed in red. This tough little begonia likes to travel a bit in the garden. I first planted on the west side of a tree, but for the past several years, it has been growing on the east side of that tree. And I didn’t move it. There’s also a bit of it across the lawn in another shady bed, so I think it has self-sown itself to these new locations. Either that, or some critter dug up a piece, drug it across to the other bed, and replanted it. Or garden fairies?
Sunday, August 11, 2024
I looked high and low and in between for the plant label for a little plant I bought this spring that I intend to bring inside for the winter.9 I must have taken the label out of the pot, for some unknown reason, perhaps to take a picture, and now I cannot find it. Did I take a picture of it? Nope. Maybe I put a picture of the plant on Instagram because it had lovely little purplishish-pink flowers and put the name there? Nope. Is it in a basket, box, drawer, etc. inside? Nope. Once more, slowly, through my pictures on my phone. There it is! I found it! But half the name is missing on the label! It just says “zygia Candy!” But there is a happy ending. I did some more searching online with just that part of the name, and now I know my little plant is Hemizygia ‘Candy Kisses.’ I will make a new label for it pronto so we never have to go through that kind of search again.10
Thank You
And that’s another week in the garden.
Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you are loving all the flowers and veggies in your garden and every book you are reading. Remember, if you don’t like the book you are reading, you can set it aside and find something else to read. The same goes for social media. If you don’t like the tone and tenor of what you see on social media, you can put your phone away or shut down that window on your screen and head out to your garden.
Still here? Feel free to check out my website, where my main blog is, and where you can read more about me and my books. If that’s not enough of me, check out The Gardenangelists, the podcast I record weekly with Dee Nash. And don’t forget my other Substack newsletter, Lost Ladies of Garden Writing. Oh, and Instagram, where I post letters to my garden.
One More Thing
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
C. S. Lewis
I hope that day has arrived for you! Take care and I’ll be back in your email inbox next Sunday with more updates from my gardening life!
The other common names for resurrection lilies are surprise lilies and naked ladies. The botanical name is Lycoris squamigera.
I rarely see Japanese jacinth for sale. I got the bulbs for mine when I visited the Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden in Charlotte, NC several years ago. My patch of them is slowly growing bigger. I have, on two occasions, given some of my precious bulbs of Japanese jacinth to others, telling them to mark where they plant them so they don’t lose sight of them. The foliage comes up in the spring, dies back, then the flowers emerge in August.
This old rain gauge is a round metal cylinder about 2 feet tall with another smaller cylinder inside with a funnel on top of it that collects the rain. There’s a wooden stick to drop down into the inside cylinder to measure the rain. My dad got it in the 1970s from a neighbor who worked for the National Weather Service, so it is, or was, an official rain gauge. My youngest sister was going to sell it off at a garage sale several years ago, so I took it from her. She was only asking $1 for it! Of course, have I done anything with it other than leave it sitting outside the side door to the garage all these years? That’s beside the point!
I hope that mentionig snakes doesn’t cause them to suddenly appear in my garden, the way my watering has been causing it to rain.
Of course, I toured through my sister’s garden. That’s what we do. She seems to have the same cucumber issues I have (some kind of mildew) and had no luck with her green beans. And a squirrel, or it could have been a raccoon, took a big bite out of one of two watermelons on her watermelon vine. I also think she should send some oak leaves to Purdue to find out what’s causing them to curl under, though I think a non-fatal anthracnose disease is causing it. But there were more pretties—like the cleome in full bloom—than uglies, which is what you want in a garden.
While working out in the garden, I finished listening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
I was sent seeds for ‘Concert Bell’ sunflowers from All-America Selections to try. They were an All-America Selection in 2022.
Yes, I often checked out How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method, edited by J. I. Rodale and staff, from the public library when I was a kid. I have my own copy now because it still has good information. Yes, indeed, old gardening books don’t go out of date like computer repair manuals. They can still be useful decades after they were written.
The low temperature of 57F Sunday morning was a good bracing reminder that summer is starting to think about possibly winding down.
I use an Epson label maker to make labels for my plants. They seem to stick well to plastic plant labels and don’t fade in the sun.