herbs – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Waiting to be Planted

For the past several days I have had a lot of little gardening projects going on. I transplanted a number of seedlings into pots. I also started seeds. I have some seedlings I have sent on to a new home. This season I have vegetables already setting fruit, even it won’t mature for weeks, and seeds which are sprouting, and seeds I am waiting to sprout. Vegetables this year include winter (hard, yellow) squash, bush beans, radishes, lettuce, pepper of the hot variety, tomatoes, parsley and cilantro.

I also have a lot of flowers. These include hummingbird and butterfly mixes all thrown together in the front flower bed as well as foxglove, larkspur, polka dots (which I think are scabiosa or pincushion plants), carnations, nigella, Mexican sunflowers, Titan sunflowers (they can grow 12 feet tall with seed heads 24″ across!), and moonflowers. Herbs include the usual rosemary, sage, parsley, thyme, basil, but I have also added summer savory and a few Asian ones for variety. Mint and lemon balm and lemon verbena.

With all this work, there has been little time for sketching or painting. Thus I decided, much like my “Not Taken Vacation” that a sketchbook dedicated to this year’s gardening efforts would be fun to do. I have a fanfold Chinese calligraphy book I am using. It is a fanfold, so I can spread it out if I want to create a panorama, or use individual pages.

Above, just an individual page to get a sense of the paper. It is very soft and very absorbent, as well as a creamy color that is far from white, but not yellow. I figured my first foray into this documentation would be best served with a simple ink and watercolor drawing to see how the paper handled. Overall, I like it. The soft paper requires a bit more caution with the water, yet it does seem to handle it very well.

So, a few pony packs with seedling waiting for a home on my gardening table. My hand trowel is not well represented, but such is life! Meanwhile, I can enjoy the sweet smell of a freshly turned bit of earth and dream of flowers and garden produce.

In the Garden

This is the view out my window these days – orange, smokey skies. Despite that, there is beauty to be found in my flower bed and fig tree and potted plants.

I ordered some herb seeds a couple of months ago and planted them in coconut fiber pony packs. I used three of them, and put them in alphabetical order to spell H O T! Hyssop, oregano (Greek), and tarragon (Mexican). They were all nicely lined up, but then I moved them when I wanted to use the table and now have no idea what is where! But, time to transplant into larger pots.

The Brown Turkey fig tree is in full swing! There are plenty to go around. The local varmints like them, too, but I have a great homemade repellent made of dried chilis, garlic, and mint. I spray the tree every night after sundown (to keep the leaves from burning) and have managed to keep most of my fruit.

Of course, the roses have been happy with the heat, and the fact that I actually water them. A flower mix strewn in May is producing all sorts of flowers (and some weeds). The lemon verbena is in full bloom as well.

I also had a couple of cucumber vines. Originally I thought I had planted lemon cukes, but it turns out they were pickling cukes. They have now gone to cucumber heaven (though I have another one blooming), and the leaves are all that remain.

Life begins the day you start a garden. – Chinese proverb

Patio Gardening

With some optimism, I did some container gardening this month. I transplanted some old roses from another property – a beautiful, delicate pale pink rose that has been in the family for over 50 years – and a Helmut Schmidt, which is a bright yellow rose with a delicious fragrance – and my favorite yellow rose.

Besides the roses, I put in a Tradescantia (never heard of that) in a pot with some lobelia, planted herbs together and separately, planted a Tickweed (also known as coreopsis) and re-did the ongoing disaster of a strawberry pot. (I should have read this before I did this pot yet again!) Here are the results.