Summer Garden

There's a whole lot of green happening in the garden these days, with little splashes of color. I'm looking forward to seeing yellow squash, red, black and yellow tomatoes, yellow and red sunflowers, and yet-to-be-known colors of poppies. I have scattered countless packets of poppy seeds in every garden I've had for the last six years, only to have had two poppies come up. This year I did the same, scattering packets of Icelandic Poppies and one or two other varieties. A few weeks later I was looking at the flower bed, wondering what were weeds and what would become flowers. There were all of these plants that sort of looked like dandelions, but not quite. I was suspect of them, but let them stay. There were so many of them I never thought that they would turn out to be poppies! Now I check them at least twice a day to see if any of them have bloomed. They're so strange looking, with their feed-me-Seymore drooping buds covered in prickly hairs.

I'm still figuring out the paths for the garden. I have two 2' wide paths and one 3' wide path. I was figuring on reducing the larger path to 2', but now it is getting crowded out by squash and a creeping succulent, so I'm not sure.

We are on the eve of a terrible hot stretch topping out at 102 degrees on saturday, with nothing below 92 degrees for the next ten days. I know that this means the lettuce and chard with bolt and the peas will die. Gianna burst into tears when I told her the peas would die. I empathized, but inside I was smiling that she loves the peas so much. It's true, there's nothing like a fresh snap pea plucked off the vine and popped into your mouth. Happily, everything else should do pretty well with the heat. I spent the last two weekends wrestling with the soaker hoses and have finally come up with a system that will make it easy for me to keep the garden hydrated.

I am not looking forward to the heat. I have stocked up on food that mostly doesn't need to be cooked (salami, berries, baguette, cheese), things that can be turned into cold salads (quinoa, potatoes) and things that can be grilled (meat, veggies). I've been asked to make peanut butter chocolate popsicles by the kids for tomorrow, and if I'm feeling extra ambitious I have the ingredients to make milk chocolate ice cream as well.