Vegetables to the Rescue

My well thought-out flower garden, especially the part I see from my bedroom window, is a sad sight.  I had pinned my hopes on veronica speedwell 'eveline', a deep pink veronica, carrying on all summer long.  It will bloom again, in a week or two.  Now there are few blooms and little color.

The lawn is even sadder - full of dead and dried out spots.  My less than perfect lawn prep of 25 years ago always haunts me in mid-summer.  The lawn is uneven.  When mowed, the high parts are shaved rather than cut - leading to burned-out patches.

I always find redemption in my husband's vegetable garden.  Despite frequent, heavy rains that knocked the young fruit off the tomato plants early in the season, it looks like we will have a good crop.  My husband followed a neighbor's lead, and added several loads of compost, free at our town dump, to the vegetable patch.  Even though the tomatoes have not ripened, there are lots of them, and they look healthy.

We have been harvesting green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. Butternut squash, a surprise plant, will be ready to be picked soon.

The squash blossoms are lovely to look at.  Some day I will try cooking them.  The zucchini will be ready in a day or two.

Worth the Bother

The middle of summer is a good time to talk about plants that are worth the bother, and those that aren't.  The red lily leaf beetle, a non-native, infests true lilies (not day lilies) in the US Northeast to such a degree that experts recommend not putting them in your garden.  The beetle eats all of the leaves, thus robbing the plant of its food source - chlorophyll.   Perhaps twenty years ago, before the arrival of the beetle, I planted several varieties of lilies.  Unfortunately, I do not remember their names.  Some of them have done well, although not as well as they used to.  My husband sprays them with pesticide in the spring. I believe that parasitic wasps, one of their only predators, have been imported from Europe, and may be controlling them naturally.

As you can see, the lilies that have survived are lovely.  They are one of my favorite plants.

A plant that I will probably get rid of in parts of my garden is phlox paniculata, or garden phlox.  The plant has a lot going for it - beautiful white, pink or magenta flowers in mid to late summer with a lovely fragrance.  What it has against it is mildew.  I have some phlox growing now that are mildew free and blooming profusely.  Others, despite careful pruning early in the summer, are full of mildew and have not started blooming yet.  I may change my mind if I get a good bloom, though.

One last note for this week.  I just dropped my oldest daughter off in Fargo, North Dakota for graduate school.  I noticed that there were no azaleas or rhododendrons - clearly the winters are too long and harsh for them to survive.  White hydrangeas were plentiful, thought, and a deep red shrub that I did not recognize.  I would have expected more prairie grasses, but saw few gardens with them.  

Wallpaper

I haven't posted in a few weeks because of the incredible heat in Boston, which made it impossible to work on my computer (3rd floor study), and because of a trip to Washington, DC to help my daughter pack up her apartment.  I am also not ready to give an overview of the season.

I titled this post "Wallpaper" because that is what one section of my border looked like - safe, coordinated, boring.

The plants in front are a violet-pink veronica (one of my favorite plants - well-behaved, easy to weed around, long-blooming, and good color choices).  The chartreuse flowers behind the veronica is Lady's mantle.  Even though shorter than the veronica, it is in the back because it is not well-behaved; it spreads.   

I added begonias with white flowers and burgundy foliage in front of the veronica.  I chopped back the Lady's mantle a bit (more will be done later).  Finally, I added two delphinium 'Black Knight" Pacific Giant.

Even though the begonias have not done much yet, they add enough of a contrast to this section of the border so that it no longer looks like wallpaper.  I hope that they grow a bit more prominent.

  
Lavender to the right and phlox to the left are getting ready to bloom.  I will give an update after my next trip - this one to Fargo, North Dakota, to help my daughter move there for graduate school.