Grow away
This year’s garden at the Bar B was … not so good.
I’m not sure what was going on but I think the big heat we had early on killed off most of the petunias I planted in early June.
The ecosytem in the back yard changed when we took down the trees along the deck last year and now the deck is hot, hot, hot.
I bought a cherry-tomato plant that was pretty well established but it faded and died in short order. Not one single tomato, not one single bud.
My potted plants didn’t fare very well either. I had bought new dirt and washed out my old pots but things just didn’t grow this year. My petunias are usually riots of color but this year they were puny and lackluster. I fed them with Miracle-Gro and they seemed to like it but never achieved the usual glory. I think it was because there was too much going on and between the heat and the lack of love, things didn’t grow.
My Columbines came up again this year but they were small and only lasted a day or so. The raspberries never really produced any fruit either. By now I’d have a small but tasty crop of berries but now there’s only buds.
The weeds are doing fine and the ground is recovering after years of dogs and the first thing to grow is always weeds. A few wildflowers have crept in and are trying to establish some ground but basically they suck right now.
Part of the yard has hard sunshine and when I start working on the yard in earnest next year I will probably have five or six of my own “zones” to plant.
Gone is my compost pile; I have too many nocturnal visitors and my pile attracts plenty of animals from skunk to mice and I don’t need that. I should probably buy one of those big plastic composters but that’s a project for next year.
At previous homes I’ve owned my gardens have always been fruitful and gorgeous. The Bar B is a gardening challenge and maybe someday I’ll be able to control the grow.