A Midsummer's Night Dream: A Green Garden

"Show me your garden... and I will tell you what you are like." ~Alfred Austin

I found this quote posted in the U.S. Botanic Garden in D.C. while visiting with my sister a couple years ago.  As beautiful as a quote this is, I hope Alfred Austin doesn't judge me based on my garden.

I told you that I would share the good and the bad.  Well this is going to be about the bad.  The very bad.  This summer has been very busy.  While this is no excuse, my garden has succumbed to our busy schedule.  In addition to our travels, the weather in Virginia has been scorching this summer, thus causing my plants to roast and wilt.

Here is what the garden looked like on July 5, 2012:

The garden looked good, but a bit over crowded.  The beans in the front and the zucchini overtook most of the garden. The eggplant in the back had blossoms, but no fruit yet.  Same with zucchini and beans.  The tomatoes were coming, but still green.  It looked like it would be a pretty fruitful garden.

The flowers that I planted back in April were scorched.  I took them out of the planters and added some new ones:

I also pulled some little "chicks" from my big chicks and hens plant and put them in new pots. I put the coffee filter at the bottom to hold the soil, filled it up with soil, and plopped in the new plant.  I love these plants.  They are so easy to take care of (they love the heat!) and they grow like crazy.  I've found that if easily I pull off a brown/dead leaf from a plant, a new one will grow.

I added a hosta in one of the blue pots because the previous plant died.  My zinnias are not doing too well, but the rest of the potted flower plants are:

The flowers in the front of the house got neglected and fried as well.  So I got some spikes ( my Gram always used these) and some nice pink petunias and planted those.  They are still doing well.  

In the following couple of weeks, I picked two medium sized zucchinis and made some delicious muffins and picked a handful of green beans.  That is all my garden produced in those few weeks.

Since then, we've been on a week vacation and made a few weekend trips.  I had to pull up the bean plants before our week vacation because they died.  The bell pepper plants aren't doing well and neither are the eggplant ones.  The tomatoes still aren't ripe or growing much either.  However, to my surprise, when I got home yesterday from last week's vacation, there was a HUGE zucchini.  I look forward to frying it.

The garden, as of today, is well...I'm not sure it would qualify it as a garden.  It is pretty dismal.

Taken July 26, 2012

However, the flowers are still doing well.  The zinnias are pretty much dead, but the hosta, lantanas, succulents, and the tall plant in the back (don't remember what it is but produces pretty white flowers) are doing well.

I think I might put more vegetable plants in pots next year and put the beans in the back with some sort of trellis.  I think that might help the garden a bit...along with a few less weekends away.  I hope for better luck and cooler weather next year...and hopefully Alfred Austin will be pleased next time around.

Now you can (or not this time) Do It Yourself Too !

~Stephanie