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Jersey Girl Garden

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: We are nicely installed here at the Jersey shore. Cats, both the Jersey Five and the NYC kits, are getting used to a new routine. My friend Winsome who cares for the Jersey cats is in Jamaica on vacation and so these kitties are stuck with me and my commuting hours. Feeding and litter box cleaning for seven cats is plenty twice a day. Kim has been doing the evening feeding shift so everyone doesn’t need to wait for me to get home.

Strawberries which are prolific and yummy but always tiny.

The weather has been too balmy to sit outside or do much in the garden yet, however my spring efforts are paying off and my dahlias are already providing a stream of early blooms. We had rain last night so everything is quite content. Finding time to water before or after work has been hard as well, but necessary many of these hot and very sunny days. The sudden hard rains and winds can be hard on them too though and I have lost a few dahlias to it.

Some nascent tomatoes – all except the poor cherry tomato.

My tomato plants have been slow starters this year. I planted them in the garden instead of containers and it may have been a mistake. The chipmunks and squirrels (which are aplenty here) delight in digging them up, not eating them, but digging them out, despite cages around them. The cherry tomato seems to be their favorite game. (I will say while planting something else recently I found a bunch of peanuts in the hole I dug! Maybe that is what the squirrels are looking for?

Unlike the tomatoes the three different kinds of peppers I planted in containers have done quite well. We already have some peppers ready for the picking and the promise of many more. We have sweet peppers, jalapenos and banana peppers – I believe it is the banana peppers that are ready for the picking – might be the jalapenos though – I will pluck some and let you know.

The banana peppers (or are they jalapenos?) are coming along nicely. May trim one for the fish stew!
Look carefully for a couple of small green peppers.

The hydrangea is doing its thing and the purply blue in the backyard is stunning. The honeysuckle is blooming (I taught Winsome’s grandkids about sucking the sweet bit out of the bottom of a blossom.) I don’t cut them often though as they don’t seem to last in a vase – the pink variety is so pretty though I will sometimes. The cut flowers are a great joy to have in the kitchen where they are seen day and evening and always cheer me. Unfortunately, Beauregard does like to have a nibble on them.

My favorite hydrangea in the backyard. I like to clip a occasional choice bloom.
The pink honeysuckle – a favorite of mom’s.

The herb garden, shown at the top, is a bit feral – the sage and the oregano seeking to crowd out everyone else. The basil is making a valiant effort, and the rosemary has the good fortune to be outside the purview of the sage and is perking along, smelling glorious.

A lone last hibiscus.

Although in spring the garden is all about the peonies, the centerpiece of the summer garden is the dahlias. This year I have planted some in the garden and others are in containers. The ones in the garden are growing quite huge and some of those are having their first bloom. Some of the old timers are in containers and a favorite orange-red and yellow is already bursting out much to my delight. In the garden is an enormous purple one which I leave in the ground over the winter and seems to be very happy. I planted it for my mom, like many of the peonies, for Mother’s Day or her birthday. That is the origin of the cherry tree and the magnolia too.

This orange and yellow is a favorite returning this year.

The rest of the dahlias are dug up annually in the fall and tucked into the garage for the winter where I hope to find tiny green buds on them in the early spring for planting. I had some new ones purchased this year that haven’t worked out so well for me so I have to think about where I buy from in the future. It could be them or it could be me. Hard to really say. I have an experienced gardening friend who advises me in these matters and she too suffered some losses this year on the dahlia front.

A barely out red dehlia.

So sets the stage for summer here. I am eyeing my fairy lights on the deck and hoping for an evening cool enough to enjoy them. I generally take my time off in August when, even if it rains a bit more, temperatures tend to go down a bit already and the evenings are more enticing. I have a plan to make fish stew today (post with that recipe can be read here) so we have dinner for the week – easier with the commute. More tales of the Jersey shore to come for those who care to follow me.

Yard

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Taking a brief break from the big box of Felix, I share a recent photo postcard acquisition of this serious fellow with his cat and dog in a lush garden setting. He is surrounded by bounty from his garden, including an enormous melon, leafy greens and something that looks like eggplant perhaps. He is plant and pet proud! It is the sort of photo which, Felix notwithstanding, is the mainstay of the Pictorama collection. This card was never mailed, nor is anything written on the back.

Kitty, a nice orange tabby, who is distracted by something off camera to the left of our view, sports a collar and perches nicely on Dad’s lap. The black dog at his feet is has a bright white chest and a substantial collar. Our man is dapper in a vest and collared shirt, neatly trimmed mustache and combed hair. His expression is serious, but he is pleased with the photo taking. He sits atop a simple wooden bench with spindly legs.

I am curious about the ropes or twine coming down from the tree, perhaps vines were being trained up them. There is a mass of unidentified leafy foliage behind him. A house peers through an arbor covered with ivy or something similar. There is an opening to a fence on the other side and these draw our eye back, deeper into the space.

Mystery bush in the backyard which has grown enormous. My tomato plants, which remain totally happy, are hidden behind them.

I myself am fresh back from a few days of hectic gardening in New Jersey and this photo of pets and vegetable bounty remind me of the garden there. All the cats are indoor ones and cannot join me in the yard, but otherwise I might give this fellow a run for his money posing on the deck.

The herb garden in an earlier state.

Yesterday I was feeling the residual effects of digging some deep holes for transplanting lavender plants, not to mention hauling soil and water around earlier in the week. Evidently my gym and running trained muscles are not those employed for gardening! Among my duties, was transplanting a sizable jasmine plant, purchased online and which arrived in my absence. It needed to be moved to a proper pot which was one of the more pressing duties.

This is more or less what the jasmine should look like in bloom.

I lived in London many years ago and I have never forgotten how much I loved the smell of jasmine in a pub garden I used to frequent so I am very keen on trying to grow it. Jasmine’s ability to survive a winter in New Jersey seems questionable, so I have put it in a large pot and will consider bringing it into the garage over the winter. I purchased a trellis for it and was surprised how quickly it seemed to take to the idea of climbing up it. In the summer humidity it almost seemed to grow before my eyes. The arbor in this photo puts me in mind of it – would be lovely to have one with jasmine climbing up it.

The first dahlia of the season! Hydrangea blooming away behind them.

However the trellis seemed like a sort of marvelous thing in itself and I thought it was wonderful to purchase for $14 – such an interesting object, simple and made neatly of wood. There are several others in the yard, most notably a few holding up large pink honeysuckle bushes which mom ordered. I only found out fairly recently that she was especially fond of honeysuckle. Not sure if it was to provide bounty for the insects and birds or just because she liked them.

Largely the garden was planted by her for birds, bugs and small animals to nibble and attract. Blueberry bushes bulge and despite my mother’s more charitable inclination in providing for the bunnies, squirrels and birds, I am determined to at least let some ripen and taste them this summer. To that end I fought with a complex bit of netting I purchased and, in my own ham handed way, draped it around one of the bushes. We’ll see how that goes. I think I saw a squirrel laughing at me.

One of two blueberry bushes, laden with not-quite-ripe berries.

I also had it in my mind that I wanted some sunflowers as I have very fond memories of growing them as a kid. I purchased some seeds and planted them a few weeks ago. Although I haven’t grown anything else there from seed I thought that growing a line of them against the fence would be a no brainer when I tucked the seeds in the ground.

When I arrived the other day I anxiously checked them and found the spot utterly barren. Upon further inspection, something had delicately dug and nibbled the seeds all up – a nice meal. Arg! I purchased two small plants which were already well underway instead, not to be utterly thwarted. Admittedly my approach to the garden has been to plunge both headlong and headstrong into the process.

Hope springs eternal! Here are the two new sunflowers I just planted.

I should not only talk of failures – a stunning dahlia is already well underway blooming and meals there are liberally seasoned with an abundance of herbs from a garden I put in near the kitchen. It is, as an herb garden should be, close enough to the house that I occasionally wander out in my pj’s to snip some for a morning omelet. I am sorry not to have recent photos to provide for some of it, but will share an update after my next trip back later this week.