Some photos 8 June 2008

It had been so long since I felt this 3-H weather (hazy hot humid) that I had forgotten how the air can feel like a weight – like it’s pressing down on you, causing you to carry yourself lower to the ground than you do in ordinary air. The haze is so thick that sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a thunderstorm is coming or if it’s just the day’s air.  As of this writing, the heat index is 101 F.

Here are some pictures.

Fava blooming yesterday

(Blooms seen from behind in this shot)  That is an ant on it. For some reason the ants have been fascinated with the favas since they were wee things.  They trek up and down them, to no apparent purpose.  I have no idea why.

One way to work with a small gardening space is to make everything closer together than recommended.  Here’s an example.  Beans are sprouting amongst the base of pea plants while Aztec sweet herb winds around them and some of the hollyhocks.

Aztec sweet herb (Lippia dulcis) is something I’ve never grown before, or indeed even knew existed until I saw the nursery selling it this year in their effort to offer a wider variety of herbs and specialty annuals than they have in the past.  The herbs have a very pleasant sweet scent when rubbed, and I find the viney plant attractive.  At the nursery small pollinators and predators were attracted to the small button-like flowers, which I wasn’t surprised about, but so far in the garden they seem to be going for more familiar food sources.  Though its leaves are, from what I’ve read, edible, it is apparently not much used as a sweetener any more.  I just thought it was a pretty plant, and thought it would look nice twining around the bases of the crop plants. According to what I’ve read so far, it was used medicinally starting in the time of the Aztecs if not before to treat various respiratory issues, but I haven’t found any information on current uses, much less how to prepare it (tea? tincture? fresh? dried? etc.). Perhaps its medicinal uses have gone by the wayside like its use as a sweetener, or perhaps relevant information isn’t written in English.

Yesterday while I was taking photos, there was an American Bumblebee that was obsessed with the sundial lupine blooms.

And another shot, this time of the other open bloom:

As I mentioned in a post on Wednesday, I got three sunflowers at the farmers’ market this week. I planted them on Friday (the 6th) so that they wouldn’t have to try to survive the then-incoming heat wave in their little peat pots.  Here is one of them, in focus in the foreground of the below shot:

Also in the shot (clockwise from the bottom left) are a bellflower (new this year), the Carolina lupine/false lupine, scallions, one of the tender salvias, sea holly, two small things in the same area (a tall verbena just starting to earn its name, and the edge of a young bean plant [I think it's a runner bean]), and the ‘Butterfly Blue’ delphinium that I got from the flower farm at the first farmers’ market.  The farmers sure were right about it loving heat and full sun!  I’m so surprised after thinking of delphiniums as such delicate little things that need lots of coddling and still often don’t even survive a year here.

The chive blooms finally opened!

California poppy bloom

The echinaceas are budding up.  Here’s one (I think it’s the one that I got last year that was just labelled as “white coneflower” – not sure if it’s a white cultivar of Echinacea purpurea or something else) with the unusual, delicate bloom of the American alumroot (Heuchera americana) that I planted this spring.

In the foreground are foliage of a California poppy, buds of an agastache (lit by the sun), and a little hardy geranium I got at this year’s historical society estate sale.

Farmers’ market salad from earlier this week -

Three kinds of lettuce, spinach, radishes, baby garlic (used like scallions), red onion.  The only things not from the market were the red onion slices and the salad dressing I added after taking this picture. I love eating food fresh from the market and/or the garden.  I can often literally taste the difference!

More photos coming.