Garden schmarden

It sure is a good thing I don’t have to rely on my own garden to feed my family. We would have starved to death a long time ago. My tomatoes are finally starting to flower! Of course it will probably freeze overnight within four weeks, so they are pretty much a loss. I planted 6 red cabbages, one of which looked promising, and today I discovered what I believe are cabbage aphids on it. I looked under one leaf and it was just covered with grayish powdery bugs. Freaky, and gross. The eggplant is doing well, that is, if you don’t take into consideration the fact that it has no fruit. Pretty flowers, though. The red bell pepper died. The parsley is finally doing well, yay! The zucchini took over the entire bed and was doing fairly well, I am getting 2-3 zukes a week, which doesn’t seem like much compared to how big the sucker is. Today, though, after inspecting it, I am pretty sure the powdery mildew is setting in. The leaves are starting to turn silvery. I am hoping it makes it through another couple weeks so I can get a few more zucchini from it. And finally, the watermelon. It has stalled. The vine quit growing, but that’s okay because we have one fruit on it, the size of a baseball. I am pretty sure that is not going to go anywhere either, except straight to the compost bin.

The good news is that a friend of mine is part owner of a fruit orchard on the western slope and tomorrow I am getting a box of freshly picked organic peaches, lower than retail price. And these are the freestone kind so I won’t have to destroy the fruit trying to remove the pit! Tomorrow I’ll make peach jam, it should be a nice cool day for it. I’ll also be getting a box of organic gala apples in a few weeks, 20 lbs for $25. My daughter eats an apple every single day, and usually one other person will too, so we can go through 12 apples a week. Raspberry picking this week. Things are looking up.

Today we bought one of those car adapter charger thingies so we can listen to the iPod in the car! We also had a meltdown over a pair of shoes. This family member has complete opposite taste in shoes than what I would pick for them, so agreeing on a style that is a good price is very difficult. Very, very difficult. It was much easier when they were babies and I just chose one kind of shoe and they wore it all the time! Wait, why can’t I still do that? Oh, right. Because there is P.E. and church and never the twain shall meet.

I wouldn’t mind simplifying my own shoe selection. I’ve often thought about doing that. Really I’d like to simplify the whole wardrobe deal but short of joining a monastery I don’t know how it’s going to happen. Didn’t I read somewhere that we wear 20 percent of our clothes 80 percent of the time? I wonder if that included only in season clothes. Of course I am not going to wear the 50 percent of my clothes that are for cold weather during the summer. Pfui. And what is someone supposed to do with a statistic like that? Get rid of 80 percent of your clothes? Wait, isn’t that also true about church work? That 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work? I might have to think about this some more.

Okay, enough bloviating from me. Here’s a picture of my beautiful red geranium, the flower that makes me happiest during the summer, which right now has so many blooms it’s crazy. John took this a few weeks ago during a rain storm. The marigolds are happy, too. It’s one little happy flower frenzy in the front yard.

Have a great week!