I think this is a Martha Washington geranium, peeking its head out from under the moonflower foliage:
My camera is already packed for an impending trip, so I had to snap this with my Google Phone (Samsung Moment "Ann-droid"), oh well...
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A Small Early Harvest
Lamentably, I may have to kill off the experiments in the raised garden in my back yard before their growing season is officially over. It seems I will be hitting the road for a month or so, and pretty much offline in addition to being away from home.
The Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes have been giving me a handful of sweet and delicious fruit every day for the past few weeks with lots more coming and new flower buds opening up every day as well. For sure I will grow this variety again and more of them.
The Japanese Mustard did well, but was overtaken by aphids after I removed the Sow Thistle from its proximity. The Chicory did beautifully. It got too hot for the beans and peas so although they started out well, they soon bit the dust. Same thing with the beets except that although the leaves stayed tiny but got tough, the strength of the plants went into producing darling little beets, some the shape of carrots and some round and beet shaped. Those I pulled up, washed off, cooked up together with the other greens, and ate. The little beets had excellent texture and flavor, so next time I will start them earlier and feed nutrients intended to develop the tubers rather than the tops.
Here are some of the greens before I cooked them for dinner tonight:
:
The little heat shaped sweet pepper is a variety called Lipstick and
here are closer shots:
My First Glads this Year
A while ago I found Gladiolus bulbs for sale in a dollar store and a few days ago buds appeared. Now they are turning into flowers.
No, they are not colossal, but what fun anyway. Also in bloom is the Lantana plant that I rooted in water from a stem cutting taken last July:
The bedraggled Lantana below it is one of those I rescued in a hurt plant sale about a year ago and parent of two clones that I rooted from cuttings last summer. In a few years I expect to have beautiful plumbago shrubs all across the front of my home. The lantanas can become invasive so I intend to keep them confined in pots and well trimmed back, but when this one gets big enough I will take more cuttings and make more clones.
This what the Lantana clone looked like when I first put it out on January 30 of this year (about six months after having put the twig my neighbor gave me in water to root):
Out of seven stem cuttings that I put in water almost a year ago, two rooted. One died when I went away for a month and left it uncared for. The other is, as you see, flourishing. It took almost a year to get a gallon sized plant in full bloom out of the cutting.