The News from Kenabeek

It’s been very busy! And the season remains advanced, at least two weeks ahead of normal. We actually have blueberries – tiny white ones, not ripe yet – and the sugar plums are getting a lot of attention from a couple of cedar waxwings, and the chipmunks. Although the “big” sugar plum tree is really more of a large shrub, maybe six or eight feet tall, with quite slender branches, the chipmunks have no problem scurrying out to the ends of the branches and balancing there while they sample the sugar plums. (They like blueberries, too, but not until they’re ripe. One summer when I was picking berries I came almost nose to nose with a chipmunk holding a big fat blueberry in its front paws, eating it like an apple.)

The chipmunks prefer the sugar plums before they’re fully ripe – red, rather than purple-black. After I noticed this and tried some, I decided they were right – when ripe the berries are sweet but bland, while not quite ripe they have a tangy flavour I quite like.

The wild roses have had their brief, sweet season, and now the deep summer wildflowers are in full bloom – white daisies, orange hawkweed, purple/blue vetch, deep yellow trefoil, bright yellow buttercups. The fallow fields and roadsides are awash with colour. The sweeps of colour are punctuated in some places by clumps of pale green/white bedstraw – a homely name for a lovely plant which should be called something like “seafoam”. I’ve even seen some fireweed in bloom, very early.

The flower gardens are flourishing – the phlox is over (although I dead-headed it, hoping for another bloom later in the season), the columbines are still in bloom but passing, the brighter green sedum is putting out its clusters of tiny yellow flowers, and the daylilies are full of buds, with a couple of blossoms on the yellow ones. One of the new plants in the lower rock garden has produced a huge number of pink flowers and I wish I could remember what it’s called – sweet william, maybe? I’d like more! And the peonies are simply glorious.

The vegetable garden is finally recovering from the heavy rains early in the season. I did lose most of my lettuce and about half my spinach, so if it happens again I will just re-plant instead of waiting to see what survived. In any case, next year I hope to be gardening in the big front garden, which is level (and currently full of grass and weeds), and the smaller patch beside the house can go entirely into flowers. Maybe a few herbs, too.

The tomatoes in the sunroom are almost to the ceiling – four or five feet high – and beginning to blossom. Here’s hoping they will pollinate well with just the breeze from the windows! The pepper plants are also huge and I can see buds on them, too. Definitely time to do a little research to ensure they will fertilize each other without help – I hope I won’t have to go from flower to flower with a little paintbrush, but I will if necessary.

I am really happy with how the gardens are shaping up. A couple more clumps of wild raspberries to uproot, with another rock garden replacing one of them, and our little “estate” will be looking fine. And I so enjoy being able to spend part of every day working outside instead of in an office! It’s been a gorgeous summer so far and we’re not halfway through it (even if the Brits do call the June solstice “midsummer”)!