*late summer in garden & greenhouse

Every time when I recently picked a cucumber I thought it was the last one and then suddenly I spot a new one to my surprise. Even when summer was super hot, the warm season was too short to bring all my tomatoes to ripen. I wish for some more to turn red, but the temperatures dropped quite low already, last Friday we had ice on the car, so it won't be ideal anymore I guess. Also I always have trouble to get seeds from certain plants as it freezes too early. The zinnias are still blooming like there is no tomorrow, very much to my amazement! And also the cosmos flowers, but the rainstorms broke many of them off, so I had to remove those. 

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*Garden update

Good morning!

I just made my first tea from my roman fennel plant in the garden and thought it would be nice to make another little garden update here. There are still so many zinnias blooming new every day and finally my little grasshopper friends found them too! The watering got easier and it is truly the time of the year where we can harvest the most different veggies at once. It is true abundance! I hope weather stays stable for some longer so plants do have enough time to develop seeds. Sometimes frost comes too early and I am not able to get seeds from certain plants. It was a bad year for beetroot, but luckily carrots and parsnips grew well. The grapes got ripe earlier than ever and soon it is time to get the potatoes out of the ground. This is also the time of the year where I already think about the next garden season and what I will do differently or which new plants I want to try out.

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*Herb & flower corner

I'm so happy how my herb & flower corner developed the last month. When we moved here, there was actually standing a big spruce. Sadly we had to remove it some years ago. It was quite crooked and leaning towards the house and with the extreme storms we are having here in our area, it was too risky to keep it. I remember that day clearly when we had to cut it down, I cried on that day, I loved it very much and did actually not want to let go of it. But after we had the most terrible hail storm last year which caused so much damage, I know we took the right decision. Only last year I started to plant a few herbs in that corner that were taking over the other garden beds. And this year I wanted to really go about it and create a place even fuller with different herbs and flowers. I also planted a willow that was growing from a seed that came with the wind into our garden. I always feel very honored when trees or plants that I did not sow decide to start a life here. 

This corner became really one of my favorite places in the garden and I love that I can see it from the kitchen window and it is close enough to pick the herbs quickly for cooking. In the first weeks a great amount of seedlings got eaten up by little bugs and snails, but I decided to do nothing and just keeping watering and suddenly everything came back and grew even beyond my wildest dreams!

So far there are growing:

▴ sage ▴ thyme ▴ rosemary ▴ lavender ▴ melissa ▴ wine mint ▴ marshmallow ▴ southernwood ▴ wild bergamot ▴ valerian ▴ spearmint ▴ chamomile ▴ chocolate mint ▴ peppermint ▴ basil ▴ nasturtium ▴ calendula ▴ different sorts of cosmea & zinnia ▴ dyer's chamomile ▴ tickseeds ▴ quaking grass ▴ mallow ▴ stevia ▴ giant poppy ▴ love in a mist ▴ curry plant ▴ roman fennel ...

Next year I would like to add some dahlia sorts.

I hope you are doing well! I'm having relapsing fever again since yesterday, but the distances between those episodes are getting longer fortunately. Have a nice Sunday!

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*Garden update

Some pictures of our vegetable & flower spot in late July.

The first tomatoes turned red just when August started and the plants are looking so robust and healthy this year. It seems they like the ongoing heat waves! The birds are already picking out the seeds from the sunflowers, but this is ok, I actually mainly grow them for the birds.

Not long ago two redstart babies fell out of their nest and we were not able to put them back, so I made a nest for them and luckily the mother accepted it and fed them further. One of the birds unfortunately died a few days later, maybe the fall gave him internal injuries, I really don't know, but the other bird is doing well and seems very used to my presence, he is always around and sitting in the garden beds and in the greenhouse. He is such a funny little guy! I'm glad to have him around!

Last year I collected many seeds of my favorite cosmos sort "Cupcake Blush", where the outer petals are like a cup and not separated like usually and in the middle they have those little thin, fluffy petals. I had white and light pink ones, but obviously they mixed with another cosmos sort and now I have those deep purple ones. I had not expected this at all, it was a nice surprise!

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*Garden update

What is more salutary

than a garden,

that is growing just for you?

So much has changed already since I made those pictures at the beginning of the month. In the meanwhile the heat has dried the luscious green away and it looks more like it usually does at the end of August, but maybe it reduces the snails a bit, I would really appreciate to have at least one zucchini for myself, but observing how the snails enjoy those plants is also nice. Such tender animals. More and more Zinnia are starting to bloom and not long and I will be finally able to harvest the first tomatoes. Until that I keep having further fresh cucumber salad every day. What is your favorite? Could you pick one? I find it hard to pick a favorite.

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*garden romantic & morning tears

A little bit of garden romantic on 35mm film and a rare visitor, a dragonfly. It makes me wonder why it is leaving it's wetland area to visit our garden. Same I'm wondering with the seagulls that are sometimes sitting in the fields here.

I'm struggling a lot right now, last week I have been mainly in bed again. It seems like my body is remembering the torture that started last summer and reacts to it. The damage in my nervous system makes me feel so much disgust for so many smells and tastes. In general for everything that reminds me of that time and I feel a lot of fear when symptoms return and it affects my mood a lot. I feel even guilty to write this as I do not want to speak too much about it and it does not change a thing. It does not change the deep loneliness it creates and often the reactions of other people about it, make me feel even more alone with it. Crying and praying until God lays a piece of comfort into my heart to be able to go on. I don't know if the day on Earth will come when I do not perceive my body as a prison. Luckily I can escape from it every night for some time. Sometimes it feels as if I was lifetimes away during one night and it is hard to find back into this role I chose to play here in my body. The worst days are those when you open your eyes in the morning and they are filled with tears already.

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*Garden & Greenhouse

It is going quick right now, we are having a heat wave and the peas are already over. In the first picture you can see how huge my holly hocks (where I got seeds from Sylvie) grew. Only very recently it opened its very first flower - what a special moment after two years of caring and waiting! I did not know the color, so it was a double surprise! I was able to harvest four cucumbers already, even the plants are not that big yet and today I saw the first little bitter melon fruit appearing. Currently I am drying lavender and had my first cup of fresh lavender tea in the morning! June is full of blessings, but the risk of heavy thunderstorms is also high. I try to cherish everything as it is right now in the garden, because I know from one moment to the other it could be devastated from the storms or hails. A deer family is living just a few meters away from our house right now, a mother with two fawns. They are grazing in the clover field every morning and I can observe them from the window. I filmed them a little for the next movie.

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*garden

Finally I took a moment to have a look in my photo archive to pick some pictures for this first garden update of the year. A little late, but I will post them anyway. Today we stood up early to work together in the garden. R. did water the trees and helped me building brick paths in my new herb corner. I had started last year to create this corner especially for herbs and flowers, but then the strong hail damaged it and because I was bedridden all summer I was not able to care for it anymore, but this year I am slowly bringing it back to life again and planted all sorts of new herbs like different mints, valerian, chamomile, marshmallow, curry, roman fennel, stevia and many more. First the snails ate up most of the flower seedlings, but after some time some started coming through again and I planted some more. Mostly zinnia, cosmea, girls' eyes, calendula, nasturtium and baby breath and my little highlight will be the quaking grass, but let's see if it will survive after all. At the moment I live mostly from peas, mangold and fresh berries and cherries. You can literally watch them turning red, so fast does it all go right now. It is a really overwhelming time in many ways, so full of tastes! After garden work we made a campfire and went swimming. It was a really nice day! I hope yours was nice too!

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*zinnia

Zinnia eye candy

and my grasshopper visitors 

that seem to love them just as much as I do!

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