Phloxing

When I first started trying to grow flowers in my yard, we could not afford to spend money on store-bought plants, so I gratefully accepted cuttings from friends and scoured the fields and woods for wildflowers.  One day, as I was on my way home from work, I spied some tall phlox growing along the banks of a creek not far from my house.  I drove home, grabbed a shovel, went back to the creek to dig up a clump of the phlox, and planted it near my patio. 

I was over-joyed when that clump re-appeared the following spring.  Over the next few years I divided it, and moved the divisions to other places in my yard.

My flower beds are now choked with phlox.  They are everywhere.

In the front...

in the back...

...on the side.

At times, they almost seem menacing, as if they would choke ME if I would stand still long enough.  About the only plants that have withstood the phlox are the daylilies, and even some of those have succombed to the crowding.

For the past few years, just before the phlox bloom, when they're six feet tall and thick as a forest, I have threatened to get rid of them.  The deal is that I'm always too busy in the vegetable garden in the early spring and summer to fool with the flowers in the yard, and then the phlox begin to bloom, and I think, "I might as well wait until after they've bloomed...."  Of course, by then, something in the vegetable garden needs picking and preserving, and while I'm inside peeling and canning, the phlox are spewing their seeds all over the property.  And so the cycle begins again, with even more soldiers in the ranks the next year.

Resolution:  I'm going to do it next year.  No more pussy-footing around.  I'll pull them up by the roots, mow them down, shoot them with Round-Up, if necessary....

Except I might save a clump or two, for old time's sake.  ;)

* * * * *

As I was out taking pictures this morning, I saw something I've never seen before:  figs, on my fig tree!

This is one of two fig trees that I planted about 15 years ago.  Not knowing much about gardening, I planted them where there was too much shade, and they just sat there.  After about 10 years, when the plants were still only a foot tall and so scrawny that they were in constant danger of being lost in the grass, it occurred to me (duh!) that maybe I should move them to a place where there was more light.  I dug them up, and re-set them in the only sunny spot in the yard.  It was about three more years before they began to grow.  They're still only waist high, but they're beginning to bush out.  And now one has figs on it - maybe a dozen!  How lucky that, just last week, I saw a TV chef poaching figs in a syrup of port wine and sugar, and then slicing them on top of puff pastry rounds smeared with goat cheese.  I'll be trying that recipe, assuming I beat the raccoons to the fig tree when the figs ripen.

* * * * *

The vegetable garden is one sad-looking parcel of ground right now.

Temperatures for the past few days have neared 100.  It appears that the tomatoes may survive the blight and leaf spot and the squirrels (thanks to Pop-Pop's electric fence), but some of the fruit is scalding.  I'm hoping the later-planted tomatoes (which haven't even bloomed yet) will do better if the heat wave passes.  The squash plants that looked wonderful two weeks ago have now almost collapsed.  I've been watering them, but I'm not confident they'll pull through.  The garden, in general, needs weeding, but, jeez, it's so hot!  I hoed the beans last week, and even as late as 8 p.m., sweat poured off of me. 

Those crazy broad beans that I planted early in the spring have done strange things.  Since only a few of the plants survived, I decided to let the pods dry on the vines to make seeds for next year.  Something must have eaten them, for they are gone.  I found more seeds online and ordered enough to try a second planting, come August, with some left for next spring.  I'm on a mission to figure out how to grow these things!