Tomatoes

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The tomatoes have grown with amazing energy - six weeks after planting the seedlings, they're nearly five foot tall and have needed new ties every few days, not to mention taller stakes.  They are four different cherry varieties (which always seem to have the best flavour).  I'm waiting for the fruit to come...

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White in the garden

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I like what white does in the garden, particularly in summer as the light fades - it lasts longer, as something you see, than the brighter colours which catch your eye during the daylight.  The front bed has ordinary white petunias scattered through it, as well as white daisies, for just this reason.  Along the verandah are several hanging baskets, planted with white verbena (as in the photograph above), a white petunia, the label of which said it was especially good for hanging baskets, and erigeron daisies, which are doing less than the others (although they're going great guns in the front garden bed)...

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And I hope that, as the plants in the baskets grow, that they will be, too, visible for an extra while, at dawn and dusk.  They add a cool effect too, given the heat of spring/summer - it's been a hot few weeks here.

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Years ago, a gardening friend lent me a book of Vita Sackville-West's columns about the garden she created at Sissinghurst, which includes of course the famous White Garden.  I'm not disciplined enough to have a garden only in whites and silvers (also, I don't have quite such extensive grounds!!) but the idea is one which has remained with me.  I notice from The Book Depository (bookdepository.com or bookdepository.co.uk) that you can buy four books containing these columns, from Frances Lincoln Publishers).  I'll bung them on my wishlist.

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The ladybird climbing energetically all over the white verbena this morning seemed to like it too.

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(Treasure that photo - my discard folder has at least a dozen in which the ladybird has gone behind a leaf, was moving too quickly for my camera to catch!)

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Verbena

I don't remember growing verbena before.  This plant was in a little pot in the cottage plant section of the nursery, and the candy-stripe caught my eye.  I bought both the ones they had, and each plant is romping away happily and flowering generously.  I think I'll try to catch seeds from them when they're nearing the end of their season.  I've since bought white verbena in a punnet, and a coloured mix, also in a punnet, and added them to the garden - with some of the white ones in the hanging baskets of white flowers I've potted up for the verandah.

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Fresh herbs from the garden

A couple of nights ago, accompanying spinach and ricotta ravioli, was a salad of lettuce leaves from the garden, topped generously with an assortment of chopped/torn herbs, also from the garden: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme (tra-la!), ordinary basil and lime basil, rosemary and oregano.  The greens were sweet and tender, so very fresh, their combined aroma adding to the taste.  The herbs smelled so very good, complex, interesting, simple, inviting.  Aaaaah.

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No tomatoes, yet: but the promise of them.  The tomato plants, put in about five weeks ago (various cherry tomato varieties) are leaping skyward - I had to buy taller stakes.  There are flowers on them, and so soon there will be fruit.  I do love the slightly odd scent of tomato leaves and plants.

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From this...

to this...

...in five weeks.  Look at those tall tomato plants on the right!  The white petunias planted throughout are too many to count, the dahlias are almost flowering and nothing has failed/died.  The last few days have been heatwave conditions, over 40degC two days in a row, nearly so today and the same again tomorrow, so watering is part of the daily schedule while it's so hot.  (The worst of such temperatures is when it doesn't cool down at night - it's hard to sleep when it's still 30degC because it's hot outside and the house hasn't cooled).

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Now where are those gardening books I shelved in the study some years ago?!

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Reading and Writing (and 'rithmetic)

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Reading this.  Wonderful!! If you haven't read this, or Kit Whitfield's earlier novel, Bareback (UK title) (aka Benighted in the US), you are missing out.  Are they literary? Genre? Scifi? Fantasy?  Dunno.  Bareback is about werewolves, and In Great Waters about mermaids (or deepsmen, in the book's terminology).  That's simplistic, given the quality of the writing and storytelling.  I came across her first book by accident, and bought the second in hardback, Because I Couldn't Wait... and when I've finished this one, I'm going to read Bareback again.

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I'm playing this game again.  Just under 1700 words a day, to reach 50,000 in the month.  NaNoWriMo is a great way to get yourself writing, fishing out things you didn't even know were in your head, getting you writing every day.  It's not too late to start... I plan to carry my (work-supplied) baby laptop around everywhere this month, so I have No Excuse (and don't have to transcribe my sometimes 'orrible scrawl).  Some of the kids are NaNo-ing too (with a smaller goal through the Young Writer version) and so I hope to encourage them and be motivated in my turn.

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'rithmetic? 1700 words a day.... I didn't make it the first year I did NaNo; last year I managed just over 51,000 words, and this year I've got an idea I want to chase - not sure entirely where it's going to go, but I'll find out...

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And I've read and enjoyed Diana Gabaldon's latest, An Echo in the Bone, and now wonder if it will be another four years before all the loose ends get to be explored further...  The audiobook (yes, it's on Audible, hurrah!) has just been loaded on the iPod and I'm sure I'll notice things I missed on that first fast read.  At over forty hours, you can see why I like a download rather than CDs, and not only to avoid postage but to avoid the tedium of transferring them to iTunes.

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