Saturday in Bay

Saturday morning seemed to be a good time to practice my photography skills, so I decided to visit my garden. In the next month or so, we will need to move the many containers into the unheated warehouse, where they will overwinter in front of large windows.

In the meantime, here are a few items in my garden that are still thriving and one that is not.

We've slowly been collecting fruit trees. This is our grapefruit. The fruits are so large, they are funny. I don't think they will ripen outdoors, so we'll have to check them weekly in the warehouse to reap our harvest.  

We also have Meyer lemons and a few varieties of orange trees. This is the Meyer lemon, which you can glimpse over to the left. At the base of the topiary, we are temporarily housing some orchid plants that thrive here, but would not be so happy inside of our home. This orchid is a Grammatophyllum orchid.

 

Here is a slightly different pattern:

Four weeks ago, we decided to try to prolong the basil season. We sowed these seeds, which are progressing nicely. We cut the tips off for salads.

When the basil grows up, here is what they will look like. These are the Italian seeds (Basilico bolloso napoletano from Franchi Sementi), which have rippled leaves and are sweeter than the usual basil. You can see that we are sure to cut the flowering tips off; leaving the flowers on to maturity means the basil leaves start to become bitter and the plants will go to seed and stop producing new leaves.

 A buddleia bloom past its peak. The butterflies have been frequent visitors to this bush.

The poor lily of the valley has totally dried out. The heat and lack of rain did them in until next spring. Have you been hit with dry conditions like we have?

I leave you with two stars in our dahlia plantings this year.

In remembrance of those who died nine years ago today in New York City and their families.