Chronicle From My Garden

July 9, 2011: As I drove the golf cart up to the mail box, 1000 feet away, I saw a young deer in the road. He was standing in the road looking back at me, about 40 feet away. I had slowed down at the curve to look at the yellow day lilies. He was trying to decide which way to go, I suppose. Then he bolted down the road leaping up in the air and then one big leap over the top of the hill and down into the ravine, out of sight. He was the youngest one I have seen out alone, usually a doe is around. I guess he was a teen ager, testing his boundaries.

My lavender crape myrtle is in full bloom, and so is the beautiful dark pink in everyone’s yard but mine. My deep red crape myrtle has never been pruned so it is very tall and the cinnamon colored trunks are the beauty spots on them right now.

The muscadine grapes are the size of big green peas. The big rain last night was a blessing for them. The kiwi are looking good and plentiful. The brown turkey figs are looking fat but not ripe yet, maybe in two weeks. Sometimes they do have a few early ones that I can put in my cereal, but not today.

My luck with blueberries is a bust. Everyone else around here can grow luscious blue berries, but I cannot. I know I am doing something wrong, but have not discovered what it is.

One success, is that the big black ants which I have found indoors, are now outdoors, and very inactive, as in “dead as a door knob”. The trap with sweetened boric acid has done the job.

Yesterday, Jim cut away a lot of the young trees, etc. which are threatening to fall over the electric fence. That fence has been a blessing to my garden, and a challenge to the deer. They are learning to look elsewhere for their favorite tidbits.

When the day cooled down a bit I checked the water in the batteries of my golf cart.  They really needed water as I had not looked at them for a couple of weeks.  I dislike this one chore, but I am able to do it as it does not require a lot of strength.

I was able to pick a few red tomatoes, but the heirlooms are not yet ripe.  I am anxious to have my first one from the German Queen.  That tomato plant has rambled over a four foot area and with all of the ties I had to put up it resembles a red neck spider web.  In fact the entire area has the red neck stamp of approval.  Maybe this was a red neck kind of day, but it is what it is.