Just before leaving home, I planted the vegetable garden. My back may never forgive me.

Now that the weather has finally turned the corner (high 70’s all day today), those seedlings will actually get enough heat and sunlight to grow. I planted three different varieties of peppers,

eight different kinds of tomatoes (three of which are cherry tomatoes) and two different squashes.

The big clump above is a mash-up of beet greens and chard that wintered over and self-seeded.

Four sweet basil plants from Trader Joe’s, which always has them this time of year. Bright marigolds, companion planted near the tomatoes to keep insects at bay. Two different varieties of lettuce.

And finally, three different kinds of cucumbers. After all these years of trial and error, I realized that once we have picked the green beans a few times, everybody gets sick of them and the rest get huge and woody – and remain uneaten, so it made no sense to plant them again.

Can’t wait to start picking – though the harvest is at least 8 weeks away.

It’s beginning to look a lot like spring in my part of the country…

Of course, we’re being revisited by the torrential downpours tonight through tomorrow…

So I shall have to enjoy these glimmers of things to come while I have them…

Hope you’ve enjoyed them, too!

…but there’s no place like home. My knitting is off-camera for the moment, so nothing new to share there. While I’m away from the blog, thought I’d treat you to a few photos snapped in the garden just before I left.

Peaches still hard as rocks, but should be ripening by the time we return.

Santa Rosa plums on the verge; keeping my fingers crossed that I beat the squirrels and birds to them.

And of course, there’s always something lovely blooming…

Usually several somethings!

And the all-volunteer army of pansies (no such thing as “Don’t ask, don’t tell” in this garden!) establishes outposts and wins hearts and minds all summer long in every shady corner. See you in a few days!

Every summer, among the dozens of agapanthus buds stirring in the front garden, we get a few of these mutants:

But this summer it’s a bonanza.

Every once in a while I am struck by the similarity between plant and animal life forms, and these gooseneck agapanthus buds crack me up. I do the same double-take when I see someone in Craftyland has knit up life-size, anatomically correct fruit and vegetables, space aliens, or sea creatures out of yarn.

But then, I am easily entertained.

That’s Bartlett pear to you and me, and last week we had to take down one of the two remaining pear trees on our property. It had succumbed to scale and fire blight over the last few years despite all efforts to restore it to good health. Our neighborhood used to be acres of pear orchards, back in the  early to mid-20th century. Few of the original trees remain, making it especially sad to have to cut this one down.

The one in our back garden is still, thankfully, in fairly good health despite being ancient, despite having served as pecking practice for a neighborhood woodpecker, despite having split and healed over, and it still bears more fruit every August than we can possibly use. A lot of those green pears go to the local food bank, and the rest I use to make pear sauce, pear butter, pear and ginger jam, and the caramelized upside-down pear tarts adored by my husband.

The tree that had been in the front garden also produced lots of pears, but not of as good quality because of its diseased state. The local deer are not as picky as we humans, however, and our house had been a regular stop on their annual tour of summer deer candy. Although the plan is to plant a Japanese maple at that corner, one with brilliant fall foliage to remind me of home, I’ll miss that pear tree.

Right after New Year’s, when I returned home and had an opportunity to see my garden through fresh eyes, it seemed as if spring was already pushing its timid way up through the soil. Or through the stalks of last year’s callas, as the case may be.

The citrus crop was badly compromised by hard frosts, and we lost almost all of the limes. Meyer lemons and radishes more than made up for them.

Hellebores are budding, looking like some alien plant species, more at home on Mars than on Earth.

Then the rains began in earnest. Seriously, this is the most exciting weather we’ve had since I moved out to California nine years ago. I’m talking thunder, lightning, and hailstones. I’m talking thunderclouds that would inspire fear and dread in the hearts of Druids everywhere. I’m talking vivid double rainbows that shatter the afternoon sky with their brilliance whenever the sun peeks out momentarily. And it’s supposed to continue like this all week!

Perhaps you remember seeing these irises last week, enjoying their second bloom cycle in a single year:

Well, I don’t mean to go on about it (despite my iris aficionado bona fides), but here’s another one that opened up this week:

Gorgeous!

And just for good measure here’s another shot of the pink dogwood in full autumn glory:

This is as festive as it got chez moi this Halloween season. We used to have very few trick-or-treaters, just a handful of little kids with their parents hovering protectively at the front gate. Suddenly in the last year or so, our neighborhood seems to have been discovered, and this year we had a steady stream of children and teenagers (Though my husband insists that when a boy is old enough to shave and his voice has changed, he’s probably too old for trick-or-treating) ringing the doorbell. I was amazed at how polite they were; perhaps only one or two did not say thank you after choosing their candy. (“Oh, come on… take some more,” I kept urging them, jiggling the bowl encouragingly, not wanting to be left with anything that I’d feel duty-bound to eat myself after the fact.)

One tiny girl, presented with the bowl of candy and told to help herself, carefully picked up, inspected, and then put back nearly every fun-size bar in the bowl before making her choices. I mean, she took so long that her gaggle of little friends started rolling their eyes and noodging her to get going. Because, you know, the neighbors down the street would surely run out of the good stuff right before they arrived if they didn’t get a move on that very minute. She was so cute, I just stood there watching her deliberate rather than grab a handful of candy, fling it into her plastic pumpkin tote bag, and send her on her way.

But I wondered later what her indecisiveness portends for her as an adult. Will she always be so paralyzed when confronted with many choices? I could imagine her shopping for shoes twenty years from now, with multiple pairs in every style arrayed before her, and the salesperson near tears as she hemmed and hawed over which ones to buy. Or lipstick. Just imagine the awful potential… that child may someday own enough lipsticks to open her own make-up salon, simply because she couldn’t choose just one. Fascinating. Has there ever been a study on how children choose Halloween candy? I bet Nestles would pony up for that one.

While the Japanese maple above leaves me distinctly underwhelmed by its fall foliage, the dogwood below (Dramatic leaf color! Shiny red berries!) does not disappoint.