A Well-Watered Garden

Last spring I started most of my garden vegetables and flower annuals from seed. We purchased a grow table from Gardeners Supply , which overall worked really well to start the seeds. I knew going into it that some of the seed experiments would be successes and some failures. I used seeds from at least 3 different companies and I also found that seeds from certain companies were more successful than others - here's one of the successes. When we moved into our house in 2010, some beautiful purple flowers began blooming in August - they had a unique structure to them in that the blooms were nestled under the leaves. We really liked them, and my husband called them "Underflowers".  I researched and found that they were Balsam. Here's a previous blog post on those pretty purple ones. Balsam is a species of Impatiens, and they are a delightful, easy to grow annual. At first I didn't realize they were an annual, because the next couple of years they appeared as well...

It took a bit of time to identify these. They are Balsam, related to Impatients. We called them "Underflowers" until we identified them. They seemed happy when they were only leaves, then ecstatic once they bloomed. I love the way they dance in the sunshine.

It was an active day in the garden, probably because the weather was picture-perfect. Before my morning jog I walked around and made a mental list of to-do's for the day. - The tomato cages I bought in the spring are like the Grinch's heart - two sizes too small. Their size as well as at least three violent storms this summer have resulted in me playing "keep up the tomatoes" with various bamboo and metal stakes - anything to keep the them off the ground and allow more sun and air to pass through the vines. Need to stake them up more today. And pick some. Also pick Cucumbers. - Prune Roses. - Trim bushes in the front bed. - Weedweedweedweedweed. I jogged, made coffee and blueberry pancakes for us (Steve working from home today), and pruned the roses. Dad stopped by out of the blue. He ate the last pancakes, and he and I staked up the tomatoes. We used the reflector poles that we line the driveway with in the winter. They were the strongest thing around, and...