July Update

July Update

Posted by Heather Harris

It's time for a mid-summer update. I am currently in Sellwood, in a caboose turned tea shop, an earthen mug in hand, sipping a chai concoction made with maté in honor of my host sister in Argentina for the World Cup today. It's really the least I can do to show my support. No kids are in sight; only women with ostrich skin purses, iron teapots, lap tops, and long, billowing skirts. Ahhh, summer.

Much like the skirts, my garden is in full, blowzy profusion right now. Peas hang their ripe fruit unabashedly from every inch of my twig trellises. Scarlet runners are entwined with pole beans, waving their vermilion blooms like a red light district. Tomatoes are swelling with hopeful promise of things to come, and the nasturtiums are wantonly dangling their leggy blooms off the edge of every raised bed. It's really quite a sight.

The chickens have yet to lay an egg (Big shock. I swear if I ever see evidence that chickens actually lay eggs, I'll pass out. I have however, answered the age old question: The chicken definitely comes first...long...long...long before the egg.)  They also have charmed their way into getting set free from the coop every day which, as you will recall, is in complete violation of one of my chicken rules when we took on the new hens. So far they are happy to scratch under our massive fig tree all day. All day. How long must a day feel to a chicken? They are probably too depressed to lay eggs.

The deer have multiplied over the winter. One even has twin fawns. And defying all logic, despite their daily romps through the yard, they have yet to nibble on one single thing from the entire garden. I know. Crazy. Our neighbor complains regularly that they are mangling his landscape plants. My only guess is that they stuff themselves on his roses, and, like a dessert menu presented when you've gorged yourself on a five course meal, they just sniff around our garden and then responsibly decline. I think I'll get my neighbor some replacement roses, and maybe a big, fat, juicy oakleaf hydrangea, just to be neighborly.

The cucamelons are my summer heartbreak. One seed germinated a month ago and is now a whopping one inch tall. The other seeds decided to pop up after an incredible two and half months in the dirt.This is what happens when I order a plant native to Mexico from a seed supplier in Arizona. Not a good strategy for all you novice gardeners out there. We'll see if anything happens before the first frost strangles them.

And that about sums it up. My maté is almost gone, and a dude just propped his mum tattooed arm a little too close to my table, so I think it's time to go...