You Think Your Garden's Not Doing Well This Year?

Well, I bet mine tops yours in being the best of the worst. (Somehow, I think that's an award I'd just as soon pass on, thank you very much.)

It's such a good thing that I've become so well-adjusted (did I just hear my husband laughing in the background?) that I'm not losing sleep or developing an ulcer because of my poor, sad garden that seems to be waging a losing battle this year.

As I've mentioned before, I love having cut flowers in the house. Here we are galloping up to the end of July and we haven't had enough heat for my good ol ', grow-anywhere, run-of-the-mill zinnias to push out more than one or two flower heads. (And I have a LOT of zinnias in the garden!) These are the same plants that had a good head start by being started inside this spring. The sweet pea vines are only about 12" high . . . no sign of them flowering any time soon. I've been reduced to cutting marigolds and bringing them in with their puny little 2-3" long stems just to have some flowers in the house.

Remember how sad the California Poppies looked after I HAD to set them out (even though the weather was still very unsettled) when they had grown too big in the pots I started inside?

Apparently they are one plant that IS thriving in this cold, wet weather. I am very grateful to them for supplying some much needed color in the garden. And perhaps encouragement to their vegetable neighbors showing that something really can grow and prosper under these adverse conditions. Too bad they don't appreciate being cut flowers in the house. They take one look around and immediately drop their petals.

Our temps have been hanging in the 50s with a lot of rain. It's raining hard now and our forecast warns of thunderstorms later this morning with possible 40 mph winds. Yikes. Rain is in the forecast for the next several days also.

Those strawberries that I mentioned yesterday that needed to be picked? Still need to be picked. I just know I'm gonna have lots of rotted ones when I finally can get into the patch.

It's getting darker and darker as I sit here writing. Also, cooler . . . I just put on a heavier sweatshirt . . . and I may make another crackling fire in the wood stove again this morning as soon as I finish here.

But what a great day to make that meat loaf for dinner that my husband has been craving. A perfect day for getting caught up on desk work, or reading, or sorting closets and drawers, or quilting (yes!), or . . . oh, yeah, washing those smudged-up kitchen cupboards.

It'll be a good day, especially now that I'm no longer agonizing over my lost-cause garden. (WAAAAH!)