Friday, September 13, 2019

The Naked Gardener


2017                                    The Ginko Tree                        2019
It's coming up near the end of summer, but my garden hasn't given up. Things are still going nuts, growing and blooming all over the place. Back in Florida you would have thought I could grow anything. With no winter snow and ice, things should grow easily in Florida. But no, they didn't. Trees did okay, but other plants couldn't deal with the heat, humidity, and soil that was little more than dirty sand. I tried tomatoes in Florida. They withered on the vine. I would plant flowers and they would melt in the heat. I did have a couple of nice orange trees alongside the house. The grove rats ate all the oranges, and when the oranges were gone the rats moved into my attic. But not here in Chicago. Three months of brutal winter, with three more of what I would call 'semi-winter' (aka, early spring and late fall) you would think there wouldn't be enough time for things to grow. Well, it's amazing what nature can do in a short amount of warm weather. My nasturtiums are taking over the patio area. The patch of wild flowers have gone... um, wild. And the ginko tree I planted three years ago almost doubled in size this summer. So I'm kind of looking forward to the colder months when I don't have to mow the lawn every week and fight back the marauding morning glories. Seriously, morning glories are very pretty when they bloom in the morning, but they've choked out just about everything in my vegetable garden. Not that I really planned on eating that stuff. I've seen Chandler pee on it.

Nasturtiums taking over the patio

1 comment:

  1. Nice work, Alan! I had intended to plant Nasturtiums this spring but never got to it. Some wild morning glory weeds came with the neighbors' peonies a couple years ago and this summer they have taken over everything, like that Georgia Japanese kudzu....

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