The Garden Works Seven Days a Week, Too, in Summer

How is the vegetable garden like the small-town bookseller in summer? The answer is the title of this post.

Below is a different view of the garden, showing the meadow that stretches out behind it--the meadow where autumn olive has been eradicated (a lot of work involved in that project, too) and the area now safe for grasses, persistent alfalfa clumps and lots and lots of milkweed, which I'm happy to say has finally begun to attract the monarch butterflies.


Cukes, collards, squash and eggplant to the left, beans and strawberries on the ground, tomatoes in the right-hand back corner from this view, with peppers out of sight. The peppers would be in the lower-right corner, so see the top picture again to spot them. They are sharing their straw bales with pansies, as the tomatoes and cukes share with nasturtiums.


Here's a closer shot of those tomatoes and nasturtiums, with squash in the background.


I love the way the collard leaves hold and collect water. Poor thing, though--it's been nibbled a bit. Well, we all get nibbled a bit once in a while, but we keep on working.


Here is a lovely little lavender star, holding the morning dew. Do you know what it is? When it turns from blossom to fruit, it will transform into an eggplant, but right now it looks like something that should be decorating an expensive French pastry. Not to take away from the beauty (below) of the hardier, hard-working, peasant-like squash blossoms. My dear French landlady in Paris years ago thought I was a "delicate flower." Where did she ever get that idea? If I am a flower at all, surely I am a squash blossom!

And now I can't write any more, because it's time to leave the garden to work on its own while Sarah and I get up to Northport to do some bookselling!