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Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Entangled in What?

Been busy. Sort of on vacation. Seeing new things. I was here, and here, and here, but now I'm back. We're planning some renovation on the house in the near future (not doing it ourselves - thank goodness) so the garden may end up feeling neglected while we dither about what needs to be done.

So what's been going on in the garden while I've been out of it (so to speak)? Well...some good things and some bad things.

• Good things:
• Tomatoes are ripe! And what's more, I've left them on the vine so long that they're very sweet - particularly the Striped Roman.
• The butterflies are finally starting to come around.
• Gloriosa lutea started to bloom. What a cool plant - sort of a floppy-stemmed exotic-looking lily - they cling to their sturdier neighbors using a curling leaf tip.
• One tuberose has begun to bloom (for more, see Bad Things, below)
• The Passiflora I planted this spring has flower buds.
  

• Bad things:
• A family(?) of hawks has been hanging around the back yard and woods. They were harassing the birds at the feeder, but I let it go empty for a while thinking the hawks would move on. They're still here. There seem to be 3 of them, and my best (not-s0-good) guess is that they're juvenile sharp-shinned hawks (or maybe not).
• Only one out of four surviving tuberoses is blooming and the other three show no signs of sending up flower stalks yet.
• Japanese beetles are still here. The was a article in the Washington Post a few weeks ago about how many Japanese beetles there are this year.
• It's dry here. It hasn't rained since July 27 by my reckoning, and it's been hot in the meantime.
  

posted by Entangled at 4:38 PM ::: Permalink

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