Into the Garden

Now that we are back from our trip, I am back to routine blogging.  Which means, you all get to read my mundane stream of consciousness....or mundane musings.  Or not.  But at any rate, I am content at home and doing the simple life here.  Or as simple as my life can get anyhow, considering. 

So, without further ado,  yes, you knew it was coming, a post about my garden.
This is the second year in a row when I got all excited about my garden, a for real bona fide actual veggie/herb/flower garden.  I had great veggies in my beautiful raised beds, made my my Tom and the big boys. I had my roses coming back in their big pots by the sunroom.  I moved my tomatoes back into big pots so I could put them in the very sunniest part of our deck (I'm gonna start calling it a 'terrace' after being in Italy...sounds extra lovely, doesn't it?).

 The original garden, last  year, with proud Jon.

I had great hopes this year.
Last year we went to California to see my family and then, finally, to Ethiopia to get our Marta.
That ended up being about a month of being gone, almost.
Deadly to my garden.  Sigh.
This year I had it planned.  My nephew was gonna be my gardener. His mom is a wonderful gardener with a bountiful garden at home.  Hmm, but my nephew wasn't quite as up with that idea as I was {Funny, he wanted to swim, and play...go figure}, plus, of course we had oh, floods followed by endless rain and then brutal heat.
Then I came home - again a month of me gone from the garden.
A sad sight indeed. 
Too sad to even take a photo.
I've been ignoring that sight all week in my busyness with laundry and re-entry chores - cleaning the attic for pity's sake!
But yesterday and today, I knew.
It was time.

I got up early, because I woke up early and thought: "GET UP AND GO SALVAGE YOUR GARDEN OR AT LEAST PUT IT OUT OF IT'S MISERY AND YOURS."

So I did.

It was a job to take on:
I had lettuce trees.

 Mine looked kinda like this, but much much taller....

like the Redwoods of bolted lettuce.

I cut em down.  Aw.
But bolted lettuce is not sweet.  Bitter.
I had to cut down my straggly woody dead basil and roses (cut those back far and hope they come back).
Weeded weeded weeded.
I tied up my tomatoes and cut off the useless suckers and such.
Refertilized my tomatoes and veggies and roses with good organic stuff; I don't know what's in it but it's supposed to be the best: "Tomato-tone, Rose-tone,"...catchy,  no?
I cut off the tops of my tiny boxwood basil plants and hope they recover too.
I cut down my thick stems broccoli that got huge gray leaves but never flowered and won't as it's too hot.
Weeded weeded weeded .
Replanted new basil plants which cheered me up just seeing them in their happy red pots again.
I wrestled w/ the squirrel netting and finally got it into the trash bin (ding ding! I won that bout).
Cut back my knockout roses, sprayed for blight, and hope they recover, ouch ouch ouch.  Those are SOOO thorny.
Weeded weeded weeded.

Then came inside back into the cool of the early morning house and had a cup of strong coffee.
  Done.
For this morning.

 And for my efforts I have eight tiny little cherry/grape tomatoes today, bursting with flavor (there were nine, yum) and the promise of more to come.