Update of the Garden Variety

I spend a lot of my time these days alternating between bringing home lots of fruit and trying to kill fruit flies. Part of my tactic is to just eat all the fruit so they can’t get to it. I really feel like I’m winning the war when my smoothie for the day has seven bananas. Take that, flies.

So then I set out little traps that look like apples. Idiots! Don’t they know it’s not apple season? I love these things. I really like not having to look at fly carcasses. I should set up an Amazon subscription for “once a year.” Is that an option? Amazon is always trying to get me to subscribe to the dumbest things I would never buy more than once. Yes, I’d like to subscribe to monthly bike tire pumps. Cannot have too many of those.

I don’t grow any food but I sure enjoy others’. My parents gift us melons and onions and cucumbers and berries and carrots and it’s such a treat. They are such good growers. My dad designed an enormous berry patch in addition to the substantial vegetable garden, and my mom is always tossing seeds around and having magic sprout up in her wake. Here is her zinnia forest:

Growing things is nice because it keeps you looking forward. “If I want ____ then, I’m going to have to ______ now.” And whatever you plant now seems to replace all memory of whatever was growing before, so even if you had a horrible year or a bad tomato patch that just sent you in a tailspin, all is forgotten because now there’s a new one in its place that, fingers crossed, is more successful. So maybe supplanting is an important part of rooting things out.

It always surprises me how Utah seems to enter a Second Spring. First Spring is April-May, when we first do the planting. Second Spring is Aug-Sept when the near-death plants can recover from the scorchfest that is July. Now that the summer wanes, I’m amazed at how good everything looks, particularly things I’d written off like certain flowers and also the lawn. And, I must remember that some things just bloom later, like this perennial hibiscus I planted last fall that looks like it has absolutely no business being here but I’m so glad it is. It’s been growing steadily and rather boringly all season until recently when it bloomed and completely knocked my summer socks off. I saw it while standing at my kitchen window one day:

“Holy SH—rub, Sean come look at this!” His summer man socks (argyle probably) were also displaced. Bonus fun is how I forgot what it even was and had to re-identify it with my phone. It felt like an alien had come and planted itself in my backyard. Hang on.

*note to self: Book idea: aliens that look like plants come to Earth and hide in plain sight until ______?*

Anyway, say hello to the new star of garden party:

hand for scale, and also to pet the flowers.

And say hello to this sad state of affairs:

Remember how I thought planting geraniums next to dahlias sounded like a good idea? Looks like they aren’t getting along so well after all. This is embarrassing. The dahlias are basically sitting on top of the geraniums like you would your sister when you find her sitting in your seat. I forgot how they each grow. Outward vs. up. But the geraniums aren’t giving up. See the tall stem on the upper right?

Still, it’s pretty pathetic and seeing them duke it out in slow-mo is hard to watch. Sorry, geraniums. I’ll do better, like probably not plant geraniums because they grow out kind of ugly, no offense. Maybe I should apologize to the dahlias, the clear winner here.

I am loving August summer this year. August summer means it’s still hot but not at 7:00am or 10:00pm. I get to go out in the middle of the day and greet it intentionally, as an equal, and not immediately melt into submission, forced to ooze back indoors. In fact—you guessed it—I wrote a poem about it:

End of August

End of August, when summer hangs 
Frozen in the air before you
And you watch it,
Warm and waiting and wondering
When it will fall.

It begins to ebb 
In the mornings and evenings
Evaporating a little more each day
Until eventually, a midday moment
Is the only sign 
It was ever there
At all.

I used to not know what to do with August because school always started then which killed off summer completely as far as I was concerned. The summer’s end is always tragic and I sometimes wonder if I’d rather it just go instead of gradually dissipating because it hurts. But now I don’t know. I don’t need to rush things. I’m glad to have some life around me yet. Except for the fruit flies, of course.

fin

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