This is the best part of summer in my book. Unfortunately, it seems to me, that it is also the fastest passing part of summer.
I like it because the yards look nice and green and are freshly trimmed — well the good people’s are, the bad people, not so much, the lazy people, not at all. I know where some lazy people live.
Folk’s yard flowers are in bloom, the front porch ferns are green and lush, and the roadside Black-eye Susans and Queen Anne’s Lace are full and happy dancing in the wind.
Fresh vegetables are ripe on the vines and some of the best tasting tomatoes in the world are being stacked between two slices of soft, fresh bread slathered with mayonnaise. I like Dukes, some don’t, that part doesn’t matter eat those maters on whatever makes you happy.
We’ve got tomatoes, jalapenos, a mound of Tai peppers, and another pepper that I don’t remember what it is. I bet it will be some kind of hot!!!
I planted basil from seed this year and it is the most beautiful bed I’ve ever seen. Bright green, fresh smelling, delicious tasting and before Saturday night’s tomato-basil dinner of bruschetta it was almost chest high.
We’ve also got carrots, beets, radishes and I let the fall/spring turnip greens go to seed and boy did they like that. Fresh tender greens are quickly filling up the bed.
Let me make it clear right here, we don’t have a lot of all this stuff because we don’t plant fields or even a great big garden. We do, though, have plenty — or will have plenty and some to freeze for winter as well.
That’s enough.
Now for the bad part.
This will all be gone — at our house anyway — before we know it.
We always get busy this time of year and on top of that we’ve had a lot of rain this June so the grass is quickly trying to get ahead of me. I’m fighting...it is winning.
We’ve got a convention to go to, the Fourth of July holiday next week, a beach vacation we live for, and a 44th wedding anniversary weekend trip we’ll squeeze in too.
The yard will continue growing, those old nasty black seed pod things are already knee high, nut grass is sinking its nuts into the flowerbed and the turnip green patch, and I DO NOT hoe. Every day that goes by that something is not attended to it will thrive on its own demise.
Turn your back for 15 seconds and satan’s tomato hornworms will have ravaged a whole vine. White flies will suck the life out of anything and everything, and even though the black bean and black-eye pea vines are surrounded by, and just about covered with netting, the deer and rabbits have a strong will, and will find a way. Something ate a whole pot of parsley last week, roots and everything. I’m assuming it was the rabbit sitting on the edge of the woods staring at me seeming to say with its eyes, “plant it again fool, plant it again, come on I dare you, plant it again.”
And, I will.
As usually happens, while we are basking on the beach everything we have will be basking in the sun here at home as well. The rain that has me fighting with grass this month will dry up and we will return to equally dried up plants and flowers as well.
We usually have a plan, we move stuff here or there into shaded areas trying something different every year. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. We will, no doubt, lose something from the garden or in a pot before we move it to another here or there place and give it a big long drink from the water hose in hopes that it might raise its dreary brow once more. Some will, some won’t.
By the end of July everything we have will look like it has been neglected for weeks, and the place deserted for months. It happens every year.
It will get hotter, it will get dryer, and the grass and weeds will continue to grow while the ferns and flowers will wither and die.
It’s just not right.
It’s just not fair!
It “is” just summer in Mississippi!
