Good morning, and yes, we did get a break. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Denver's weather has been bouncing around like mad this week. Last Saturday the official high was 102°; the weather station nearest my house topped out at 104°.
Tuesday, the high was 78°. WTF?
We've bounced through the low 90s for the rest of the week — but another cool front is forecast to roll in tonight, lowering the forecast high for tomorrow to 80°, and an overnight low dipping below 60°.
Mmmmm... does anything feel better than cool summer night? I sleep so much better.
Meanwhile, I've a wide variety of daylilies blooming. This one reminds me of a perfectly ripe cantaloupe...
while this one is the most perfect pale, peachy pink.
I'm in kind of a gardening lull right now — it's too late to do the stuff I didn't get done earlier, but not late enough, or too hot, to do other things. Oh, there are some weeds to pull, and keeping stuff watered, and soon there should be beans and cucumbers and squash and tomatoes to pick, and a small patch of dwarf iris to divide, and a handful of standard iris rhizomes to get into the ground — just small little tasks that can be done ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
I did finish digging and dividing the standard sized iris last week; there were a couple of stands of our "neighborhood generic" variety where the rhizomes were massive — I'd never seen rhizomes of such size. They should bloom next year for soccergrandmom; I'm going to have the Baker Neighborhood Standard Iris blooming across the nation.
Meanwhile, on Thursday afternoon Xcel Energy finally removed the "no parking" signs from our block; unfortunately it took them until last yesterday evening to remove the road closed" sign from the east end of the block, and the sign is still there on the west end. Sometime within the next couple-three weeks will be contacted again by Xcel's subcontractor to have the gas meter moved from our basement to outside. We'd been planning to have it done in any event. I met with the dude from the subcontractor on Monday, and the process shouldn't cause any destruction to our landscaping, as they pull the line from the street and the only place the meter can be placed is on the east side of the house, over the neighboring rental property's concrete pad.
I'd been bumming out that I wasn't going to be able to do a garden blogging garden party this year — between getting Da Boys set for the next school year, uncertainty as to when I'm going to have to organize moving/closing down our office (the lease expires the end of August, but we've gotten a one month extension), concentration on knitting projects, and just general malaise, it just wasn't going to happen this year.
Which is why I was extremely gratified last week when out of the clear blue sky, Brahman Colorado e-mailed me and said he wanted to host the next bash at his reclaimed and absolutely astounding garden.
Beyond the fact that the BC and his partner are two of the sweetest guys I know, I've been dying to see the whole of BC's garden. He tells me that along with his stunning water feature there also is a hot tub and swimming pool — what more can we ask for (well, except for the chocolate fountain... I'm not sure if that will be there yet).
The date is next Saturday, July 31, from 3:00 to 9:00. BC lists the menu as including:
Bar-B-Que pork ribs
Green Chile pork ribs. (pork ribs on sale at Albertsons for .99 pound. We make the green chile)
Fruit salad
Mexican Caviar (avocado, corn, black beans, green onions, cilantro, lime and secret ingredients)
Homemade potato salad
Vegetarian Quiche Lorraines
Rolls (we'll see about homemade)
Johnnie's homemade Ozark Peach cobbler
Frankenoid's homemade Rave Review Coffee Ice Cream
If we can get hold of johne we'll try for the chocolate fountain, too.
For the address and instructions on what you can bring, please email BC at brahman.jr at gmail dot com.
That's what's happening here? What's going on in your gardens?