There is a lot going on in the garden in July this year. It’s rained much more than usual, so it isn’t the “hanging on for dear life with supplemental watering that never can be quite enough” that we generally deal with down here.

The new garden along the fence line (“Fenceline Garden?” Are we doomed to just forever call these things the first thing we ever call them? My guess is yes) is doing great.

A couple of packs of Zinnia seeds from Lowe’s is turning out to be the best two dollars we ever spent. Pretty sure it’s the Dreamland Mix, but not 100% there.

So all the gourds we put in are doing well… which is awesome and I love the look of the vines… but I must admit I was expecting to lose at least some to borers. So now I need to string fishing line over the entire fence and hope it is going to be enough. I’m letting that one continue to climb the tree though, because (famous last words…) I want to see what happens.

Weirdly the 3 types of gourds: miniature, crookneck, and the canteen gourds are already proving interesting.

While all three have really similar leaves, they each have vastly different flowers. There is one with normal yellow squash flowers, one with normal sized squash flowers but they’re white in color, and one that his tiny star shaped yellow flowers about the size of silver dollar. Those last ones remind me of watermelon flowers.

The one thing I really notice is the smell of the plants. While I love the smell of tomatoes,  I HATE the smell of the gourd vines. It reminds me so much of my chore as a kid: to crawl around on the patio cover and harvest the loofahs that my parent’s were growing. It was prickly, hot, and there were always a ton of red wasps… but the smell! I had to crawl through the vines to harvest the loofahs, so it was all encompassing. I told my brother about my reaction to the smell and his reply was that he had no strong feelings about it one way or the other. Hi. Yeah. They never made you do that job?

Don’t let that make you think I don’t like the gourds, they are in fact one of my favorite looking things in the garden right now. But I am dreading the day we have to rip all the vines down and the smell…

The triangle bed is looking different these days.

I’ve pulled all the rest of the pink horsemint out of the triangle bed and the mint is flushing back out from being cut back. It needs some more weeding (what doesn’t) but is looking good, if slightly dull at the moment.

So the two cherry tomatoes are doing great and harvest has been good and regular. I do miss having a Sungold cherry though.

And the three determinate tomatoes are all doing nicely, but most especially the one in the picture above. Thanks (I mention this every time) to the toddler who took tags out of the 4″ pots before planting, I have no idea what variety that is. This, small of an issue as it seems, has taken a TON of the tomato season fun out of it for me. Turns out a rose by any other name… is just a constant damn annoyance because I grumble about it every time I’m out there.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled out the remainder of the dried larkspur plants in the driveway bed. We let them go to seed and harvested close to a half pound of seeds. I scattered a lot around the driveway bed and backyard- so hopefully it will be larkspurs EVERYWHERE next year.

I do have a bit of a conundrum on the pink snapdragons we grew out front though.

They were pretty while they lasted… but they wrap up at an awkward time for Texas replanting. This means I’m either going to have to leave that spot empty (It’s near the front of the bed though…) or figure out something to go in that is going to need a TON of attention to limp it through being planted in the heat of July and that still will never really look great. (I’ve played that game before. I know how it ends.) I need reminding of this next time I think about planting snapdragons.

The eggplants are doing AWESOME (no pictures. Leaves are beetle ridden, but they’re setting regularly.) Thing is… kinda don’t like eggplant? The grilled eggplant we tried was… not anything I’d pay for, write home about, or anything else. Baba Ganoush is disgusting or not meant to be made with skinny Ichiban eggplant or both. And so Indian style eggplants are next up for the recipe attempts… we’ll see how that turns out. I don’t have real high hopes, but we’ll see what lemonade we can make outta these suckers.

And the gladiolus from one bag of corms took up a one foot by three foot section at the back of a bed, have nice strappy looking leaves- and the harvest of flowers has been AWESOME. I will definitely be planting more of these next year, for SURE.