About the Garden

The weather is finally summery here and our garden is flourishing. A short while back I mentioned we have passion flowers and someone commented they were surprised. I don't know if they're unusual in our area or not--they came with the house. Here's the proof. They're finishing up now, but we have a couple still blooming. Each year I intend to really look at and stitch one of these wild flowers.We're THOSE neighbors. We are really encouraging milkweed because the butterflies love it. I find the plant to be fascinating, from it's multi-blossomed flowers to it's hard pods. The colors are amazing. I keep thinking it would be fun to stitch with milkweed fluff. It's very silky. I remember reading something about it being done, in haute couture in the early 20th Century perhaps. Or maybe it was used as quilt batting. I did a little Google "research" and found that milkweed fluff was used in life vests in WWI and can be spun (with difficulty). There were a couple of business sites promoting the uses of the various parts of the plant.
We have another bumper crop of oregano. It's hard to keep it from taking over. The bees and large black hornets love it. Anything for the bees.
Last, here are our tomato plants. If you look carefully you can see some tiny tomatoes. I counted six, but they're really hard to see in this photo so you'll just have to take my word for it. (They're mostly to the left or right in the center of of the photo).