Green(ish) Thumb

I was genuinely shocked when I returned to Dawson last Saturday and saw how green everything was.  When I left the buds were barely out on the trees and while it was summer in my heart, it looked like we had a long time to go before Nature was going to catch up.  But I almost didn't recognize the place when I got back.

It's growing like mad out there.  Lovely poppies like these have started to appear in my yard:

And whatever this is, it's blooming in the garden:

I hadn't thought I would do much with the garden this summer.  While this is the first time that I've actually had my very own outdoors, I don't see myself as much of a gardener and figured that I'd be happy to just let things go (with my landlady keeping the worst of the jungle weed-whacked).  But then last weekend Ben put a big planter with different varieties of mint on the porch, and I figured that if I was going to have to water that, then I might as well add a couple of pots of things I like.

I couldn't find any basil, but did get lavender and oregano.  I also put the rosebush outside because it was getting in the way on the windowsill.  It doesn't look like it plans to bloom again any time soon, but the new foliage has an equally lovely colour.

These few pots sit at the top of a slippery slope.  On Monday my landlady's partner showed up and did all sorts of raking and tidying up outside.  The yard looked so much better, I started to think about clearing out the dead flower stalks from last year and other debris from the flower beds.  Today the weather was so fabulous, and I was revelling in having an actual real weekend, and just... kinda sorta... bought a few seed packets and spent a few hours outside making things prettier.

I'm not sure it shows, but this is an "after" shot.  While it is still rough around the edges, and I didn't do nearly all the weeding I could have, it is a vast improvement.  Besides clearing out last year's dead stuff and some weeding, I planted flat-leaf parsley in the garden, added a planter of chives to the collection by the door, and planted cosmos in a half-barrel at the end of the driveway.

Cosmos must be lovely, if even the seeds look this interesting.  I also have a packet of moonflower seeds soaking in a cup of water (as per the package's directions) and will put them out tomorrow.  I also spread around some mystery seeds.  Some kind of flower that bloomed in the garden last year had all kinds of seeds lurking in its dried out pods, so I planted those.  And I discovered wildlife in the garden, too:

I'm not sure who belongs to this cat, but he was awfully affectionate--if very dirty from rolling around in the dust underneath the bench.

I don't really have high hopes for anything I planted, and fully expect my attention to wander to other projects long before the growing season is over.  I will probably keep watering the porch plants, if only because it is so refreshing.  It was a hot hot day today, and getting my feet all went in the early evening was remarkably refreshing.  And Ben did say something about mint juleps and mojitos when he planted all that mint...