Why Garden?

I am often asked, especially by baffled teenagers, why I spend my summer hours digging and weeding and working in the sunshine. So here's my gardening apologia....

Gardening is good exercise and good for your heart. Even the American Heart Association lists gardening as a healthy form of exercise and recommends at least 20 minutes three times a week. All that bending and stretching and twisting keeps you young and flexible. The sunshine on your shoulders is also necessary for your body to produce Vitamin D -- essential for calcium absorption and bone growth. Who knew?

Gardening is good for your soul. The prolonged periods of solitude guaranteed by gardening provide perfect opportunities for philosphizing and self-examination. I know my teenagers rarely interrupt me when I weeding the tomatoes or deadheading the pinks, something about being put to work, I think.

Gardening is good for the environment. All those plants busily transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. All those weeds and clippings can also be used to build a compost pile, saving space in the local landfill for something else. The resulting compost also returns nutrients to the soil when I dig it in around my plants.

But the real reason I garden? Jude the Obscure:


Phil gave me this rose bush two years ago for Mother's Day. Since then it's flowers have perfumed my garden, my house and even my school. All that and it's beautiful too.

More later,
b

Remember Me?

So it's been about 2 weeks, but I have a very good excuse. I was on vacation. In Canada. At Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary celebration. I had all kinds of good plans -- I was going to take a photo tour of Mom's garden and post it here -- I was going to take family pictures and post them here -- I was going to write a blog or two at midnight when the sun was still shining in the very far north. Funny how none of that happened.

Instead I have two pictures of my favorite wildflower ever:

See how lovely it is? And it grows enthusiastically from Edmonton north. I've seen it in Colorado too. Maybe it's the elevation, not the latitude. Who knows. But here in parting, with a promise that I'll get back to this blogging thing regularly, is number 2:

Isn't that lovely?

More later,

b

Meet My New Friend

Since my last post the weather has changed dramatically. Hurrah. We've been enjoying classical July 4th weather -- 90 degrees and sunny. My favorite weather. Of course once the sun comes out, things start to change in my garden.

And the biggest change I've seen yet is my dinner-plate dahlia. The little dahlias have been blooming enthusiastically for the last week or so. (I'd post pictures here, but a sudden summer storm chased us all inside before I could finish my garden tour.) But I did get a picture of my new best friend:

I know this isn't any kind of record-breaking dahlia, but I'm impressed with my first attempt. Daniel suggested taking a picture of the flower with a quarter so we could see how big it really is. See:

Since the lightning seems to be getting MUCH closer, I'll stop now.

More later,
b