It Is Indeed Still Summer

First Sunflower at the garden

Apparently, summer is over and I'm slow to catch on. There's talk of fall/winter garden planning, which I've been ignoring, and then there's Pinterest. I logged on yesterday and discovered Halloween DIY posts and then scrolled down to find Christmas ideas. Christmas.

I can remember seeing a lot of Facebook and blog posts last winter counting down to the first day of spring, pretending winter was over. So here I am in the middle of summer trying to deal with powdery mildew on my squash and tomato plants bearing their first green tomatoes. Isn't this what we were all dreaming of last winter? Maybe not the powdery mildew, but you get my point.

While I know I should be planning my fall/winter garden, I'm just not ready. I'm busy looking for organic sprays that kill flea beetles and organic fungicides for the powdery mildew. The beetles were a problem last year, the mildew is new this year. The organic soap I found last year wasn't available so I found something new despite the store employee telling me they didn't carry it.

My gardening experience this summer has been different from last year. I spent a lot more time at the community garden last summer, maybe watering too much. This year I water twice a week and rarely see or talk to any other gardeners there. There are 88 plots and some days there are two or three of us there, sometimes it's just me (not that I mind that).

I've come full circle in my thinking on veggies. Last year I was set to grow container plants at home when I saw the community garden plots were available. After (almost) two years I feel like I could be just as successful growing veggies on our deck. Obviously, the bigger plants like corn, squash, or big pumpkins would not work there. But, container planting on the deck is the direction I think I'm heading back to. 

This year I had half-formed plans for the deck. When I started planning the community garden plot the deck ideas went to the back burner. I started out with cool weather plants like peas, lettuce, radishes. But, I didn't plan what I would replace them with. Now those containers have a few annuals I couldn't resist to fill in the holes, but I'm not growing edibles and that was my intention.

Tonight we went to the garden to spray the beetles and the mildew. When we got there we discovered the first sunflower had bloomed. I started these by seed, but after transplanting they fell flat to the ground. I figured they were done, Chris thought they'd make it (that's us in a nutshell). So we were both excited to see it. We also got daring and picked two ears of corn since the silk was dry. They were not quite ready but they are on tomorrows dinner menu.

To all of you pinners thinking of the holidays, this is our corn.
We will enjoy it with the rest of our summer.