I think my vegetable garden is being eaten by both groundhogs and deer. Despite all my fence work, I was willing to believe it was just groundhogs until a) my 3x3 bed of bush beans, which I'd fenced off separately so they could grow back from being chomped, were chomped again without any apparent disturbance of the three-foot fence; b) the pole bean plants six feet high were also chomped down to bare stems. I refuse to imagine groundhogs climbing a flimsy structure of plastic poles and string and managing to eat at the same time.

So, no beans this year. Parsley is now all gone too, along with nearly all the sunflower seedlings, the kale and Swiss chard, and a good part of the sweet potato vines. Tomatillos chomped down, though the fruit is forming. Squash plants not touched yet; melon plants only bitten lightly on the outside of the tangle, though I am holding my breath: they're doing too well, making lots of lovely fruit, and I'm sure either squash borers will kill them or the deer will get hungrier. Tomatoes not eaten yet, though I have no hopes for the fruit once it ripens. Peppers okay so far. Asparagus ferns not appetizing for some reason. Cardoons doing beautifully, but since I have no plans to eat them that's small comfort. Lots of onions; potatoes will probably survive although someone did take bites out of the plants.

I'll have to put up a real deer fence over the winter. And even so I may grow beans and chard and so forth up on the deck.

I'm going to be a pig about the demo garden harvest. Hopefully we'll have no major crop failures there, or I will end up feeling cursed and even more incompetent. Why cannot I manage to at least feed my family, instead of the families of neighborhood wildlife? Gardening sucks, and so do I.

Have ordered both fall garlic (from Territorial Seed) and fall-flowering crocuses (from McClure & Zimmerman). Self, do not forget you have done this.

By the way, these all turn out to be the same company:

* Jung Seed
* Totally Tomato
* Vermont Bean
* McClure & Zimmerman
* R.H. Shumway's
* Roots & Rhizomes
* Seymour's Seeds
* HPS Horticultural

As a point of interest. They don't make a thing out of it, but neither do they exactly hide it. I assume they all started out as individual small companies and got bought out.

Part of my ongoing effort to be Queen of Recyclers: tomato plants went into the bed where the pipe hoops for the winter tunnel were still standing. They are now too big for the little stakes I started them with, so I've bound the hoops together into a support structure with old soaker hose that's too holey and kinked to use. It looks wacko, but I think it'll work. I've been using the "plant ladder" things from Gardener's Supply for tomatoes, but they are not really wide enough for full-size tomato plants, and are being used for melons this year.

The soaker hose replacement (i.e. the irrigation system) is mostly in now; I did the "north-side" T-junction section yesterday and just have to put in a few extension bits for peppers in pots, and maybe a piece for the onions, potatoes and one tomato outside the fence, though I'd need more half-inch tubing for that. If I order a timer as well, I don't have to get anyone to water while we're away in August, though that does mean the water running every day even if it rains. But it hardly ever rains in August (except thunderstorms, and I always end up watering before thunderstorms anyway).

Still have to plant some squash and sunflowers. (Same at the demo garden, where we weeded ourselves silly yesterday. But it looks much better!)

Noon and 90 degrees, heat index of 98, which is not typical for June even in this new overheated world we're creating. Where did our nice cool spring go?

Air conditioning has been getting a workout since Thursday; at least we've had power for it, unlike some who had it knocked out in the big storm Wednesday and didn't get it back for days afterwards. I've only been able to spend short work periods outside. Ideally I'd be out at 6 a.m., which only works if I don't have to be everyone else's alarm clock. What with the heat and the rain everything is growing like crazy, including the weeds, but I see major growth on summer vegetables as well, that had been sitting around complaining about the cold up till last week. I've basically lost all the spring crops, either to heat or groundhog - really I should just give up and grow them in the fall.

After the kale and the peas got chomped, I was sure the critter was climbing over the fence, and determined to build it higher, slowed down only by the steambath that the garden had become. Got the stakes and fencing yesterday, and got halfway around before I found the hole under the fence. Just about where I'd stopped reinforcing the underground barrier this winter when the weather got too bad. Oops. Can't finish the job properly now, as it would involve digging up black raspberry plants that are currently producing and would certainly die if their roots were exposed, but I laid rabbit wire down on the surface and up the fence and weighed it down with stones (one of which had been pushed away this morning). I'll also finish the climbing barrier when it cools down a little. Am just praying that the beans survive.

Went by the demo garden with the family this weekend - we will have MAJOR weeding to do this week. At least it's supposed to be only in the 80s. I still have to plant summer squash both here and there. Perhaps I can justify the delay as an attempt to miss squash borer laying cycles.

Nick (now a high school graduate) started on the invasive species removal project this morning, and got a fair amount done before deciding heat prostration was imminent. I'm looking forward to a whole new landscape back there.

Daylilies starting to bloom; lilies very soon. Bonica roses doing splendidly this year, and the teas are relatively free of blackspot, but obviously I will have to spray them as soon as I remember to get out there early enough in the day. Lobelia, cosmos and zinnias grown from seed are blooming; petunias not yet. Gorgeous new coral lilies all done now. Not sure what else is going on since I haven't been out there enough! Feel disconnected.

Am reading another book on science and gardening (written in the UK, so stuff on native species is relevant only in theory, but technically otherwise fine); now up to genetic engineering. Husband helpfully brought home book from library called 1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die which is rather depressing, not as he thought because the gardens were so perfect (I am a realist about hired help), but because I'm halfway through my life and have only seen 16 of them, so what chance do I have? Though I think 101 is a more reasonable goal, considering the worldwide distribution and the obscene cost of travel these days.

I do feel I should update, though I can't possibly list everything I've been doing in the last month, and right now I am sitting on the couch with ice on my hip because it can only take so much weeding. But in compartments:

All my own seedlings are either in the ground (here or at the demo garden) or out on the deck waiting their turn. Nothing under lights (though I will resurrect those in late August and start fall seedlings indoors. I will). As usual I have too many plants, at least in the vegetable department; have just tucked two extra tomatoes and four homeless tomatillos into what space I could find, and I brought home three unwanted hot peppers from the demo garden yesterday, because I am weak and cannot throw out plants. I'll put the habaneros in the front flower bed (with the new acquisitions of butterfly weed and swamp milkweed, the gorgeous coral lilies, and all that other stuff) because they are pretty and I do not eat them. If passing strangers wish to relieve me of them, that's perfectly fine.

I've been to two native plant sales in the last month, and along with the above milkweeds acquired some cardinal flower, a spicebush, a red buckeye, a witch hazel, two pawpaws, a sourwood tree, and a bayberry. I think that's it. Not buying anything else, not with all the stuff I grew and the free plants I occasionally come home with from MG activities.

Am still not done with the neighbors' project, because it has been raining so much, which is good for drought relief but always inconveniently timed for me. This is going to be an issue, not having a sheltered spot to cut and treat wood, but one I can't think about at the moment.

Demo vegetable garden going really well; we have a wonderful group of interns this year who are working hard, and it's really looking like a garden, and there's little to do until we start harvesting, but I'm off the next two weeks anyway (training day followed by family here for Nick's graduation). Then I can get back to friendly bickering with David over use of space. I bet he'll sneak tomato plants in while I'm not looking. And I will counter with clever use of winter squash seeds. Ha ha.

I finally had my landscape BayWise certified, and am trying to help with other people's, but we have all been busy on different schedules.

That's enough for now; I'll try to keep up and say something interesting...

So I brought this plant home from the demo garden yesterday (it was in the way and had obviously seeded itself from a parent nearby). I wasn't, embarrassingly, actually quite sure what it was, except that it was in the mint family, but it was pretty and I knew I could stick it somewhere where its prolific tendencies wouldn't matter. Put it in a plastic bag, stuck it on the deck when I arrived home, let the cat out. Went out again a minute later and he had his head buried in the bag, chewing happily. Identification ho!

Removed the cat and confined him forcibly inside to wander about forlornly meowing I CAN HAZ CATNIP? PLEAZZ? while I quickly relocated the plant to the back forty (well, the back half of the half acre, under the neighbors' huge maple tree) and tucked it nicely into the ground (getting rid of about thirty garlic mustards in the process, a small fraction of what's on that knoll). I let Gobi out again a bit later, but he didn't find the escapee.

So just now I was pulling up more garlic mustard (SCOURGE!!) and I looked over and there he was, head buried and munching. I missed the happy scene of reunification ("MAH DRUGS!!!" "oh no") but I had to stop it from continuing for hours and ending with a dead plant, so I removed him (with a sprig to keep him busy) and gave the plant its much-needed water. It's a substantial and well-branched herb, unlike the grown-from-seed one he killed in five minutes two years ago, but I'm still not sure it'll survive him.

He smells of catnip; I smell of linseed oil (am anointing boards for neighbor's vegetable beds) and am pleasantly exhausted. I CAN HAZ PIZZA? Y/Y/Y/Y!!

I have transplanted 140 seedling plants in the last several days. Whee!

I really should update, because the Master Gardener season is in full swing again, and we had a lovely first workday at the Demo Garden today - lovely weather, with actual sun and heat (I got a little burned, in fact; with all the clouds we've had lately I'd forgotten that was possible), and a whole bunch of lovely new workers. Funny being the Voice of Experience only a year after my own intern days.

Most of the seedling report has to do with trying desperately to keep up with transplanting - got some tomatoes and the Demo Garden marigolds in four-inch pots today - and then figuring out where to put them. Today's transplants are out in the mini greenhouse, because it'll be warm tonight, but next week we're supposed to have nights in the 30s again, and so I guess I'll be carrying flats in and out. And by then I will have lots more plants in larger pots. I also started some seeds - kale and cauliflower and stuff like that, I'm not going to bother looking - that will need transplanting pretty soon because they're only in bits of starting mix tucked into egg-carton cups, instead of the Jiffy-starts I was using before, which have cohesion and breathe. I've also used a bunch of peat pots this year, which are good except when the plant grows too fast, like the marigolds which had roots sticking out the sides of their pots. Their current planting is in layers - Jiffy-starts inside of peat pots inside of plastic pots. Silly, really.

I also have to start a bunch more seeds for DG plants - melons, cucumbers, etc. - but not till next week, because this is getting ridiculous.

Orange Emperor tulips are blooming; hopefully not all the petals will fall off before it gets cold again. Grape hyacinths are out, and various little bulbs that I always have to look the names of up, and the magnolia is in full glory, preparing to clash violently with the Orange Tulips That Will Not Die in the front bed. (I like orange, but not with purply-pink.)

Note to self: must plant some hyacinths somewhere where I don't have to bend all the way over to smell them. The smelling season is beginning, anyway: daffodils, when brought inside; the Pieris japonica perfuming the front yard with honey; the cilantro I transplanted today at the DG. Viburnum and lilac not out yet, but it won't be too long.

Spring is really in full swing here: daffodils well started, maple flowers out (sneeze), Kaufmanniana tulips blooming, and almost clusianas, and the later sort of crocus. Miniature iris have hung on longer than usual, because it's still cold... though now warm enough to plant onions out, if I had the bed finished. Possibly tomorrow, before we leave for SC (where it is real spring, lovely gardens ahoy, and a tea plantation). The boxelder I'm monitoring for Project BudBurst isn't leafing yet, but the buds are swelling; probably it will hit that first event while I'm gone, oh well.

My two plant-light areas are bursting with seedlings, including quite a few I transplanted into pots over the last few days. Yes, including several tomatoes that were growing two to a plug and I just had to save instead of snipping off. I am incorrigible when it comes to saving tomatoes. Well, I can always give them away! Except for the two Giant Tree cultivars that grow to ten feet high. At least I can plant those outside the garden because the groundhogs won't be able to reach the fruit.

I think there will be enough room for everything without adding another light on the top of the stand somehow, but I can do that if I have to. Need to buy another timer though. I did plant some more seeds yesterday, gem marigolds I'd hand-gathered last year, because one sort of the bought seeds didn't do well (most never came up, which might have been lack of light (covered the seeds when I shouldn't have) but then some did sprout but look really tiny and pitiful. The other variety is doing great) - all those are for the demo garden, so I have to have a reasonable number. More seeds to be sown when I get back, but the weather ought to be OK then for moving plants outdoors if they are in the mini-greenhouse or the plastic tunnel. No luck on peas under the tunnel, by the way, at least not yet, and only tiny sprouts of lettuce etc. Perhaps not enough water; soil dries out fast under there with the added heat. I've pulled it off for the interim. A learning experience, you know. (Am quite enjoying reading Sylvia Thompson's The Kitchen Garden in large part because she's the sort of garden writer who admits to her mistakes. I think I'll have to acquire a copy that's not the library's. Also enjoying William Woys Weaver on heirloom vegetables, but his book is out of print and scarily expensive used.)

There are always some seedlings in the bunch that are more enchanting than the rest, and this time it's the roses - which will be miniature when they're mature, but are more so now (two inches high) yet distinctively rose-like; even the proto-thorns are visible. And I'm quite fond of the little sage plants, too, with tiny leaves already full of their characteristic scent.

I'm looking up information about control of harlequin bugs, which are a really destructive pest on brassica crops and sometimes others - they totally ate our broccoli and brussels sprouts in the demo garden last year, and since I'm in charge this year I have to have a Plan - and came across this bit of vague language in a garden forum:

I kill them by hand but it does not deter them.

I know what the poster means, but it brings up disturbing pictures of Zombie Harlequin Bugs roaming the garden by night.