“Happy Summer!” flashes the sign in East Fairhaven.
Yes, that pretty well sums up how I feel these days.
We’re in the thick of it now. Mid-July. Mid-school vacation. Summer has hit its stride, and I feel as though I have too. There is absolutely nothing better. Well…except that I keep looking at my tomatoes and wondering why they aren’t a little farther along. The peppers seem to agree with the calendar, but the tomatoes? They’re taking their sweet time.
Of course, this has hardly been a typical gardening year. Remember the snow? The cold? The late spring? Our peas went in later than usual, and everything else seemed to follow suit. But now those peas have been picked, and suddenly I have something I wasn’t expecting: an empty raised bed, safely fenced away from the rabbits and woodchucks. The bed at the far end of our yard is already pretty well planted with tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and even a few reemerging potatoes, but it’s unfenced, and I’ve noticed more than a few nibble marks out there. This newly empty bed suddenly feels like prime real estate.
Most gardeners would probably look at the calendar and say, “Well, that’s that.”
Not me.
Instead, I decided this empty bed was an invitation.
So off I went to a local nursery, convinced I’d find more tomatoes and just about anything edible I could tuck into that newly vacant space. By now you know exactly what I found; not much. Mid-July is a wonderful time to admire gardens, but not necessarily to shop for vegetables.
Still, I didn’t come home empty-handed. Into the wagon went several unusual basils, parsley, lemongrass, marjoram, one jalapeño already sporting peppers, a bell pepper equally productive, and a couple of strawberry plants that seemed determined to prove they hadn’t missed the season at all.
This is hardly a new pattern for me.
Every year I tell everyone else to get started early. Every year I somehow convince myself that come July there will still be everything I could possibly want waiting patiently at the nursery.
Years ago, I loved wandering through Howland’s Greenhouse—now, sadly, just a memory. While everyone else admired the beautiful displays, I was usually poking around the far corners where the slightly frazzled plants had been overlooked. I fancied myself their rescuer, certain I could nurse them back to greatness. Jane Howland would laugh; not at me, but with me, as I stood in the intense July heat of the hothouse debating whether one more bedraggled plant deserved a ride home.
Perhaps that’s why I never quite believe a gardening season is over. I don’t really stop planting. I just keep reinventing.
Every season has its opportunities. Right now, I have room for another sowing of beans, perhaps a few cucumbers, herbs wherever they’ll fit, and maybe even Scarlet Runner beans to scramble up the beautiful green wire trellises I bought the other day. Their soft green reminds me of Monet’s garden at Giverny, and I’ve been looking for just the right excuse to put them in.
And then there’s the blueberry bush and the asparagus crowns I bought last year that are still patiently waiting in their plastic pots. Apparently, they have more faith in me than I deserve.
I know I wrote a few weeks ago that by now your gardens are probably pretty well set.
Mine may be “set,” but that doesn’t mean it’s finished.
Gardens are living places. They change with the seasons, with the weather, and sometimes simply because we have a new idea. An empty bed isn’t the end of something; it’s the beginning of the next chapter.
So, my plan is simple enough. Fill that empty space. Add a few more edible treasures. Put those trellises to work. See what surprises late summer still has to offer. There is hope, if not a perfectly organized plan. And for a gardener, that’s usually enough.
Perhaps that’s why gardening keeps us young. Every empty space whispers, “You still have time.”
“Summertime and the livin’ is easy.” – from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
The Seaside Gardener
By Laura McLean