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 May / June 2007 |
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May / June 2007 |
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 Editor’s Gleanings Gardening with Kids Notes from the Brazos Beck on Nature (greyed articles available in printed version - subscribe now!)
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Gleanings This year my garden has been a testament to the power of rain. Oh I plant well-adapted and native varieties, compost, mulch, feel with organic fertilizers and usually my yard looks pretty good. But the past few years have been hard — almost no rain and the only water around is full of chlorine and who knows what else. So all of a sudden we have rain! Lots of rain! And what happens? I’ve got flowers blooming like crazy. My roses have never looked so good, been so generous in the number of blooms and seemed generally really happy. Even the Easter sleet didn’t slow them down. My year-before-last calendula popped up again and started blooming as if it were a completely new plant. My verbena are the lunch box of every butterfly in the neighborhood. Iris that haven’t bloomed for years are in full show-off mode with brilliant colors and lots of buds. I have a pot of iris I brought from my mother’s house when we sold it about 10 years ago. That was the last year I saw it bloom — until this year. And now there it is in all its glory, deep purple, full of nostalgia. Even my culinary sage thinks it’s some sort of fancy flowering plant. I’ve been using the flowers in arrangements with the roses and they look great. Now I realize that I can’t make this rain happen again next spring, that as much as we’d like we can’t control the weather, but we sure can enjoy it! I hope your garden is as happy as mine is and I hope the rain lasts a little bit longer. My tomatoes like it too!
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