It's A Garden Party - Late Summer Odds & Ends

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

I know the Farmer's Market has been rained out the past few weeks. You know the old adage "when it rains, it pours?" Well . . .

This, however is a place I strive to keep positive, so without further ado:

We have a new 'face' in the garden.

I found him while preparing to weed eat around the Herb bed, and he got a bit miffed at me when I moved him out of the way.

Not as cranky as the Praying Mantis, but close.

I was sick when It was time to tie up the Tomatoes, so as a result the Romas are running all over the bed.

It is more difficult to pick the fruit, but I've never had such an incredible harvest.

My freezer is filling up and I imagine I'll be picking tomatoes up until frost.

Banana leaves make for beautiful artwork.

I don't know if I'll ever get any fruit, but the plants are quite happy with the same reduced amount of water the rest of the garden is getting. If the frost holds off long enough we'll have bananas.

The Crepe Myrtle seems to have such an ethereal air about it.

This year, like last, instead of blooming all at once the blooms seemed to roll across the canopy with large swaths of the tree budding, blooming,  and spent all at once.

That makes for a strange looking tree. The neighbors' trees have all done the same and so far I haven't found a reason why.

Oranges!

I hope, any way.

The neighbors have stopped watering their lawn, which means they are also no longer watering my Orange tree.

Now I can control the water - which means can't blame anyone else if I lose the oranges this year.

A Girl’s Garden
- Robert Frost
                         from: Mountain Interval

A neighbor of mine in the village
    Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
    A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
    To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
    And he said, “Why not?”

In casting about for a corner
    He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
    And he said, “Just it.”

And he said, “That ought to make you
    An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
    On your slim-jim arm.”

It was not enough of a garden,
    Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
    But she don’t mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
    Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
    Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.
    And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
    Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
    Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
    And even fruit trees

And yes, she has long mistrusted
    That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
    Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
    When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
    A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
    How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
    She says, “I know!

It’s as when I was a farmer——”
    Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
    To the same person twice.