Grand Clifton Garden

The carrot and beet seeds that Wilder and I planted in April are finally getting big. These are the first fruits of this year's garden.

One kind of sunflower (I think the Mexican variety.) is starting to look seriously droopy. If we don't get some rain tonight I'll have to lug buckets of water out to the fence. I need to get a hose badly. There's some kind of repetitive appeal to going back and forth to the bathroom filling up watering can and bucket and then taking them out to the veggies once a week, but slaking to the thirst of a couple dozen sunflowers is going to take too many trips.

Our sunflowers are growing large. The biggest ones are about 4' high now. I haven't been watering them but they don't really show signs of feeling parched. If we don't get rain for a while I'll have to figure out a way to get water to them.

My first batch of compost in the fancy barrel composter has not been a roaring success. I don't think I had enough kitchen scraps to mix in at the beginning, I used leaves (which are slow to break down), and I didn't use a compost catalyst. So after a couple of months in the barrel it was still only half broken down. Then I decided to use the partial batch as mulch. It is now a two to three inch layer of stinky mulch nestled amongst the chilis. I hope this works out well, now I can start fresh with a new batch of compost.

Weed pogrom in full effect yesterday. Finally found the bill hook which I had hidden in a child-proof location in the basement. Suitably armed it was a great pleasure to whack down scores of massive weeds. Now we can see the sunflowers from our windows.