Except for one week, we have been at home on the Island since May 19. This has enabled us to grow lots of vegetables and flowers this year. We have eaten tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, cucumbers, onions, carrots and other things. No corn because we don’t have enough room for that. Even more than the vegetables, our eyes have enjoyed the flowers.
Every year we learn more about what likes to grow here and what does not. Last summer we had a kind of hybrid cosmos that outgrew itself. This year it reseeded itself but returned to one of the parents of the hybrid. So, we got this beautiful new yellow and brown flower that reproduces itself intermixed with the yellow and red gillardia that really likes to grow all over the island.
In back of the house all kinds of zinnias intermix. We gradually get a mixture of new plantings and some surprise reseeding from earlier plantings.
The best surprise of the year has been caladium. We had one bed that is constantly shaded and stays a bit damp even without being watered. We filled it with caladium this year and it loved the place. We will save these “bulbs” and use thrm even more next summer.
Both Trish and I equally love playing in the dirt!
