August Garden

I started this post in late August and then just never got around to finishing it. Partially because, even 3 weeks later, I'm still in denial that August is over. Clearly September will be the month that never happened since it's almost October already. This year it felt like August settled in slowly, so slowly it never really ended for me. The weather hasn't helped either - the crisp cool days of September have just started, abnormally late (or perhaps the new normal, thanks to climate change) and most days have this air of fading summer. It's too hot, too humid, too wet... yet the light is wrong (as it's the equinox tomorrow). 

It's hard to enjoy the outdoors thanks to a barrage of mosquitos that flourished from a foot of water in 1.5 weeks thanks to Hurricanes Henri and Ida, going outside means coming back in covered in itchy bites. All this heat and moisture have been especially hard on the plants. Weak stalks, blight everywhere, everything is flopping and falling and fading instead of flourishing. 

So here's a quick recap of the garden in August, told in a few important details instead of the usual overall summary. 

Vines and Things
It was the end of the line for the pumpkin vines in early August. The squash vine borers decimated the vines and were moving onto the mini pumpkins themselves, which was unacceptable. So the boys and I picked all 11 of the little pumpkins and I pulled up the vine. 

They are still going strong a month later (mini pumpkins are the best) and are now on display in our kitchen.

Herbs and Things

Some things like the rosemary, lemon verbena, thyme and oregano are going strong. The calendula is blooming, but nothing like last year. The fig tree is still alive. The lemon verbena has blight. The sage died, much to my dismay. 

The sunflowers hit their peak - look at that big yellow one! 

I also finally got a sort of purple sunflower! It's purple and cream, but it's still purple! 

Mixed Flowers:

The zinnias reached ridiculous heights in August. The snapdragons, cosmos and globe amaranth are producing tons of  blooms too - I can't keep up with all of the blossoms, making for some very happy pollinators that frequent the garden this time of year. 

Tomatoes:

The tomatoes did wither from blight at an alarming pace on it set in, but it was also a bumper crop year for tomatoes. Unfortunately instead of coming in slowly in manageable waves, they all started to come in at once so we had a few weeks with WAY more tomatoes than any family could eat. 

This is my largest colander. It's really big. And it's full of cherry tomatoes from one day. I think I filled this thing 4x over in a couple of weeks, it was crazy. And the cherry tomatoes kept coming. 

That doesn't even count all the BIG tomatoes that came in. I've never had so many plum tomatoes. We have had more opportunities to make sauce this year than so many other years - the volume of tomatoes was just astounding. 

Dahlias:

These has been an amazing year for dahlias too. This year I think I found the ideal number of dahlias for this bed (8) so that everything has room to grow and also the right way to stake them - a mix of a cage and then a 6 ft fiberglass stake to make sure nothing tips. 

The bouquets have been unreal. August is definitely dahlia season.