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Writer's picturekaydee777

Resilience and Succession

Three weeks on from The Storm That Ate Downtown and the front (south facing) sections of the garden are thriving.

Foregrounding the Milagro Chile Pantry, a late planted sunflower blooms next to sugar cane sprouted from a set given to me by the Last Emperor before he left the little island off the coast of Georgia. In the bottom right of the image (above) is one of the three pomegranate bushes which will ultimately form a hedge on this front boundary line. A luffa gourd vine climbs up the pomegranate. The Chile Pantry is loaded with creamy yellow Havasu peppers. I am thinking of harvesting a batch to sun dry because there are so many.

This week I took out the hybrid yellow sweet corn which never really recovered well from the rough treatment of the rain deluge. Without the corn, has a clear view now through to the Datura Wrightii - Madame Moonflower’s night perfuming bloom.

Most of the sunflowers, which were smothering the Milagro chile pantry, have been cut down to let in more air and light, though a few succession sunflowers are beginning to bloom just to keep the song birds happy and well fed.

Tomatoes were dealt a serious late pruning, post The Storm. They might or might not recover.

My first attempt at succession sowing, Arikara Yellow drying beans of a previous post are looking good in the eastern sector where Painted Mountain corn flourished in early summer. They have a backstory of Black Crowder cowpeas in front of the tomatoes, just germinating this week. .

Monsoon rainstorms have provoked the Desert Bird of Paradise Erythrostemon gilliesii into bloom again.

On the west side, in the kitchen window view garden, cowpeas (aka black eyed peas or Southern peas - Vigna unguiculata) are blossoming and forming pods. These are the heirloom Dixie Lee, I believe. According to my research, cowpeas are one of the oldest food crops to be farmed and were first domesticated in Africa.

I am hoping to harvest enough of a variety of dried peas and beans throughout this growing season, to see me through winter. Spiced up with chile, flavored with garlic, dried tomatoes, thyme, marjoram and basil and served with cornbread or polenta from the grinding flint corn already put away.

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