Dog Days

Milo snoozing

Milo snoozing

The equinox passed on June 21st and even though each day gets shorter until late December, it’s high summer now – called “dog days” from ancient times, it’s the period from July through August when the dog star, Sirius, rises in conjunction with the sun. Early this afternoon I heard a red fox’s wild cry and just saw the behind of him trotting into the woods.

Fireflies rise each evening here in the hollow from the moist green meadow, blinking like Christmas lights against the dark tree canopy of the woods, happy in their habitat that is so rapidly despoiled elsewhere. Butterflies and fritillaries sup on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) at the edge of the creek and nesting birds feed their young with countless caterpillars, though I believe Doug Tallamy and his graduate students at U. Delaware counted a particular phoebe’s take one day. See his Bringing Nature Home to get a glimpse of the magic web our plants and insects make.

Orange butterfly weed (A. tuberosa), milky Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed-susan dot the sunnier parts of the meadow.

After several years of diseased tomatoes, this year’s batch is growing well with dark green color, no leaf spots and good fruit set: Big Boy, Lemon Boy, Mr. Stripey and cherry Sweet 100 all look good. I’ve always rotated tomatoes to a new plot each year, so I suspect the difference is purchasing starts from a different garden center. I think the old one had infected stock.

Have been harvesting lower leaves of Malabar spinach (Baseslla rubra – see www.johnnyseeds.com) which I fell in love with last year when I profiled Georganne Arave’s garden in Virginia Gardener Magazine (www.vagardener.com). They climb like morning glories, so you need a trellis of some sort. I’m using an old tomato cage and also have a row at the base of the wire deer fence. There’s something about those deep green, fleshy leaves that just cries “Eat me, I am good for you!”

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