My Weedy Eden or Too Many Potatoes

Gardening is one of my passions.Here I am with some of the roses I brought over from my Dad's garden.  When they finish blooming, I deadhead them (a gruesome term) and dose them with fish emulsion. I imagine the roses shouting "Hallelujah" or maybe even "Not again!" At any rate, they ramp up and produce another glorious month of blooms.

I approach gardening like I do with my painting; I bat around and keep at it until I get it right. For example, one of my shrubs has been transplanted 4 times. The last time I told it to stop whining and drooping or I would rip its heart out. It chose to flourish. (Actually, I overstate. I can't bear to get rid of a sickly plant.)

Right now I am dealing with an embarrassment of potatoes. I am cooking potatoes in everything. Last night I had a major tantrum when my pyrex pan shattered with a load of basil crusted roast potatoes.  Little round darlings nestled in shards of glass. Heartbreaking.

Today I harvested my first successful beets. Last year's beets were frightening. They looked like homunculi and tasted like wood, but this year the beets are delicious and look like normal beets. Phil helped me achieve this gardening feat by sifting the dirt in the raised beds and adding lime.

In this photo I am wearing my summer gardening outfit of my son's discarded scrubs...very comfortable, and passerbys think that I'm a retired doctor instead of a scruffy artist.

I have a hummingbird resident in my garden who critiques my work and scolds me if I get too close to his bee balm or croscosima. Here's a sketch of some of his activities of daily living.