Port Potager

The little garden I planted outside of my tiny office is filling nicely. For example, the small nicotiana I transplanted has blossomed: I like the handling flowers, and it smells nice, too. The container planting has also filled in over the past month or so: Since this container gets a fair amount of shade, the pansies are still going strong. The whole thing has filled in with all the rains we’ve had: This garden connects to a tiny strip of land bordering the garage. I filled that in with daylilies that I moved from the perennial border a couple weeks ago. These are a very vibrant red, but that color no longer works with the white-orange-blue color scheme that I’ve switched to : So now these are hanging out in the back, and once we paint the garage yellow like the office, they should really pop: The daylilies should also look a little fuller in seasons to come. These are divisions that I transplanted fairly late into the season, so they’re a li...

The weather has turned, bringing us a quick shot of some much-needed rain along with fall-like temperatures for the foreseeable future. We’re also heading back into the darkness, and that means that we’re starting to make some final harvests around the garden for the season. The tomatoes will be fussy with the blast of cold nighttime air, and I pulled many of our big storage crops (pumpkins, cabbages, black beans) during my last picking session. Still, while some things are coming to an end, it’s already time to think about the spring. Our bulbs came in the mail yesterday: We have three more varieties of garlic: German Red, Spanish Benitee, and Early Italian, and hopefully these will do far better than they did this year — we didn’t have much of a harvest at all, which is why I had to order more to plant instead of using our own extra for seed.   I also ordered some bulbs for the cutting garden, since many are now too old to produce any blooms. According to the g...

It’s hard to get excited about a drought , but if there’s a silver lining, it’s that this was as good a summer as any to work on a pretty intense side project. Since I am now working from home as a full-time writer, Kirk built me a tiny office in the back yard. He started this project back before school ended, and today the interior is finally complete! Here’s my new view of the garden from inside: That window used to be on the back of the garage, but Kirk salvaged it, closed the hole, and added an 8’ x 8’ room to the back of the garage with its own entrance to the garden. Here’s what that garage wall looks like now:  That’s a flip-down table that we installed to be a standing desk , plus a few other office-y fixtures to hold my (very minimal) stuff. Mostly I just use a laptop. Here’s the view from the garden: This office is basically a tiny house with no plumbing. That chair  still needs a side table, which we decided to make out of a big slice of t...