Nearing the end of summer

I'm guessing I'm not the only one that's thinking how quickly the summer has flown by. Normally I'm super excited about these next few weeks (cooler temps), but this year, the budget work schedule got pushed back a month. We were supposed to be done August 15, but now it's September 12. That wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that Chris has a work trip planned immediately after we head out to Portland/Seattle for a friends' wedding and visiting other friends (which I'm really excited about, but can't believe it has come up so fast!). During the crunch time, we tend to work a lot of overtime. It's usually fine because Chris can usually take care of Banjo. It's going to be extra difficult this year. I'm hoping I can ask one of my neighbors to be on standby to take care of Banjo in the evenings. Everything will work out, but it would have been so nice to be done with the crunch time by the time we headed out to Portland.

The potatoes are nearly ready. The stalks are drying out, which means I'll be able to see if there's a harvest soon. I am thinking I'll dump the garbage can over next weekend (I'll let you know how the experiment went). The cilantro my mom gave me went to seed and dried out. I didn't realize it, but it's an annual. I've collected the seeds and hope I can get some cilantro plants growing again next year. I have more Egyptian Walking Onions started from the small bulbs it shot out. For now, they will continue to be housed in containers, but I hope to plant them in the raised beds we'll make.

My columbine went to seed a long time ago and about a week ago, I started seeing small, green plants growing all around them. I was worried it was clover, but when I looked closer, I saw that it was probably a hundred baby columbines! I'm still surprised at how well those plants do in their current location against the garage. I'll have to expand that bed out to accommodate all the growth!

Two of my other butterfly weed plants are blooming (the first one fell victim to a critter - a few days after they started blooming, something ate the flowers!). I'm excited to see if the plants continue to spread in that bed. I have to add compost this fall to see if I can get the coneflowers and bee balm (if it comes back) to bloom the appropriate colors. I realized something in the soil was missing when the coneflower, which should be purplish-pink, bloomed a faint pink. Hopefully the compost will straighten that out. The butterfly weed is a brilliant orange, so it must like really poor soil.