It's a scorcher

When it hit 90 on the second week of this internship, (April 7), I knew it didn't bode well for tolerable new york city summer weather. Today is the third day into a 90+ degree heat wave and the first time gardeners were sent home due to excessive heat. It's garbage night too, so my walk home from class tonight was pretty foetidus, to put it botanically. Here's a picture of a lotus flower to conjure up cool, sweet smelling thoughts. These plants are pretty outrageous. The spent seedhead looks a lot like a fancy showerhead.

Pumpkin patch

Sometimes I think Joe ought to be doing this horticultural internship instead of me. His garden plot looks pretty amazing this year. He's always building some new contraption to string beans or vines on. And the children's pumpkin patch at FBGA is going pretty well too this year under his care (fingers crossed..you can't count your produce until you harvest it). He'd never grown pumpkins before volunteering to take on this job, but he seems to be a natural pumpkin farmer. I hope all his hard work (and the rest of the crew helping out) pays off and there are lots of pumpkins and gourds for the kids come Halloween.

Quite a show

Susan and I were completely knocked out walking by this section of the Rose garden's north border. It's like textbook garden planning: the various alliums in different stages of bloom and post-bloom, with the coneflowers and echinops, which should also hold interest long after bloom. One of the many perks of this internship is the opportunity to see the techniques you read about in gardening books actualized by a talented gardener. These aren't the best pictures and they were taken in full noon-day sun, and yet you can still see just how fantastic these plants are together.

Joe's beautiful garlic

Harvested a few days ago and left out in the garden to sun dry. No worry of any rain this year. When I saw it last night at the garden, I couldn't get over how beautiful it looked. And it's going to taste so good.

Coming soon

to a dinner plate near me....































and one who may have just narrowly escaped being dinner. This butterfly (and I mean to hit Uli's insect library to ID it) is pretty banged up. Update: American Painted Lady Butterfly