Back when it was green

I particularly like the photo of the strawberry blossoms! Don't worry about the patchy clover… it'll fill in all on its own soon enough. My grandparents planted both red clover and white clover in their yard and it quickly filled every available square inch of dirt. (It also greatly improves the quality of the soil. As a legume it hosts nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its roots. Everything else you plant will love it. Plus it tends to outcompete most weeds.)

I love how immersive your garden photography is - I feel like I'm right there, wandering around at my leisure, reveling in all the colors and shapes and how the light just seems to bathe them. I'm never going to avoid giving that amazing gift to myself!! ❤️💚💛💙🤩

Oh my goodness EVERY. SINGLE. POST. I love love love seeing not only your garden, but how YOU see your garden. Also, I am absolutely living vicariously through you. I also live in a Surface of the Sun type area and maybe one day I’ll get some tomatoes up and going and see if I could hack it, but seeing your beautiful thriving green wonderland?? Glorious.

I love your garden posts. They make me smile at the beautiful green-ness of it all! Here in Tennessee, the heat waves broiled most of my garden back in July. I still have some flowers but all my edibles are basically burnt to a crisp.

I really love ALL your garden photos. Used to enjoy gardening, but disabled and housebound now. So thanks for letting me live vicariously through you.🫛🍐🫜🥰

Yeah, I'm another that looked at every one - because I can't do that. I live vicariously through the gardens of others. Where I live the sun is the Angry Day Ball. It will scorch to death all but the hardiest plants and I have reverse seasonal issues (so I'm looking forward to Fall) anyway so I couldn't give them a fighting chance. Then it gets cold enough to freeze (dangerously at times) in winter. So yay for your garden! I've envied (in a friendly way) your plants. I'm glad you get to have them for their time. They'll be back to party next year!

Hi, Tig! I actually skimmed the text and looked at all the photos, because we also have a feral yard that's going to fall. The green is the only thing I like about summer, though, so I'm not as sad to see it go as you are.

I too love your garden posts, and take my time with every single photo. ❤️

I feel you! Summer — and my garden — are two great joys in my life, too. Your sequence is kind of like Thich Nhat Hanh’s “hugging meditation” on impermanence. He speaks about it differently at different times, and in one version, it goes like this: Breathing in, I hold my loved one in my arms. Breathing out, they are gone, they have already died. Breathing in, I am happy they are in my arms. Breathing out, I have already died. He might advise us to recognize the grief or guilt and let it pass. He has a teacup meditation that is similar. Even though I practice these mediations, with everything feeling riotous right now (we have dozens of butterflies at all times; it’s a frenzy) it’s hard for me to imagine enjoying the stillness of winter.

I looked at all the pictures.And I found Tig in my first glance. I'll have to go and bet in something 😂 And I have two words for you: fall crops. There are flowers and some crops that bloom and are harvested in Autumn. There are some that bloom in winter too, some heathers do. They're in my to buy list for 2 years now, I believe. Well, depending on how harsh is the winter there... Kale and spinach can grow through winter.

I always liked so called "weeds" myself, they have such pretty flowers and shapes and colors. they're only really called weeds cause people don't like them and think they're useless...but everything has a use. I feel like a weed most of the time.

I love all the garden photos. Some of them are really excellent photographs! And I miss having a garden. (I've been in an apartment the last six years. I really need to get around to buying a house, as the apartment was only supposed to be a temporary pandemic thing.)

I look at all the photos! I too have a Garden album - in fact, it’s so full I had to divvy it up by year because iPhoto decided it was going to stop adding photos to it (I couldn’t find out whether or not there is actually a limit; it just stopped working at a seemingly random number.) Documenting and sharing the garden is, for me, one of the pleasures of it. I also have some feral raspberries underneath our deck. I’ve made some halfhearted attempts to prune them (mostly because I don’t want too much growing under the deck; fire risk) but I have yet to take the plunge on moving some of the canes out into the yard. The lack of direct light under there probably keeps them reined in somewhat (they poke their branches out through the bottom trellis) and I sort of want to have a plan for where to put them…I guess? I have heard the “horror” stories about rampaging raspberries and it sounds delightful but I do need some space in the rest of my yard for the other plants, in theory… Also I grew a rhubarb from seed this year and I’m hoping it survives to get as stately as Rhu!

I love garden photos!

The bee on the raspberry blossoms is my favorite 💚 How wonderful to catch it just as it was coming in for a landing! I forget where it was, but somewhere recently I was reading a passage talking about using the awareness of the impermanence of things as a means to heighten current enjoyment - like, you know it won't last forever, so it gives you a greater joy knowing you're able to share it right now. Basically your cycle above, but without the feeling guilty for looking ahead part. I'm... not sure I buy it, honestly, but it is an interesting perspective to consider.

I always read and enjoy your gardens posts! Partly because they arr beautiful and partly because they make me feel better about my giant half feral milkweed patch that this year (after 3 years) attracted monarchs! Totally worth letting it grow so wild you have to to sidle past it!

I can genuinely say I looked longingly at every single picture. Your garden is goals for me and I am slowly but surely getting there. I never skim these posts, they're so lovely. And woah Tig!

> Nobody is actually going to look at each individual picture, they're gunna just start skimming after the first few. Haha. Joke's on you: my mail app filters pictures automatically unless I tell it not to. So I read all the text, then clicked through so I could properly see the pictures on their home site. I love posts like this. Enjoying the time to walk through your joy is just as much joy for me. Geeking out is my love language, and so I never pass up a chance to immerse myself in someone else geeking out. :) And this is exactly that, and I mean that in a genuinely positive way. You've put so much thought into your garden and the joy it brings you by looking just the way it does. I think it's fantastic. And the fact you've transplanted so many things that most people wouldn't *want* in their gardens makes it even more joyful for me, since it's so deliberate that it looks that way. As for rhubarb, I admit I've never cooked it up in anything. Usually I just grab a stem and eat it dipped in sugar like a crunchy little sweet-and-sour treat. Not that rhubarb cooked isn't delicious, of course.

Nice garden! I tell myself that mine will look better NEXT YEAR, I am thinking it out. I suggest that it is a marathon and not a sprint!