Who will win, me or the laundry? And the garden, early July.

I love this rose. I would never have picked it out myself (I worry about killing anything as fragile as a hybrid rose-- my benign neglect plus the Maine winter is not a good combination for something delicate), but it was already in our garden when we moved here. And despite me just cutting back dead growth, doing some erratic weeding and tossing some compost in its direction periodically-- it has done pretty well.

This has not been a banner week for our clothesline challenge. Wednesday I waited for the thunderstorms that never came. Yesterday I got the laundry started very early... and it got rained on. It dried, but it took all day and now I am behind. Our family just got home from the funeral of a friend from church, and everyone is sad and the sky looks alternately sunny and ominous. The drier is going right now and I am okay with that.

Finishing our CSA share is going well this week. The taco salad we made last night was delicious and the kids ate large handfuls of kale chips. We make them like Smitten Kitchen. It really makes me unreasonably happy to watch them eat a dark leafy green.

The garden is mostly looking good. This week we staked the tomatoes and fertilized the pepper plants. They look a little better but are still small. The green basil is doing well but the purple basil is not. All of the tomatoes have flowers and the yellow cherry tomatoes have set fruit.

None of the pictures I took of the little sunflowers and zinnias came out well, but they are up and thriving. The little cilantro plants are also up, and I need to seed another row of those, since they don't last very long. In a few weeks it will be time to plant seeds for the fall garden-- this will be the first time we've tried that.

The back of the yard does really well with benign neglect.