This June I have become a mad propagator! These are cuttings of hydrangea I managed to acquire last week, and well, along with a bunch of citrus too…

I am keen to try at making a lemon espalier border in the garden,  from um… these cuttings. Who’d think I would be drawn to this sort of thing, or even up for such a task? Not me!  Well, I’ll not count my lemon trees before they root.  It probably will not work. Everything in the garden seems to be thriving now that we have installed drip irrigation (on some of the garden, but not all), and I am very excited to be gardening a lot of my time this summer.

Beneath my soaker-hose hydrated shelter of white sheet sun bonnet, the kale & lettuces are a bunch of partying plants, like a mosh pit of dancing leaves, along with my fragile little seedlings of new lettuces, kale, spinach, to rotate after the big leaves have been eaten or bolt, whichever comes first, as well as a few other things…

Mind you, I’ve never been able to grow lettuce here before, ever. I have now discovered the secret! There’s nothing like a huge salad bowl every night for dinner , of lettuces and these…

tomatoes which I’ve trellised this year (yes, with some handy red cotton yarn I have)…. this photo taken a week ago, shows them just touching the top string at almost 6’…. but now, they are reaching up past it and the tomatoes are beginning to ripen red as the yarn!

I do love my very rustic garden. Jeff and I have built it little by little, from a cleared bit of woods. I am considering potting shed now, as I spend the early mornings contemplating sitting next to the first-year Gravenstein which will one day be ‘under’ , and artichokes, asparagus, and perennial flowers… while the sprinkler showers us all with a pitter patter of rain. I love this time of day like no other.

I’ve also been up to doing some baking.

Working on a signature rustic lemon-mascarpone sponge cake…

(um, but this one was an experimental apricot one…)

because life is just too short to overlook these impulses.  This of course, is along the vein of propagating lemon trees, what is this craving I have for lemons? I will not question, but instead perfect my lemon recipes as I affectionately care for my little citrus plants. Grow…. grow… grow little lemons.

As I close this post of June’s bliss, I want to share with you a fun cake making video of Jamie Oliver’s, while wishing you all a lovely July and it’s a holiday here so Happy Fourth and all of that patriotic cheer!