Posted by meghan on June 18, 2013 at 22:25

Today I went to the hardware store and, on the clearance rack, discovered an astonishingly robust acorn squash plant for 99c. Obviously I brought it home and popped it into the garden. I'm excited, as squash and eggplant were the two things that I'd really wanted to do and hadn't been able to find seedlings for. (I'm still looking for eggplant, hoping against hope that someone has a decent looking plant this late in the season. Maybe I should give up? But…eggplant!)

I've spent most of the last two weeks being quite ill, and am relieved that the garden doesn't seem to have suffered for my absence. There's been a lot of rain, and, to my surprise, my tomatoes are starting to set. Several of the plants have flowers or buds, and two of them have tiny green tomatoes already! I'm pretty sure that this is officially my most successful garden ever, just with that. Embarrassing but true.

In less happy news, my coriander, which wasn't looking so great to begin with, has died tragically. I'm hoping that I can find some thyme or rosemary to put in its pot. I still have both basil plants, one standard and one bush, though the bush one is starting to flower a bit and the standard is looking rather droopy. Possibly I'm just not great with herbs.

I also discovered that the "flower" that I'd found so pretty is actually trailing nightshade, so I've started ripping that out. I'd planned to leave it, because it was quite attractive when it was flowering, but I'm not comfortable having something toxic growing right next to my food garden–and right where my dogs like to whuffle about in the dirt. I pulled out a big patch of it today, and will tackle some more tomorrow. Guess this means that I've got space for autumn crops, at least!