Pentecost and the Garden

Hurtling toward the end of the school year, and while summer is never my favorite, I think it will be good to have a break.  Pentecost yesterday, and a nice day overall.  

I gave a lecture on Marxism and the Soviets to the 10-12th graders this morning and had a blast throwing apocalyptic millenarianism at them. I just re-read that original post and wished I had referenced it while writing the lecture since it was harder to organize my thoughts several years after reading the original book.  Obviously, I incorporated a lot of other material in my lecture, including several books I read this year, but still.  Hopefully I can do it again (even better) next year!

Strawberries are producing--have gotten quite a few already. The one upside to the construction behind our house is that it seems to be keeping the birds away from the garden, at least for the moment. The raspberry canes are absolutely loaded with immature berries, so we should get quite a crop in a few weeks! Blueberry bush has many green berries too, a vast improvement on last year's four. The dwarf mulberry will probably fruit next year (fingers crossed!)

I'm mostly focused on the berries this year since I don't know how the construction will ultimately affect the light situation on the patio, so I put in only one cucumber plant and a bunch of flowers.  

My hydrangea looks good this year!  It was a little peaky all last summer, but it looks lush and vibrant this year.  

The kids were hoping for another prodigious watermelon vine, but I just don't have room this year with how big the two raspberry bushes are.  

A few weeks ago, I moved the fig tree into the middle of the garden since it wasn't leafing out properly and it seems happier now.  Nothing much else to report about; still knitting away on various things, reading a LOT (I should do a separate post on that soon), trying to think about the rhythms of summer.

Fig is in the big green pot in the center of the picture.