Urban gardening update, August 4th.

(I'm trying something special this year and am keeping a "photo blog," telling my story mostly through images but with a bit of description added as well, concerning my first-ever year of being an urban gardener. Check the "Garden 2014" photoset at my Flickr account for the entire series, including more photos for each entry than you see here.)

August 4: Well, a bit of a sad day last week -- I harvested the last of my salad greens for this growing season, because of this being my first year and not realizing that I should've been staggering out their plantings on a regular basis all through the spring. I'll definitely be changing my plans for next year, though, to make sure to have lettuce and mesclun ready to be harvested every few days all summer long. That leaves me with just a few last sproutings left, but mostly with all my plants now in their fully adult form, as you're seeing in these photos, including my coleus which is now grown to three feet tall and still counting, my moonflower plant which has really taken over my floor lamp at this point (I just wish it'd start actually flowering!), my tropical plants over by the radiator which still continue to grow well, and my old pot of violas that are sadly now starting to die, just like the gardening guides predicted it would once the hot weather hit. And in the meanwhile, Carrie stopped by the other day with new lantana plants for me that she had been planning on throwing out, which you're seeing in photo F; in that same photo, you can see that my sage has nicely grown out enough now to warrant putting all together in one pot for the first time, although sadly not the same can be said about the lavender and chamomile sprouts, which I'm just about to give up on soon. Carrie also pointed out while she was over that the hard purple bulbs on my original moonflower plant from March, that grow afterwards in the location of a flower that had just bloomed and died, actually each hold a pea-sized seed for next year's crop; so I'm collecting those each time they're ready now, and am doing what the guidebooks say and am storing them in a paper envelope in a cool, dark place until next spring. More updates soon, I'm sure!