First Beach Rose of 2018

A quick note to report that the gardens are in full swing. Today is May 30. Everything has been planted, from Italian sunflowers to dark purple Italian beans, Black Russian tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, dark purple peppers, hot peppers, and all the rest. The greens gardens exploded about a week ago, and we’ve been giving away bags of young kale, arugula, dill, and young lettuces. Food is already abundant.

In the flower gardens, the big news is the beach rose we brought back from Maine – it has become a monster! It’s also sent off several suckers, and we have new, young beach rose plants all around. I knew beach rose was a naturalizer, but I had no idea how robust a spreader it is. The garden bed where it lives will, in a few years, likely be nothing but beach roses, which is fine with me. Everything else can be relocated. I’ll take a gigantic hedge of beach roses at the front of our house. I’m more than fine with that.

Here’s a photo of the first beach rose to bloom this season at our home. Looking at this makes me happy. We learn as we go: if I’d known that the beach rose is such a strong and fertile plant, I would have dedicated tons of room to it. It’s one of my all-time favorite summer flowers.

My husband and I have been spending our free time on our boat. Over the Memorial Day weekend, we docked at Breakwater in Stonington for lunch and had amazing Blue Hawaiians, boated to Mystic to cruise the marina and chat with the boaters there, and boated to Block Island and another favorite lunch spot, Dead Eye Dick’s. We both got sunburned. He caught and released a few fish. It was a perfect start to summer.

Thank God winter is over.

Barbie xo