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Beautiful June

June in my garden means all of my roses are either blooming or are just about to bloom.  While I was working on the novel the other day my mom surprised me with this vase full of gorgeous “Cottage Rose” roses, a David Austin variety.  I don’t know how this rose behaves in anyone else’s garden but in mine it is towering and reaching and wants to be a climber.  The roses are prolific and gorgeous.  The scent is light but definite.  Roses in my garden either have to have a scent or they have to perform some other purpose (rose hips, for example).

Here’s “Cottage Rose” in its natural environment, the jungle of my yard.

This is my bean bed which is coming along nicely.  I need to buy another bean packet to fill in some holes where beans didn’t pop up or where they were eaten to the ground.  I planted all I had in this bed.

I’ve grown bush beans and they’re good but my favorite is always the pole bean.  I am growing Scarlet podded, Helda, and Lazy Housewife.

I have some wild purple lupines from a wild seed packet but this one my mom bought at the nursery and I can see it from my eyrie of an office.  I’ve been enjoying the almost coral color mixed with the orange calendula and California poppies it shares a bed with.

I have been wanting to grow red currants forever.  I have made several failed attempts.  For the first time I’m getting berries and they’re so pretty!  Gooseberries are another ambition I have and now I’m encouraged to try for them next year.

This week we finally heard from the bank about our house.  Through a gross miscommunication we have been applying for the HAMP loan for a year and the bank was ignoring us because our bankruptcy file never officially closed.  You can read about it on my other blog if you like “If My Bank Was My Boyfriend”.   The upshot is that they aren’t ignoring us anymore and we should find out whether or not we get to keep our home within the next month.  Now I’m looking around feeling both dread and excitement at the same time.  I find myself saying (constantly) “If we get to keep the house we’ll replace those dying diseased peach trees with more “Frost” peaches…” or “If we get to keep the house I’m going to plant a gooseberry…” or “If we get to keep the house we’ll get a tub we can actually soak in…”

The reality is that if we get to keep our house we’ll be so broke we’ll just have to sit tight and buckle down with budgets and make do with what we have and there will be no real improvements for the foreseeable future.  I can live with that.  For the chance to see my sour cherry tree mature and put out a full crop?  For the chance to harvest our first Spitzenberg apple?  Worth the poverty.  Not having to move, not having to leave this house we love, not having to uproot ourselves to God knows where and in what hovel… completely worth being broke as dirt.  All my fingers and toes are crossed.  We think the numbers are in our favor and the bank says the only thing they care about is the numbers.

Whatever the outcome, I’m enjoying my roses and seeing my fruits and vegetables growing and maturing.  June is a lovely month in Oregon.