MelsGarden,

My 2023 Garden 🧵

A short thread looking back over the year. This is something I loved doing on the other site, so I'm trying it out here.

Not necessarily my best photos - more like a representative sample of things that stand out in my memory. Happy moments, celebrations, and gardening topics that are important to me personally.

Alt-text has commentary on each - the context & why I chose that particular photo, as well as goals for next year.

It was a busy year & I'm looking forward to 2024! Happy everyone! 💚

A large black kitchen colander holding produce I harvested from my vegetable garden. It includes a handful of green beans, two zucchini, three cucumbers, and a dozen striped cherry tomatoes. This photo is important because it represents the average amount of food I generally harvest from my garden each day. As someone who is struggling financially, I can't emphasize enough how much this is a lifeline for me. Food has gotten so expensive that without my garden, I wouldn't be able to have fresh produce. Vegetable gardening is not just a hobby. It is a very real necessity for me.
Close up of an anole lizard peering at the camera. Its expression just makes me smile - inquisitive, comical, keenly intelligent. I would desperately love to know what it was thinking. The lizard is clinging to a weathered gray fence post a few inches off the ground. There are green leaves with a tiny yellow flower across the bottom of the photo. I chose this photo because my garden is home to so many anole lizards it's almost ridiculous. They're everywhere. Literally everywhere. But it's one of the things I'm most proud of because building a backyard habitat has always been a priority for me. When the wildlife shows up, you know you're doing something right. Plus, they're just flipping adorable lol.
A small yellow sunflower framed against a bright blue sky. Strong sunlight casts shadows across the petals as a tiny bee crawls over the dark center. A volunteer flower that grew itself from scattered birdseed. I let the sunflowers go absolutely wild this year and they rewarded me with giant tree-sized monstrosities covered in hundreds of flowers for most of the year. They created cheerful bright spots all over the garden and were absolute magnets for bees & butterflies. I will never again complain about messy birdfeeders. Have at it my feathered friends. It was worth it lol.

MelsGarden,

My 2023 Garden 2/🧵

A short thread looking back over the year - see 1st post for details! 💚

(commentary in alt-text!)

A Queen butterfly visiting a purple mistflower. It has dark orange wings with black markings, similar to a Monarch, but with solid orange and white spots on the dorsal side. I took thousands of butterfly photos this year, and it's hard to choose a single photo that represents that. So I chose this one because it was one of the first photos I took after I finally got a decent camera - a butterfly species I had never photographed before, and one I'd never been able to definitely identify because it is too similar to a Monarch. But there it was on the camera, a genuine Queen in my garden. The moment I took this photo my whole chest just exploded with happiness and excitement. For me, it was one of the best butterfly photography moments of my life.
A perfectly coiled fiddlehead frond. I've long since forgotten what variety of fern I planted, but this little baby is pale green with tiny, spiky reddish "hairs" all along the stem. I chose this photo because it is magical - like something out of a fairy tale. And I adore magic & wonder in my garden. Somehow my patch of ferns survived the scorching heat dome this summer, but it took a Herculean effort to keep them going. I've accepted the hard reality that the devastating effects of climate change means I'm eventually going to have to let them go. They just aren't adapted to my Texas climate. But for now they're hanging on, and I'm savoring the magic & wonder while I still can.
A white snow pea flower. It's a Star Wars Storm Trooper. I mean come one - the white helmet, the spots on either side that look like eyes. It's either a Storm Trooper or a funky alien species. And it's looking right at me lol. Why did I choose this photo? Because it's an alien in my garden and my nerdy sci-fi loving brain can't stop snickering. One of my fav photos of the year.

MelsGarden,

My 2023 Garden 3/🧵

A short thread looking back over the year - see 1st post for details! 💚

(commentary in alt-text!)

A Widow Skimmer dragonfly perched on a dried seed head. The dragonfly has dark brown patches extending from the body halfway across the wings. The outer half of the wings are clear with a faint brown fingerprint at the very tips. The abdomen is brown and gold. Background is a blur of green and tan. Not sure what the most beautiful species of dragonfly is in my garden, but Widow Skimmers are hard to beat in my eyes. I chose this photo because dragonflies have become a bit of an obsession for me, and Widow Skimmers were the first species I was able to photograph extensively. And they're just so breathtaking. There's no denying this beautiful creature is just pure magic.
A shiny green zucchini nearly ready to pick. I chose this photo for two reasons. First, because my primary focus in gardening is actually to produce food. It's a necessity for me (see previous photo on first post). So this represents purpose and function - things I value in my garden. Second, I chose this photo because it was an accomplishment. I generally don't have trouble growing warm-weather vegetables. But the last few years I've struggled with zucchini. The vine borers have been just relentless. This year I finally got it under control and had a really nice, steady supply of zucchini. So hell yeah. This was a win, lol.
A shiny black Carpenter bee hanging from red salvia flowers. Why this photo? The salvia. I literally live on Planet Salvia. It went to seed once and blew itself EVERYWHERE. There is just no way I can do a thread of my garden and not include salvia. It reigns supreme lol. It's also the single best pollinator plant in my entire garden. It's always covered in bees. It's also one of the few flowers that actually thrived during the scorching heat dome this summer. I genuinely believe that the wild salvia in was a key factor in helping to sustain the pollinator populations in my garden thru the blistering summer. It might be an aggressive weed at this point, but it's one I've come to truly value.

MelsGarden,

My 2023 Garden 4/🧵

A short thread looking back over the year - see 1st post for details! 💚

(commentary in alt-text!)

A cluster of Oakleaf Fleabane flowers. They have dark yellow centers and a perfect circle of thin toothpick-like white petals. And yep, that's a weed lol. Technically I could get fancy and call it a wildflower since it grew itself, but it's really just a weed. They pop up all over the place. Why choose this photo? Because I ADORE flowers like this. Tiny, intricate, exquisite. If you've followed me a while then you probably know I have an irrational love of beautiful plants that spontaneously appear in my garden. Also known as weeds, lol. No thread about my garden would be complete without them.
A cluster of blackberries in various stages of ripeness. Two are dark purple, two are bright red, and several others are still pale green. They're surrounded by dark green toothy leaves. Why this photo? Because they represent an epic battle I lost. Spectacularly. I've dubbed this year "The Mockingbird Wars" lol. I grow a lot of berries - blueberries, blackberries & mulberries mostly - because I like them. Who doesn't, right? I also grow berries specifically for the local bird populations. But what do they want? My stuff. This year included an embarrassing number of incidents involving an angry human in a bathrobe rushing outside to shout obscenities at feathered thieves. In hindsight it's funny. Sort of. Lol.
A Louisiana Iris flower. It has five large, pointed oval purple petals. Three have a distinctive yellow stripe at the center. I chose this photo because it represents a goal for next year. I don't grow many "showy" flowers - mostly because they intimidate me. But I'm hoping to expand my gardening skills next year with what I jokingly call "fancy" flowers. For me, this is a big challenge & well outside my comfort zone. They really are beautiful tho, and although I tend to focus on food, native plants, or plants that directly contribute to my backyard habitat, showy flowers really are just...nice. And everyone deserves nice things, lol.

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