The Dying Summer Garden

Like many places around the world, the weather here in Reno has grown increasingly unpredictable and severe. Luckily here it hasn't been so severe as to cause much pain and death, but it has been odd. It was a very long Winter and it snowed into April.

The garden, in most years would be bursting with bloom by April, but it was still lying dormant until the final snows melted off. I could feel the vibrating energy of the plants that had stored up so much water over that long winter, champing at the bit and anxious to burst forth, at least for those that survived that is, we lost most of our Rosemary. I think it was just covered in snow for longer than it could tolerate.

And burst forth it did! I've never seen our little wildish garden so lush and full, and it seemed to happen almost over night! But now it's mid September and the garden is slowly fading. The marigolds and sunflowers are almost gone, even the sweet peas are fading. Only the beautiful trumpet vine that invades our yard from over the back fence seems to still be going strong.

I'm not complaining though, we've had a month more of garden than we normally do. In most years, everything would be brown and wilted by August.

I thought I would do a mini-series on the fading garden, as who knows if we'll ever get a growing season like this again?

These were taken with the Cadobo-Lumenbox hybrid camera (a 50mm Lumenbox lens with a cardboard camera body of my own build) because it has the closest focus of any of my lumen cameras and a (to me) really lovely incredibly short depth of field. A variety of papers were used although most were well expired Kodak IV. Exposures ranged from 90 minutes to 2 hours.