I am proficient at a few things but construction is not one of them. I have zero patience for hammering nails, drilling holes or thinking of how pieces of wood could possibly fit together. But I built an obelisk. I cut pieces of bamboo, drilled holes in them and then used plastic zip ties to hold the thing together.
The obelisk in full glory. (August 20, 2013)
And here it is (in a different spot) when I first built it.
I like to think I am proficient in selecting diction and syntax. Perhaps this is why I built an obelisk. Because saying “obelisk” is really gratifying. Say it out loud. Obelisk.
See?
One of my favorite bloggers is in agreement and wrote,
Obelisk is a nice, solid, meaty word. I’m going to have to make one, just so that, for a blessed week or two, when people ask me how I’m doing, I can square my shoulders and stare back at them with a steely glint in my eye.
“I,” I will say, “am building an obelisk.” (source)
Lemon cucumbers grew up the obelisk and it was quite useful for awhile. And now, the season’s ending and it is falling apart. As (most) of my plants are only alive for a few short months, in such a manner did I too build the obelisk. In order to connect with the fleeting nature of my annuals, I built something transient…ephemeral…that I may share in how my short-lived flora grows and lives and bears fruit and then dies.
Do you buy that? Me either, because it is a load of bull…Hey! This glog has a PG rating.
The thing was shoddily built.
My husband (the Spy Garden Builder of Garden Structures) and I strolled through the garden today. He looked at my sad little obelisk, leaning over on the deer fence, dilapidated and falling apart at the joints and covered in brown, dried and dead cucumber vines and said,
“It’s time to take down this mollusk.”
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
He knows it is an obelisk, not a mollusk. It was a joke. And it made me laugh and laugh. Because he knows the only reason I built the obelisk was so I could use the word obelisk.
And the Spy laughed.
As he disassembled my mollusk.
Farewell mollusk!
And a few other sights du jour:
Thai Red Roselle
Calyx (another lovely word)
Another view of the roselle
Examining another roselle plant
Eating the roselle calyxes while showing off a Serpente di Sicilia gourd
A big gourd!
A gourdzooka
Love the little lanterns of the cape gooseberries
In the background of the above picture is a lemon cucumber and a pink (Hartman’s Giant) amaranth stalk.
Love the colors of this foliage (violet de Provence artichoke plant)
Giant Yellow Eckendorf Beet (I do hope it’s a giant when I dig it up!)
Lavender, grown from seed. Not much of a picture to look at but this was a slow-grower, so I am proud of the progress!
An eggplant bloom (still no fruits not sure what happened this year, too cool I guess)
Until tomorrow!
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Beautiful photos, as always! Off to catch up some more on your posts!
Thanks! I’ve been meaning to catch up on yours…always enjoy your photos and writing too ;)
You are right…If it wasn’t 4am I would walk around the house saying “Obelisk!” loudly excellent choice of words. Love the gourdzooka as well. Your garden is fecund with possibilities (or was ;) ). You can have an annual “slaying of the Obelisk” to add to family and holiday traditions. Who knows, one day it could build up to be something akin to The Day of Summerisle and will be the stuff that legends are made of ;) Have you tried growing Japanese eggplants? We gave up on the big ones here because our growing season is too short but we got heaps of the Japanese finger type ones so it might be worth a try next season.
The types I tried to grow this year were Thai Yellow Egg, Fengyuan Purple and then Rosita (which was either Italian or South American). So the Thai and Chinese varieties were similar to Japanese types (smaller fruits). I don’t know why they didn’t do well. It was pretty cool at the beginning of the season, maybe not watered enough when they were small? I’m not quite sure. I’m going to try harder next year because I love eggplants.
They seem to be pretty hardy things. Our garden beds were pretty dry but our eggplants went mental and we were giving them away all over the place. Maybe it was just “one of those years”… The rest of your garden looks amazing :).
Thanks. Yes I agree on the “just one of those years” point. I will definitely try again with the eggplants.
Lol, that big gourd puts me in mind of the ‘Snozzcumbers’ in the BFG.
‘Marvelous’ and ‘Fabulous’ are two of my favourite words – they are just great words to say and sound (if you know what I mean). So expressive :)
Especially if you say it like Maaaahhhhhrvelous haha
AWESOME POST! Now you will have to build more. That gives me an idea for tomatoes. Well, I’ve had a lot of ideas, now I know that to call them.
Thanks! My husband will have to build more (so they last for more than one season)! haha