Talk about being conflicted.

The garden needs rain badly. Although we are above average in rainfall for the year, everything is dry. I don't want to water anymore than I have to, just on principal.

On the other hand, we are having new shingles put on our house, and the carpenters could finish this week if the weather stays good. And we are having all sorts of people visit us this weekend, and it would be good that the grandkids could have the space taken up by ladders, cedar shingles, power saws etc. Maybe it will rain overnight.

The peas have gone by, and it wasn't a great year for them. It was so hot they dried up quickly. We had probably four good-sized meals of them in two plantings and another three meals of Sugar Snaps.

The summer squash is producing very well, but the woodchucks seem to prefer eating our cucumbers. I have been buying those and fighting the woodchucks.

The tomatoes are coming along and green, and we have one watermelon that I hope is big enough for the grandchildren to eat on Sunday.

The raspberries have produced well, probably getting 25 pints, eating them regularly and freezing the rest. The peak production is past, but we still are getting a pint every three days or so. The blueberries are still coming strong. And the peaches, shown in the first photo, are hard but look good.

The flowers continue to look great. It has been a great for lilies if you take steps to fight the lily leaf beetle. These white lilies, in the second photo, in the back yard are almost 6 feet tall. And the guys doing the siding spared them.

It isn't just flowers, either. This viburnum, which bloomed with wonderful white flowers in the spring, now has these superb berries. This was a rescued plant so I am not sure of the variety, but I think it is a tomentosum. It has no damage from the viburnum leaf beetle.

My column Sunday was about a new garden recently installed at a John Calvin Stevens brick apartment building on Woodford Street. This is the way a garden should be planted for low maintenance, thinking about how large the shrubs and trees will be at maturity rather than when planted.

About the Author

Tom Atwell has written the Maine Gardener column in the Maine Sunday Telegram since the spring of 2004. He has worked at the Press Herald/Sunday Telegram since 1974, about the same time he started gardening with any seriousness.

He gardens with his wife, Nancy. She not only is the better gardener of the pair, but also knows the botanical names of plants. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.

Tom was born in Skowhegan, grew up in Farmington and graduated from the University of Maine with a BA in journalism. His goal each year is to have continuous compost from his three compost bins, continuous bloom in his low-maintenance garden and more fruits and vegetables on his family table than the garden pests eat in the field.

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