Whisper words of wisdom

Our flowers are beginning to bloom and the garden is literally buzzing with activity (I can't believe I just used that pun, how pathetic. Bartender!).

We are still very new to flowers and things here are a little haphazard. Hey, what can I say, we're veggie people. Anywho, we want more flowers. It won't change the flavor of our blog, but we thought we'd warn you just the same.

Purple Coneflower

Last year we started a bed of perennial flowers in the middle of the garden to add some color and also to attract good bugs. From seed, we planted daisies, black eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, and bee balm—but, since some plants take a few years to get established we didn't get the full array of blooms last year.


This year everything already has a year of growing under its belt and the coneflowers, which were absent last year, made their first appearance.

Diversity in salads

This year's first pea flower.

Squash Beds

An executive decision was made last year that all of our squash and mellon type plants would be direct seeded this year. They are now all in. We spent the better part of the day clearing out all of the beds to hopefully get rid of any lingering squash bug larvae. The grass has been cut for the first time this year and we used the clippings for mulch. This photo gives a pretty good view of the five beds we planted (they're the green fuzzy ones). In each bed we also planted a few nasturtium seeds to help deter pests and eventually add some peppery zing to our salads. This now marks that 18 of our 22 beds are planted. All that's left are our peppers, tomatoes and some random last minute herbs.

No Mow

Our landlord has a keen interest in just letting things go. We won't mention the condition of the house (bad vibes), but outside there is an odd array of random volunteer trees and patches of grass a foot or so high. I don't know what it is, but he hates having the grass cut. We suffer our share of ticks through the year, nothing bad, and the chickens think it sucks. However, right now it's not so bad. The wildness of our yard has invited a shabby meadow. There is color everywhere.

Dogwoods

There are a large number of trees on the three and half acres where we live and we have become quite familiar with the lot. We've come to expect their changes though the year as a way to kind of catalogue time. The dogwoods have recently come into bloom.

Of all the varieties of trees on this property, the dogwoods are my favorite during all seasons. In the summer they are a spectacular source of shade. Their leaves in the fall are always colorful and enduring. During the winter their branches bend and twist in all kinds of peculiar directions. And in the spring, just like the fall, they provide an array of colors that are both vivid and long-lasting.

This magnolia flower

...looks way too tropical for Pennsylvania.

Flower Show

It's fun to watch and wait for trees to flower. One of my favorites on our property is the magnolia. Does my affinity have anything to do with the Grateful Dead's Sugar Magnolia? Maybe. Or, they're just big meaty flowers and I love them.

The next tree on my list of wait-fors is the dogwood. All year round the dogwood puts on a very unique display of color and form. But for now we can wait, because the magnolias are out and they deserve their turn.

Stripes

I know this is our five hundredth, "Look at the pretty flower!" post in as many days, but, frankly, we've been incredibly lazy about the blog lately. And also, isn't this a pretty flower?

Spring is in the air ...

The crocuses are blooming, the magnolia is ready to pop, and Kelly shot a groundhog. I hope you all don't mind, but we decided to spare you the photo of that last bit.

Blooms

Spring is still nine days away, but the warm weather has inspired some flowers to show up early.

Scarlet Begonias

I went to my first Grateful Dead show in the summer of '92. I was sixteen and highly impressionable. Needless to say, after that show, I was hooked. For the three years that followed, I went to see them any chance I could until Jerry's body finally had enough.

Now I'm not the kind of Dead Head that holds a vigil every August to commemorate Jerry's death or goes to Rat Dog shows just to keep the dream alive. No, I'm not that guy, but I collected some experiences from those three years that will always have an effect on the person I am and will continue to be.

(Holy shit. I'm sorry, I don't know what the hell just happened there.)

I like to sneak in my appreciation of the Grateful Dead's music from time to time with a subtle sign here and there. A few of the posts I've put up were titles to songs or albums, our chickens' names are Dead tunes, and one of my favorite plants in our house is a scarlet begonia.

This particular begonia is my third attempt (forth if you talk to Meg) at growing one of these things. I thought I would never be able to keep one, but this one has been in our home for almost two years and for the first time buds have begun to appear.



In celebration, I've been playing the Dead off and on all day. Why not all day? Well I'm a hockey fan too and there was a game on.

While Huffing Sage

I have no idea how to introduce this post...
I was gathering some sage and thyme this afternoon for a batch of cabbage and potato soup. Although this is all we have going on in our garden, other than some root veggies, I do like to hang out in there and mentally map out our possible plant rotation.

So there I was, huffing sage, staring off into space, cogitated, when I realized, "Man we are going to need a shitload of nasturtium seeds." You see, our squashes (oh yeah, all of them) were eradicated by squash bugs. After the disaster we discovered that nasturtiums are great companions to squash plants, specifically to keep away these types of pests. As I was daydreaming about our garden for next year I realized that we are planning to have a good deal of squash in all sorts of varieties. Since the squash bug will suck on anything in the squash family I figured that we were going to need, you got it, a shitload of nasturtiums.

Meg and I have been trying our best to save seeds this year and have done fairly well in our quest. Now most of our garden is cleared out and turned, but there are some flowerbed corpses that still have not been scoured for seeds. I ventured to the shade garden area to see if I could scrounge up some yellow-nasturtium seeds, but soon realized that I really wasn't too thrilled with digging through all kinds of frozen debris for little brain-looking seeds. However, I did manage to grab a few more cardinal climber seeds (pictured above) that were dangling nearby.

Walk Softly...

and carry a big stick.

One of the projects from this weekend was to find a replacement flag pole for the Jolly Roger. Sadly our garden has been flagless for a month or so due to some serious flower power.

This was our first year trying to grow flowers and we thought it would be cool-lookin' to have something vining up the flag pole. Morning glories sounded pleasant and the seed packet said they would grow about 12 feet. Our flag pole was about 20 feet so we though it would be perfect. Shortly after what we thought would be the last frost, we planted a few seeds at the base of the pole and hoped for the best.



A few months later we realized that the seed packet seriously underestimated the potential of the morning glories. They grew to the top of the pole and were reachin' for more. The pole was about 2.5 inches in diameter, that heft went a good ways up, and we thought it would surely hold.



We were wrong. Meg went out to feed the chickens one morning and noticed something was off. It wasn't windy the night before but the sheer weight of the foliage snapped the pole in half. If we were to replace the pole then, we would have had to cut out the remaining morning glories and we were gonna have none of that. So, we had to wait for them to do their thing, which is a gift to see when going out for morning chores, and then die off.



After they croaked, Meg and I went to the bamboo patch at the end our our property and cut us a fresh new pole. We're planning to let it dry flat and will hoist the Jolly Roger come Spring.

The Herb Garden's Last Hurrah

Our yard's gigantic herb garden was left to do its own thing this year. We still got some chives and oregano and thyme out of it, but mostly we got weeds. By virtue of being left alone all summer, some of the weeds turned out to be quite nice! Here's some of the stuff that was blooming a couple weeks ago, before the frost got them:

Seeds

Meg and I have been collecting seeds from our garden as the growing season progressed. Last week we went to see the Renoir exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (if you live in the area, it is a must see) and since then I have been trying to gather as many flower seeds as possible. There is something about an impressionist depiction of a French garden that gets us fired up for color. With the addition of three small flower beds we saw a significant increase in the number of beneficial insects that buzzed through our garden. We're hoping that next year's new beds will attract even more.