The State of the Garden

Garden, April 1st

I have been a little slow getting the garden going this year - normally, we have everything in the ground by the end of March, since we do most of the work during Benjamin's spring break. For one reason and another, we just didn't get around to buying tomatoes and so forth, apart from planting a few of the seeds that prefer cold weather to germinate. In the top photo you can see the sorrel that has been growing for about 3 years (the hardiest plant I have ever grown!), and the pea shoots and lettuce seedlings.

 

Garden, April 29th

Our delay didn't turn out to be much of an issue, since this year has been a lot cooler than last year, and if we had put tomatoes out, we might have regretted it later. The lilac bush bloomed about 2 weeks later this year than last, and everything else is similarly behind.

Tomato, pepper, cucumber and basil 4/29

The last week or so I have been working in the yard for an hour each morning while Malcolm takes his long nap. This morning I finished up planting the various herbs and flowers that go in pots in the deck. I also had to repot the new lime tree I bought last week to replace the one that died in the Christmas Day snow storm.

Lettuce and mesclun mix 4/29

We have seven assorted tomatoes - four in the garden, three in pots, two peppers - one jalapeno and one sweet cherry variety that we have never tried before, a cucumber - also new to me this year, two kinds of basil, collards (well, we will if the seeds ever sprout), sugar snap peas, two kinds of lettuce (in the garden and in a flat on the deck), carrots, mesclun, two kinds of eggplant and blueberries. In addition, we have bee balm, anise hyssop, oregano, peppermint, lemon balm, two kinds of sage, the lime (which doesn't look like it will have fruit this year) and a fig tree (also no fruit - too small still, I think).

 

The rhododendron and azaleas are blooming now, also later than last year, but full of blooms and beautiful.

And the red rose is loaded with blooms. I just love the scent, the color, and the feel of roses.

This has got to be the best time of year in Arkansas. The sun isn't scorching yet, the humidity might be a bit high, but since the heat isn't up, it is bearable, most of the nastiest bugs aren't out much yet, and everything is fresh and green.

Bloody sorrel, up close

And of course, this year I get to start sharing it with Malcolm. I think we have the makings of a fine gardener on our hands, as long as I can convince him not to eat the dirt!

Just trying to stay cool

So, it is hot here in Arkansas. Yup. We've been right around 100 degrees for most of the last two weeks. At some point, we were hotter than Phoenix. Benjamin has decided not to let the heat stop him, since the world is warming and it will likely be this way every summer from now on, and played tennis 4 of 5 days this week (and then wondered why he was so drained, and ate 1/4 of a large watermelon in one sitting). If I wasn't quite so pregnant, I might be doing the same, but as it is, I can barely stand to walk the dog around our hill at 6 in the morning when it is only 75.

To go along with the heat issues, one of our city's wells has failed, and while there is plenty of water for home use and fire fighting, the water company has put in place a water conservation plan until a new well comes online. This means we aren't supposed to water our lawns or use irrigation systems at all. Now, we never water our lawn, but we do water all the bushes in the yard, not to mention the vegetable garden. I was told, via email, that I could water the vegetables and not be cited for non-compliance as long as nobody complained, but when I went to fill a watering can last night, the outdoor water had been turned off. I think we can turn it back on, as long as it isn't locked, but I'm not sure why the company felt the need to turn off the water. I assume they turned everyone's water off, maybe to drive home the message, but it seems a bit much.

I am seriously considering planting cactus and other desert plants that don't need any water. Stupid drought.

Flowers at Crystal Bridges

The first thing I noticed when we got out of the car at the Crystal Bridges Museum were all the flowers. The museum itself is in a sort of gorge or valley - you park above it and walk down to it. All along the parking lot and the hillside around the building were lovely flower gardens.

I was very impressed at how vibrant and non-droopy everything was, considering how parched my own garden is by this time of year. The gardeners (and sprinkler system) there must be top-notch.

I can't remember what this purple flower is, and it was sort of hard to capture on camera because it was on long fluffy stalks and wouldn't sit still in the wind.

This pink flower is just a little out of place - its fellows were one bed over. 

There were quite a few butterflies and bees enjoying the flowers too.

The flowers were a lovely introduction to the museum and preparation for the art inside.

Pesto and Tomatoes and Collard Greens

Our garden is doing well, despite just emerging from the driest May on record. This weekend, I pulled out the peas, broccoli and romaine lettuce, since they had all finished producing and were just providing food for bugs. The broccoli and romaine remains went into the compost bin to enrich the mix for next year. Removing them also gives us some space to plant ... well, something else. I haven't yet figured out what exactly. Maybe lettuce for fall. Anyway, the rest of the garden is still doing well. For the first time, our carrots are actually growing and are edible. The tomatoes are starting to ripen - there have been 4 ripe Early Girls so far - one eaten by a worm or something, one stolen from the deck, and two eaten by us. The Arkansas Traveler heirlooms are doing nicely, and we should have a couple of those ready by the weekend. We should have tomatoes for at least a month, hopefully two or three (a girl can hope, anyway).

Last night for dinner, we had one of our favorite wraps - Caribbean Beans and Greens, which is basically black beans and Collard Greens with rice, in a tortilla. The greens all came from the garden, and we left plenty for later. While we were harvesting the greens, I noticed that most of the basil was starting to set flowers, so I trimmed all the plants back. When I got it inside, I realized I had enough basil in hand to make a batch of pesto. So I did. We'll probably have that for dinner Friday or Saturday. Yum.

In addition to all the berries - strawberries (which are just about finished for the year), blueberries, and blackberries, our farmer's market has had peaches available for the last couple of weeks, so I have been eating quite a few of those as well. They are not freestone peaches, alas, since those come later in the summer, so I can't dehydrate them or can them, but I can definitely eat them. Plain, or with yogurt, or in a smoothie, or in a fruit salad, or baked up with blackberries into a lovely cobbler... I don't know if I will get any peaches dried or canned this year, since the freestones come ready about the same time I will be adjusting to motherhood and sleeplessness, but you never know. I hope I do, since peaches in the winter are a wonderful way to break the gloom of a December day.

Iris

Last year, a friend gave me some iris from her yard, and I planted them in our front flower bed. I wasn't expecting to get any flowers this year, but one of the plants surprised me with this beauty. I love the stripes and the creamy yellow interior.

My parents have come and gone, and the baby's room is now painted. The crib is assembled too, but that's as far as we got. This weekend, Benjamin and I hope to do some furniture shopping - for a bookcase for that room and a dresser for ours (so we can then put our old grad school dresser in the baby's room), at which point the room will start to look inhabitable. And I do have some decorative things to put up on the walls...eventually. What I am saying is, I don't have any pictures of the room yet. Soon.

A Month in 18 seconds

Here it is - a time lapse video of our garden in 18 seconds. The camera was up for just about 1 month, pointed at the vegetable beds. It got jostled a couple of times, so the frame shifts a bit, but not too bad otherwise for a first attempt!

The batteries died at the end of the month span, which is why the video isn't longer. I might put it up again later in the summer, or wait for fall. I haven't decided yet. When I do put it back up, I am going to choose a different location, one a little closer to the garden. The camera is really made to do close up shots, like a time lapse of a flower opening, so the focus doesn't work as well so far away. And the different lighting conditions every day made the pictures all very different - most of them were taken at 11 or noon (can't remember at the moment which), but have the look of very different times of day.

Lettuce!

Here is a picture of the romaine lettuce in our garden for your Monday morning. It is actually bigger now, since as usual I am a week or two behind in posting my pictures. I have been harvesting individual leaves for out salads, mixing them in with other lettuces from the farmer's market, and it is wonderful. I love having fresh salad in my backyard. The plant in the upper left corner is bloody sorrel, or ruminex sanguineous. It is mostly used as a decorative plant, I guess, but I bought it as an edible, and put a few leaves in salads to add a bit of variety.

Sunday was my birthday, and it was pretty darn good. I made strawberry jam, played some tennis with Benjamin, had dinner with friends, and was not hit by any tornadoes. All good omens for this coming year!

Blueberries and cognitive dissonance

This picture creates cognitive dissonance for me. I love blueberries, and am wildly happy that our two bushes made it through the summer and winter and have many green berries on them. But, in my mind, blueberries don't show up until August, during Seafair, when the Blue Angels are flying overhead while we pick them. Here it is, only the first week of April (or it was when I took this picture), and there they are. Based on the patterns of my childhood, the summer goes something like this: June - strawberries (we picked about 60 pounds of strawberries the day before our wedding) and edible peapods, July - raspberries (as a small child, I once completely ruined an entire flat that my dad had spent an hour picking when I tromped through it by mistake, and I've never been allowed to forget it), August - blueberries, blackberries and tomatoes, September - peaches and apples. Not so in Arkansas, or Texas, where I first had to learn to live with a totally different growing season.

In Arkansas and Texas, strawberries show up in April, generally a little before or on my birthday. This makes it really hard to have fresh strawberries for strawberry shortcake on the Fourth of July! Not only are they early, they are delicate and short-lasting, since they prefer the cooler, damper warmth of the Pacific Northwest to the hot, dry spring and summer of the south. I doubt I could go anywhere around here and pick 60 pounds of strawberries without breaking the bank. On the plus side, I will be able to make strawberry jam this weekend for my birthday, thanks to the flat I have ordered from my on-line farmer's market.

Anyway, cognitive dissonance aside, the task for now is getting bird netting over the blueberries, so we don't lose them all to the thieving blue jays again this year.

Flowers for Good Friday

Ajuga

 I promised flower pictures from my garden, and here they are. Spring is in full flower right now, and it is lovely. We had some too warm weather last week, but this week has been perfect, so hopefully the flowers will all last a while.

Clematis

This clematis is pretty darn hardy. That first spring we were in the house, I chopped it down and planted a rose in its place - but it still came back. And now I am happy to have it, winding in among the climbing rose (pictures of that at the end).

Mexican Lime tree flowers

This is so exciting! See that little green nub in that one flower? That is a baby lime! Last year, this tree only bloomed in the middle of the winter, when it was taking shelter from the cold in our living room. There are no pollinating insects in our living room.  This year, it did bloom in January, but it kept blooming when we moved it back outside, and it has kept going for a couple of months. There are a lot of tiny limelets, so we are very hopeful of getting a good crop.

One of our azaleas, with added oak tree seed decoration. I don't remember the azaleas doing this well last year, and after the horrible heat and dry of last summer, I wasn't sure they would be in good shape. I was wrong.

This one was so bright that all the pictures I took of it look completely over-exposed, even though they are not. It is just that fluorescent. 

And here is the climbing rose. Last spring, the climbing canes never really filled in, and while we had some roses, there weren't really that many. This year, the bush is much fuller, and there are lots of blossoms. Plus, they smell really nice.

Since I took these pictures last week, the other three rose bushes have started blooming, and the peas in the garden have gotten a few flowers. Next time, I'll give you a few pictures of the edible parts of the garden.

Backyard camera update

I checked on the backyard time lapse camera over the weekend, and it appears to be working just fine! I had 12 days worth of photos of our garden, and the changes were already visible in that short amount of time. Since it was working, I decided to leave the pictures on the memory card for now, and take everything off once I have a month's worth. So, sorry if you were waiting eagerly - just another couple of weeks, I promise! And by then, I will have found the software I need to put the photos together into a video (there was supposedly a CD in the box, but it may have been left behind at Christmas, and then disappeared. Oops.).

In garden news, over the weekend we planted our broccoli (plants) and collard greens (seeds), and 8 tomato plants. We still have beans to plant, and I ordered 3 peppers (Anaheim, jalapeno and serrano) as well as a heirloom cherry tomato plant from our CSA. Let's hope this summer is kinder on the garden than last year!

Daffodils!

These are actually from a couple of weeks ago. Our spring is far enough along now that all the trees are blooming, and the daffodils around us have definitely passed their peak. That's too bad - I always wish daffodils would stick around longer. In college, I used to go to the store and buy several bunches at a time when they were on sale and put them all over my dorm room.

 However, spring also means it is time to start planting the garden. The lettuce seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are up, and the carrots are about to sprout and the peas are in (although, they and the carrots probably should have been in a couple of weeks earlier). I have collards, onions and beans to plant too, and of course we will have tomatoes and jalapenos. Probably broccoli too, if we can find good starts. Ooh, spring!

Pretty, sparkly lights!

As promised last week, here are some sparkly lights to brighten up what is a gray and gloomy January day (well, it is gloomy and rainy and cold here in Little Rock anyway). This display is put on every year at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, and never really gets old.

I think we went the first year it opened, when it was just a few flowers in the darkness and a small cart selling powdered hot chocolate. Now, it is over half a  million lights over several acres, with a full espresso stand. As Benjamin said, you know when you are in Seattle when there is an espresso stand at the light display.

The pictures don't really do the lights justice, although I was pretty pleased with how well the night light setting on my camera worked this time. The flash only went off a couple of times when the lights were bright enough to make it think it should be lighter than it was. Otherwise, it was mostly just a matter of keeping my hands steady while I shot the picture.

Sprinkled among the flowers were critters and creatures of all kinds, like this spider and the frog in the top picture. Did you spot that one? For the kids, the garden had a sort of scavenger hunt map that listed all of the 30+ animals, and even without the map, I had a great time trying to spot them.

One of the coolest things about the display is that it is not Christmas specific - there was only one Christmas tree in the whole display. That means that it is not at all exclusionary. Bellevue is very multi-ethnic these days, and when we went on Christmas night, there were people from many different cultures and countries visiting, some of who do not celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah.  What a great way to lighten the darkest part of the year!

Friday Garden

I am running way behind on my pictures. Here are a couple of pictures of our garden, from the first part of May. The peas (tall plants in front of Benjamin) are finished now, and the broccoli is about finished. The collards (middle of the first box) are a lot larger, and so are the tomatoes and squash (back box).

Next week I will give you the long-delayed pictures of our hiking trip, and maybe even pictures from my trip to Philadelphia.

Roses in my yard, part 2

As promised, here are more pictures of the roses in my garden. This is not a very good picture of the climbing rose, Zephrine Drouhin, but it seems it is the only one I have. Huh.  Anyway, it is a lovely rose. It shares the trellis with a clematis, or rather, it will, when it gets a chance. At the moment, the clematis has rather taken over.

I can't remember the name of this rose (and I forgot to write it down when I was cleaning off my desk this weekend and came across its tag), but it too is lovely. It is the same color as the roses I had in my wedding bouquet, and has a wonderful light scent.

As you can see, there is a cluster of buds on each stalk, opening into a mound of flowers.

It should grow into a large bush, since it is supposed to be a good hedge rose. I hope it does!

Here is a close-up of part of the vegetable garden. As you can see, everything is doing quite well. We had some of the first lettuce in our salad the other night. The Early Girl tomato (not in this picture, to the left of the beans) has tomatoes already, as do the two cherry tomatoes. Yay vegetable gardens!

Roses in my yard, the first wave

We have six rose bushes in our yard, some of which are blooming right now, and some of which will be blooming.  This rose is a Rosa Rugosa, Hansa.  This was the only bloom (so far) and the only picture, which isn't great, but you can get the idea.  It is also the rose bush that Miikka dug up three or four times, so the fact that it bloomed at all is a minor miracle. He has been stopped, by a better bit of fencing, and the rose seems to be recuperating.  If all goes well, it will continue to grow and it will eventually be a large bush.

This is one of the roses that was already in the yard when we moved in.  I don't know its variety, but it is a robust climber. I suppose I ought to prune it back a bit more, to make it bushier, but I can't bring myself to cut back all that healthy cane. Maybe in the fall?

Here is a close-up of the blooms on that rose. I was playing with the photo editor, so the color is a bit saturated...

We also have a mini rose bush, you know, one of those little plants you can buy at the grocery store for Mother's Day or whatnot. Only it isn't so mini - the plant itself is a couple of feet tall.  The buds are small though, and numerous.

I do love me some roses. I am still waiting for my new climbing rose and a hedge-type rose to bloom. Pictures of those will follow once they do.

The difference of a month

Here is the backyard on March 17th. No plants on the deck, brown grass, no leaves on the trees.

Backyard, April 1st (no fooling). Starting to get a bit greener; if you look closely, you can see leaves starting on the trees.

April 18th. What a difference! Everything is so lush and green. Too bad all the bugs are coming out too. I have already had 3 ticks, and several other bites. Just from working in the yard. Ahh, spring and summer.

Ok, OK, Garden Pictures

OK, Mom, I got the pictures of the garden off the camera last night, and here they are.  This picture was taken yesterday.  Left to right: 3 tomatoes, with basil seedlings (can't see them in this picture), sugar peas, beans, collards, lettuce (just replanted, in planter), carrots, and lettuce.  All coming along nicely.

The now-standard jalapeno plant.  We could have put this in the garden, but why bother, when we know it grows well in a pot?

 Potatoes, Yukon Golds and some sort of fingerlings. I have never grown these, although Benjamin has.  We decided to try the container method to save having to give them room in the raised bed (and because we had a boatload of extra dirt to use up...)

Cherry tomatoes, two kinds, on the deck.  Again, these could have gone in the garden bed, but we decided to put them in the pots instead.  I think we will have to build another bed next year, but this is satisfactory for now.

This is the so-far most successful of the three blueberry bushes we put it.  It has little fruits already!

And here are my two little Asian Eggplants.  We bought the seedlings from our farmer's market and the whiskey barrel from the grocery store (again with the need to use more dirt). I haven't tried growing eggplant before, so I hope this turns out to be a successful experiment.

There, a garden update. There will be more tomorrow, and then I will probably be out of pictures and out of ideas for the week!