What’s growin’ on?

Now that we’re into May, there’s a lot going on in the garden. Fred worked hard this spring installing some brick edging along the garden to create a physical border with the lawn, and it looks great. In mid-April, we bought a new small tiller & truckload of compost/topsoil mix for the garden and turned it in.
For vegetables this year, we’ve planted a couple tomatoes, a few cucumbers and squash plants along with some green beans. To keep the deer away from the green beans, Fred built the a-frame cover pictured below. Everything is growing slowly so far with the cold weather we’ve had to date. Both the plants and myself are much looking forward to the warmer weather for some real growth spurts!

The flowers we planted in the past couple years are truly welcoming us into Spring this year, too. While a welcome sight, they do present a logistical problem with the garden layout. Currently, flower bulbs are interspersed throughout the garden – which makes it difficult to till up the entire area. Instead, we’re able to only till certain areas. Conveniently, many of the flowers have done so well and have naturalized to the extent that this fall will be the time to divide them, which will provide an opportunity to move them to a more fitting location.

Coucou, Printemps!

Why, hello Spring! You almost caught us unaware. But we’ve been window-watching all this time, and have noticed our beautiful change of season!

I know it’s been quiet here on the blog, but the homestead here in NoDu has been bustling. We’re busy this Spring! Each weekend has a different project occupying us - us the human folk, at least. The kittens have been spending all their time this Spring laying on the couch peering out from the windows! Such sweet friends they are. Milosh always welcomes me home before re-claiming his spot right in the front window.

We’ve added two new planting areas: the side yard “orchard,” and a new flower garden in the back yard for cutting. In the orchard area, I’ve added blueberry bushes and there’s the fig tree. I hope to plant a pomegranate tree today that I bought at the market yesterday.

In the existing bed that lines the sidewalk & driveway, there’s a mélange of Spring vegetables: micro-greens, lettuces, beets, chard. Though, I think I accidentally weeded all the chard, believing the chard shoots to be oak tree shoots. I’ve promised my husband myself that I will not be buying any vegetable plants as last year the deer ate everything. I’m convinced they had our yard marked as an all-you-can-eat hotspot. We’d find tomatoes with one huge bite taken out of them a few yards from the once-laden plants. With that in mind, I subscribed to The Produce Box, a local CSA which delivers boxes of local farm fresh produce to your door weekly. We should be receiving our first delivery this week!

I’ve also expanded the herb garden area directly in front of the front door. It’s so nice to just slip right out the door to grab some fresh herbs just off from the front porch.

Regarding the back yard, in the wet days of early Spring, I had thought a tulip bed would be just the thing. Perhaps inspired by our trip to Holland, I thought they would do nicely in a segment of our backyard. So without giving it much thought, my dear husband went to work tilling it one weekend. In his zeal, he broke the tiller in two as the area was quite rooted. We spent the better part of the afternoon using the hatchet and the axe to chop out the roots. So far I have some tulips, a couple “Scotch Brooms,” a knockout rose, and a ton of miscellaneous flower seeds I had lying around. We’ll see what comes up! Pictures to come soon.

Joy to your World,

Elizabeth

A Tale of Loss & Growth

This past Wednesday was the Jewish holiday of Tu B’shevat. This day is a celebrate for the “Birthday of the Trees,” and is the specific day of the year that Jews celebrate and ideally plant trees. This year it occurred in February, but the date varies depending upon the Jewish Calendar. It so happened that in the same week of the celebration, Fred and I planted 4 new trees of our own in our yard.

I had a conversation with my friend Paige, a garden professional, about my pitiful fruit trees from last year. The fig, blueberry, raspberry plants that I had mail-ordered last year are the saddest examples I’ve ever seen. I asked her where I should get nice blueberries bushes and a good hardy fig tree to transplant into my yard, and she assured me that she could get me good plants and that now was the time to put them in the ground. P:aige brought me the trees on Friday, and this Saturday, Fred and I toiled in the yard, planting 4 beautiful new plants: 2 blueberry bushes, 1 fig tree, and 1 “Snowball” Viburnum bush.

I think my new Brown Turkey Fig Tree is the most lovely specimen ever. Compared with the twig of a fig I had before (thusly named “FigTwig,”) my new tree is magnificent. While planting my new tree, I actually accidentally stepped on the original “FigTwig” that I planted one year ago. It snapped to the ground, and when I pulled up little FigTwig’s broken single branch and compared it with the new plant, he was a pathetic thing not 1/10 the size of the new fig. I love the moss that covered him and how his arms seem to try to wrap up the sun in a loving embrace. He spindly nature offers an air of mystery and seem exotic to me.

The Snowball Viburnum was the largest plant we put it. It’s a lovely big bushy plant with large white “snowball” flowers, which look like the puffy flowers of a hydrangea. This bush is an excellent bush for chickens, as they adore to roost inside the bush on its their long horizontal branches.

The blueberries far exceed the plants I received through the mail-order catalogue. Currently, my blueberries from last year are probably about a8” high at this point. The plants Paige brought me were about 3 ft. and 4 ft. plants. One variety is “Premium,” the other wasn’t labeled. They need to be different types so they will cross pollinate and produce the fruit. We put them on the edge of an existing “natural area” in the yard. It’s my hope we can add bulbs and other shrubs to beautify these leaf ridden messes natural areas.

And all of these plantings were done amide the sad reality that it appears I have forever lost my engagement ring. I realized I couldn’t find it on Wednesday morning, and we’ve searched everywhere. It’s the most painful loss I think I’ve experienced – and that both humbles and shames me. I can’t really describe how it feels to lose such a sentimental treasure. Fred gave me the diamond ring when he asked me to be his wife, and he tried to wrap up his love for me in it’s token form, and to lose that token and physical reminder hurts the most. Also, realizing we’ve lost it’s tangible worth is difficult. It is humbling and wonderful though to realize that such materialistic things are fleeting; and these are not the things that life is about;  we are safe, and well and surrounded by amazing and loving family and friends; a ring is nothing compared to these things. God Willing, we will it, and if not, it’s perfectly okay. 

Joy to your World,

Elizabeth

Garden Party

Mr. Broccoli greets you first in the garden; a cheery “hello!” from between his leaves. 

You see the Sweet Peas have tackled their first climb up the trellis.

 

And at the end all huddled together, Baby Radishes waited next to the rows of their Turnip cousins. Not having thinned the rows at all, their greens are like a group of women in ball gowns gossiping close together, their skirts smooched and squeezed and popping out at every source of space.

Weeded, they weep about like they’ve fainted. The date is past the scheduled harvest time. You wonder if they’ll ever be any good. 

Cousin Turnip is still clearly in need of a weeding... You envision the small harvest that will come. Planted too compactly and without enough spacing, the yield will be tiny. 

More promisingly sprouts the spinach. Their seeds were sown a bit after all the rest after a packet of leftover seed from last year was found laying about.

And finally, your dear friends Mr. Chiogga and Mr. Detroit Beets, followed shortly by their friends, the lovely and dainty Misses Nelson Carrots arrived to the Garden Party.

in the ground

 

Today, my garden is renewed. Seeds are nestled in the ground, and transplants are settling in. I succumbed to two impulse buys: a carton of six snapdragon transplants, and three small strawberry plants. The strawberry plants even have tiny green fruits and little white blossoms. This year, I’m trying to coordinate the timing of my planting/harvesting/replanting. The diagram below is what I put in the garden today. For the first time, I’m staggering planting. I have set up room for four different radish and two different turnips rows.

 

 

The Garden

the backyard Garden, age: 3 weeks.

I was so close to joining a CSA this year. In fact, I did enroll, and then I backed out and canceled my order. Instead, I decided I would support a family CSA. My Family's.

Okay, not really a CSA. But we are in it for a fun summer of hobby vegetable gardening this Summer. We have over 30 tomato plants. Over 15 pepper plants. Cucumbers, zucchinis, bush beans, leeks, onions, and countless herbs and even some cutting flowers.

It's progress is magical. After half a week of heavy raining, the bean's (not seen in this photo) went from 2" bean sprout stubs into magical broad multi leafed plants. The onions already can be harvested as "green onions." We have three blooms on the tomato plants, and we also saw three baby red bell pepper buds.

It's all very excited.

Things are a growin'

Things are definitely growing down here in the garden. I went out on Friday morning and spent the day with Mom & Dad weeding- boy, was it rough work. But so worth it!!


We've also got quite a few little sprouts of baby veggies!!