gardening – Page 7 – A picture and a thousand words

Too fun

The other day it got sunny in the late afternoon (a rarity) and without our dense layer of clouds it didn’t get too dark to work outside until about 5:30! Huge progress! I’m still chipping away at the enormous branch pile, so I’ve been outside more days than not in the last week, despite the gloom.

It’s so neat – we’re just now seeing the first signs of Spring. Usually it irks me to no end that Spring starts to appear in February instead of the far more civilized April, but apparently I’ve finally adjusted to the seasons out here because these glimpses seem so welcome and encouraging to me. I have a bunch of theories (more snow this year, looking forward to evenings spent in the yard and on the patio, general attrition…), but regardless of the cause, I am so delighted to present: Crocuses!!

Yay!! And these plants, which I hated in the fall because I had to cull off all of the slimy black leaves that rotted underneath the plant, are now budding. Definitely winning their way into my heart.

I have to say, while the previous owners of the house were incapable of mounting anything (toilet paper holders, electrical outlets, towel bars, etc.) at level, they had a genius for landscape, or hired someone who did. It has been so fun to me to watch our yard change – even through the winter there’s so much going on, and with the number of buds I’m seeing already it seems like the next few months will be genuinely riotous with flowers and color. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

My potted mini daffodils are making an appearance, love the little bulb nubbins:

Other notes: the primrose came back after the snow, happier than ever!

My parents brought three more primroses when they arrived, and they’ve been living in the kitchen window until it gets warm enough to plant them. (I’m almost sure they’d make the transition to outside now, but they look so pretty in the kitchen that I don’t want to risk it.) I wouldn’t have chosen the colors of the one in the rock wall (maroon and gold), but it looks so cheerful from the house that I can’t wait to have more next year. The store up the street just put out a bunch of new colors, including many blues and purples. I may have to swing by tomorrow and pick up a few of them. I think the blues and purples would look so pretty with the yellow that my parents brought, and the pinks and reds would make another great spot.

In less happy news, the bamboo is sending up shoots like mad. Does anyone have advice for getting rid of it? Should I just dig? I’ve been searching online and not coming up with many shortcuts that seem viable…?

Mystery Flowers

Despite persistent cold and rain for the last few weeks, we seem to have a little patch of flowers growing in amidst the mushrooms by the front walk!

The visible roots and green sprouts look like irises (though why they’d be growing in November is a puzzle), but I haven’t a clue what that little mystery flower is. The red is so pretty. The entire plant is about 3” across and it seems to have appeared just in the last week.

Any ideas??

Sorry that it’s been so long

Oh, man, I’m far behind. I got lulled by my lack of bloggable photos and didn’t post, and now all sorts of interesting things have happened: the start of (fantasy) football and the related knitting, the back deck gardening success, the baby born (and sweater, etc. revealed, finally), the quilt progress and regression…

Usually I cope with lack of posting by just putting up five posts in a night (RSS feeds be damned), but for some reason this all feels intermingled, so this will be the longest post ever. Sorry?

So first of all, I went to the Farmers’ market a week ago Saturday. My intention was to pick up flowers, peaches and veggies (all of which were accomplished with the typical farmers’ market glee), but there were a few fun additions. I ran into Pam from my knitting group at the skirt stall, fun. And then after I was done shopping, I returned to the booth and bought one! (My Christmas stocking had a bit of fun money in it, and though we’re a full ¾ of the year later, I found something great to use it on. 🙂 Nice! )

Here are the farmers market flowers with the front of Isabella. I’ve finally made it to the lace – the knitting is so, so much more interesting now. I’ve made quite a few more rows since this photo and they’ve just flown by. All of the football in the last week hasn’t hurt the progress!

The plants on the back deck have been entertaining. The tomatoes are going strong. I’ve picked five so far, and there are at least 10 more in various stages of ripening waiting in the wings. The beans keep appearing – every time I give up and expect the end, I see 7 more waiting to be picked. No complaints! Best snack ever.

The strawberries just started blooming again a few weeks ago, and the fruits are closer and closer to being ripe to pick. And, exciting to me, the poor pepper plant that got overrun by the beans, is actually making peppers regardless. How cool!! Definitely runty and late, but I’m just delighted by every sign of progress.

And finally, I’ve been working on the pine trees for the quilt. They’ve been weighing on me ( a classic case of unexecutable vision), and I finally charted and started to construct them last weekend. Here’s the result about a third of the way in…

Since then I’ve been finishing and ripping back squares without quite finishing anything. I LOVE the deep-dark pine tree colors up close, but against the lake and land business, they don’t really work. I’m struggling to come up with a reasonable solution… so far I’ve tried improving the tree/water contrast (helps, but not enough). Next up is mixing in more medium greens to go with the darks. I may have to switch to mountains and hills and then return to this – I love the squares but they just don’t fit the quilt.
I meant to write about the baby knitting as part of my catch-all post, but then realized that it would be easier to have my pattern notes separate. So, to be carried on in a later post… 🙂

I am not a spider person

… and pacific northwest spiders are a force to be reckoned with. They’ve been increasingly ever-present for the last month (I feel like I’m dripping in spiderweb shards whenever I leave the house, since they love our front and back decks). Unfortunately, the biggest one I’ve see so far this year has taken up residence in the tomato plant.

Kevin took a picture:

It gives me goosebumps just to look at it. Shudder.

At least the tomatoes are getting huge, too?

A garden post, now that it’s stopped raining

I wish that I had more quilt squares to show you, but that has very temporarily been placed on the back burner. We’re heading to Boston this weekend for a wedding (I didn’t have a dress), and I just found out that I need to have gifts all knitted for a shower by the end of July (I hadn’t started), so I’ve been being responsible and not working on the quilt, even though I wanted to.

Instead, here are garden pictures! I think the beans are just about done. I had another nice big handful last night, but I don’t see any more flowers or teeny ones. I think they couldn’t cope with the week of rain and clouds — whatever momentum they had seems to have died. A great experiment though, and one I certainly intend to repeat! The new excitement is the tomatoes, which are coming on strong. There are LOTS of them, and they’re getting quite big. Still green, but I’m so pleased with them. The basil is also getting huge — time for more strawberry-basil martinis?

And because I thought it was cool, here’s a ladybug in the mint!

There’s a ladybug-ish thing on the next stalk. I have no idea what it is. If I had to come up with a theory, I would say that it looked like the ladybug took a page from our shrimp’s book and molted, but I didn’t think beetles did that. Huh?

Deck gardening starts to look like a success!

The beans and tomato plant, despite the measly afternoon-only sun, are getting bigger by the day.

And look! A baby tomato!!

Once I saw the first one, I kept looking, and found several small grape-sized individuals, and then a whole cluster!

The beans are even more exciting. The little inch-long slivers have suddenly transformed into real vegetables!

I won’t show you every single bean on this plant, but it’s amazing to me how many there are. Looks like we have a plan for tonight: grill salmon, harvest beans to go with! Here’s one more photo — I think this is so, so exciting, that my little experimental plant is so huge and useful now. Here, another pair of beans, ready to eat!

Both plants still have lots of flowers, so I’m hoping that we get several more weeks of beans and then the tomatoes should be ripe.

How cool.

They bloom!

The irises are blooming! This astounds me. Two weeks ago, they looked like this, and were totally stemless and budless.

In the last week, they sent up shoots, budded, and bloomed. (I love how the bud structure for each plant looks identical.)

They were looking spectacular on the deck railing, but had to be moved to the table after I woke up this morning and found that they’d launched themselves to the ground. I’m guessing that there was wind and they were just top-heavy enough? Somehow they survived the fall without any apparent injury, but I don’t want them to have to go through another one.

From afar, they’re striking (especially for their height), but up close, they’re spectacular.

(Kevin left his camera at home… When the cat’s away, the mice play with the amazing digital XLRS-or-something. 🙂 fun.)

The best part is that only about a third of the blooms have flowered, so this should be a fun week. I am so, so glad that they decided to bloom before we left for the wedding. To miss this would have been a disappointment.

Container gardening!

I did warn you that the last post was one of many. While my parents were here, we actually got to use the deck, and I remembered what a nice space it is. It didn’t take too, too many days before the project bug bit, and I wheeled the bikes into the living room so that I could reclaim the space, bought planters, soil and dirt and went to work. 🙂

I actually drew out a plan before I started, which was unusual given my normal gardening style, which generally consists of impulse purchases.

(The original plan was on a post-it, but I had airport time and so I made it more computerish.)

I have an entire planter of strawberries, instead of the single plant from last year. (You’ll see a few crocus leaves, too.) I pinched off the first buds on the new plants, which is always hard to me, but I’m going to let them keep any that they put out going forward. There’s already been a good spittle bug showing, but this year I know to pull them off right away.

Most of Kevin’s planters from my birthday last year made it though the winter, but one completely died back. I bought geraniums, a mystery pretty pink thing, and pansies, and now it’s a riot of color.

I bought two starts of lavender to go with my rapidly growing irises. They’re teeny now, but I’m hoping with the big pots, they’ll be happy.

I’d bought lavender the first summer we were out here, and it’s looked more and more pathetic. This winter, I’d finally given it up for dead. I waiting to dig it out, though, and was so pleased when I was about to and instead discovered this!