Spring Catch Up

Hearts and Flowers....Forest Pansy Redbud
The vegetable garden has had it's share of gains and losses...spinach was a bust, but the tomatoes , onions, garlic and kale look great! All the arugula went to seed immediately, now I'll have it every where! Here are community pots of leeks, sweet onions, alpine strawberries and ruffled pansies for a co-worker
Catsup Bottle (or is it Ketchup?)
"Natural" terrarium I found in the woods...one of two
I'm afraid I'm not super human, so far from it! I've been so busy outside that the idea of taking the time to blog about my gardening and farm ventures seems irrational to me....! I'm out till' dark most evenings, enjoying the kaleidoscope of nature before me. The never ending planting and weeding just fill all my extra time. The house is dusty, and many garden areas have weeds still to be pulled, but new things have gone in, and old friends are blooming and growing like crazy.


I took many early spring walks, going places that now would be impossible with ticks and wild plant growth. On one such outing, I found an old dumping site from many years ago, mostly barbed wire and farm refuse, but these bottle gardens caught my eye, growing here for many, many years. Sometimes a beautiful thing can generate from pure trash. I try to wrap my mind around the tragic disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most fertile coast lines in the world...what beauty will come of that? and how far off ?? ever?

Spring Pleasures

Wishing everyone a splendid Spring holiday, happy planting!
An unusual dwarf double Daffodil, not RipVan Winkle...more green and delicate..
click any photo to enlarge...
Honey Bees feeding on a Japanese variegated Butterbur bloom...
The Memorial Tree for Marie Thompson Morley, my mother. Planting the bulbs with her ashes was my idea, but my mom always wanted to be buried with a nut tree to feed wildlife and foster a healthy environment. I just added the bulbs as a reminder and a tribute to an amazing woman, her pursuit of knowledge never left her, nor did her reflection of the world through poetry and the written word.She loved maps, languages, travel...her dogs, and those that understood her.This spectacular Burr Oak is at least two hundred years old, most likely older. It's sited at the highest point at Hiddenfield farm.
The Memorial Tree for Dorothy Donovan Lusk, my amazing Godmother.It's taken a few years for the bulbs to multiply, and I've added more as well. I love to think of her ashes nourishing the living world, and being part of it. This is a magnificent Chinkapin Oak, one of our most beautiful native Oaks...they have a graceful, atmospheric character. The living ring of flowers is about thirty feet across, and will get thicker every year.
Since my last post, we've had two major snow storms blanket the area. I love snow, and we never get enough to give a good cover for the garden...but this year has been amazing! I wonder if it's over, we often get late freak storms...and this year will be a doozy, I'm sure of that. I had just sheared my Boxwood at the front of my house when the weather started to change. When I woke up, everything was iced and perfect.

This has been one of the busiest times I can remember...I feel pulled in so many directions, but I always have my head in the garden! How can it all get done?, I'm still cleaning up from one of the worst winters we've had here in the Midwest, and I think we had it good, compared to everyone else! The chicken coop has been scraped clean, putting every bit all over the vegetable garden, as well as the more ornamental areas. I never clean up the majority of the garden until Spring, I like to give lots of foraging possibilities around for wildlife, as well as over Wintering sites for butterflies and other insects, like Praying Mantis.

The Charms of a Golden Dragon

"Golden Dagon" pale and fragrant...
the next flower cluster...
a miniature Cattleya hybrid, just the right size!
there are seedlings EVERYWHERE!
Two years ago, I received a fantastic gift of a "Golden Dragon" Clivia. I had bloom the first year, and selfed the plant to produce a berry cluster, eventually turning red when ripe. I had moved all my Clivias into the cold greenhouse for a "chill out" period, but unfortunately, it got really cold in there! I have residual heat from the passive solar nature of the structure, but after several cold gloomy days, a sudden drop in the outside temperature was a bad thing in the greenhouse! All the most tender plants had been cosseted in the house, under lights...but I like to let the Clivias stay relatively dry and cold for the first part of the Winter. Not that cold! I'm not sure what the temperature got down to, but when I saw the dull look of frost burned leaves I rushed all of them into the house for safe keeping. I ended up having to cut ninety percent of the leaves of of all the plants...scalped! They did survive, and low and behold, two started to bloom-my "Golden Dragon" and a nice deep orange Civia minata. I'm not sure weather the yellow- selfed cross seeds will make it, they went through the freeze as well...but I've crossed the deep orange one to the gold one to see what I get, hopefully a deeper yellow and better foliage size and shape. The nice surprise with the "Golden Dragon" is the addition of a sweet fragrance that the orange forms don't seem to have, at least with my plants.

All the orchids are going into bloom, an embarrassment of riches. This little Cattleya-Sophro-hybrid was picked up at a box store....no label, but it's a gem of a plant, and it's miniature size makes it fit in well with a mixed collection of plants. everything is starting to respond to the longer days, there is hope after all!

This time of year, I go seed crazy. I have my local haunts, as well as the amazing on line selections....I really have to watch myself, so as not to "go overboard...!" I just can't avoid buying certain seeds, Sweet Peas in particular. I could be addicted to worse things!