Vegetable Garden Tour

Why is it that I never have enough room in my garden? I have the same problem each year, and I thought the problem would be solved by moving out to the country and plowing up space for a huge garden. This year's garden is the biggest garden I have ever had, I and still don't have enough room.

Though, the other question that I suppose needs to be asked is why do I feel the need to grow 22 different varieties of tomatoes? If I didn't need to grow 22 different varieties of tomatoes, I might have room for everything thing else I think I should be growing. (20 varieties are in the ground--but I have seemed to run out of room to  put the Amish Paste and Cour de Boeuf tomato plants--not to mention that I still have sweet corn, more green beans, peppers, eggplants, beets, and  more to get in the ground!.)

Whatever my problem is, I'm starting to realize that it isn't going to be solved by  simply plowing up more garden space...more garden space just means that I will need to start growing twenty different kinds of lettuce and goodness knows what else.

Enough of my problems--on to a quick garden tour!

Looking North-East...

6 different varieties of garlic...

Summer cabbage (in between apple tree seedlings and surrounded by California poppies that are just getting ready to bloom.)

Red romaine lettuce interplanted with daffodils and potatoes.

Spinach, interplanted with green beans and daffodils.

Potatoes in mulch (I wonder if I am growing way too many potatoes--we have four long rows this year--in any case there is going to be lots of picking of Colorado potato beetles.)

One of three long rows of tomatoes.

The garden looking south west. You can see raspberries, rhubarb (which is getting choked by the raspberries), strawberries (which my free range chickens have decided they love and of which they ate every single last ripe one today--I don't think they are going to be free ranging for the rest of the strawberry season!), some random beds of things like carrots, beets, kale, and and perennial flowers, then off in distance the long row of garlic.

I do also have melons, cucumbers, more cabbage, Brussel sprouts, onions, and a long row of sunflowers coming up.

Still need to plant sweet corn, pumpkins (they are getting a separate patch this year), squash, fall beets and carrots, peppers, eggplant, and probably some other vegetables that are slipping my mind right now.

So that is how my garden is growing right now. How is yours doing?

Linked to Farm Girl Friday blog hop.

Early Morning Magic

In the garden

whispers from the night

are left among the beans

fairy umbrellas fade

as the sun grows bright.

One Day Old

Two of the newest additions to our flock of laying hens.

Linked to Macro Monday.

Swan Family

Blue Mist

I like my irises old fashion and delicate--the kind that have blossoms that resemble a butterfly about to take off in flight. I'm not a big fan of the new fangled large irises that look like poofy party dresses. This large light blue iris though will stay in my garden--even if it does look like a party dress. I don't know the name of it or even remember where I got it from. I do believe that "Blue Mist" would be the perfect name for it, though.

Morning Sunlight

Morning sunlight on giant allium flowers.

Linked to Macro Monday.

Solved! The Mystery of the Dying Flowers

Last week I finally figured out why nothing has grown well in this garden since we moved here. I would plant flowers and they would turn yellow and die. All I could do was wonder why.

Turns out the little flower garden has been getting a weekly dose of concentrated bleach water. Well, that explains a lot!  (The chlorinated water is a by product of our water system that has to be serviced weekly. Unbeknown to me, each week the bleach water was being tossed out the door on to the flower beds.)

So now that I know what the problem it (and have established strict rules for where the bleach water may be put in the future--hello, gravel driveway!), we are starting over with the flower garden:

I tore out a lot of dead and ailing plants and dug out a good deal of the soil and replaced it with fresh, uncontaminated soil. 



Fresh perennials went in as wells as some annuals.

 I filled some pots with violas to add color and height to the back of the garden--and so that I would have something to put on the two old milk cans we dug out of our woods the first summer we moved in.

I am hoping in a month or two that I will be able to post photos of a lush green garden filled with color (instead of the mostly dead or yellow plants I have had in the past couple of years!) And I am very happy that the mystery of the dying flowers has been solved.

A Flower Garden Makeover

The little flower garden enclosed by a white picket fence in front of our house has been sorely neglected since we moved in 3 years ago. This spring I decided it needs a makeover. It has so much potential to be a sweet little cottage garden. You can follow along with its progress on Dandelion Haven's facebook page.

(The fence "before" any work was done.)

(Rocks and weeds cleared away and getting ready to strip, prime, and paint.)

A Glimpse of the Garden

Baby Spinach growing between rows of daffodils in the vegetable garden.

Village Midwife

Village Midwife. Photo taken in the mountains of Honduras by Peggy Goetz.

Your days and nights are spent
In the precarious dance between life and death
That poverty brings to women in childbirth
You are intimate with joy and sorrow
Ancient earth wisdom lines your brow
You know where the healing herb grows
You know how to rend secrets from the earth
To ease pain, speed birth, stay the hemorrhage
You understand that the earth mother
Who gave us flesh, can be tender
 But also brutal and relentlessly cruel
You are strong in tenderness, brave in compassion
You endure in sorrow, in the senseless dying
You comfort the mother who gives birth to empty arms,
The young father who has lost his life's companion
You rejoice in the beauty of new life
Where there is frailness and fear you bring hope
You carry the strength of generations of women
Rooted deep in the wisdom of the earth

Linked to Real Toads. Stop over there for a moment and be awed by the timeless beauty in the faces of grace filled and strong women in several different cultures, photographed by Peggy Goetz.

Identity

Little girl fettered by invisible chains

hedged in on all sides

by a prison laid stone by stone

of false doctrines of men

life decided for her

no room to breathe or be

breaking free into the sunlight

into the wings of the wind

searching, seeking, growing

soul taking root in sacred soil

finding identity not in men

but as one beloved by the Creator

Linking to five minute Friday.

(The prompt today is identity.)

Turkey Eggs and Trilliums

I was out in the woods this morning pulling the never ending garlic mustard (what else does a person do on her day off in the middle of May?) and nearly stepped on a nesting wild turkey. It gave us both a good scare as she flew off. I quickly snapped a few photos of her dozen speckled eggs then left the woods, hoping that I didn't scare her off for good. This is one place where the rest of the garlic mustard won't get pulled this spring!

I'm loving watching our trillium turn from white to pink--and once again thankful for the cool weather that is prolonging the blooms (and making it more comfortable to work outside!).

And this morning, a non-tattered red admiral sat still on a dried oak branch long enough for me to snap a few photos...

In other news, I have bluebirds nesting in the bluebird box (house sparrows have taken up residence the past two springs). Now if I can just keep the raccoons from discovering the nest and eating all the eggs...

The Beauty of Dandelions...

The  beauty of dandelions

is that they bloom twice.

First as golden stars,

then as silver moons.

(And then they give birth

to a million tiny comets)

Tattered Red Admiral

We have hundreds of red admiral butterflies this spring. On warmer days there are clouds of them in our yard. Apparently the warmer winter and early spring provided the perfect environment for the caterpillars and hibernating butterflies to survive.

Mayapple Blossom

Linked to Macro Monday.

Dream Woods

Digging myself out from under a massive pile of garlic mustard to post some photos of a neighboring woods....the kind of woods I hope to have myself sometime in the future. A woods filled with Trillium grandiflorum as far as eye can see with not a single garlic mustard plant to found:

Now, excuse me as I head back out to my woods to pull more garlic mustard, so that my dreams of having a woods that is carpeted with trillium's (with a few jack in the pulpit thrown in for good measure) from edge to shining edge can come true.

(And this a great article if you ever wanted to know what it takes to encourage trillium in your woods.)