A Harvest Lunch

Monday was my first day at home after a week of travel.  Faced with an empty fridge, I went foraging for lunch.

I found peas ready for harvest:

Some should have been picked a few days before, but none were too big to eat.  About half of these became Monday's lunch, with a side of strawberries.

The berries didn't last long enough to be put in a bowl, but here's a photo pre-trip (and pre squirrel-netting).

(I might have had the same lunch every day this week.  I'm not telling.)

Late-April Blooms

I love wandering through the yard this time of year.  When I take a break from weeding/prepping/planting to look at what nature is doing without my intervention, it really is astounding.  There is something new to look at every day.  Here's proof:  fourteen days since my April Bloom Day post, and I have more than fourteen new blooms to show off.

1.  Irises. Each morning I've been running out to see if a new one is open.  So far, four different bearded irises have opened their buds.

2.  Centaurea (bachelor buttons).  Shown here with white bleeding hearts.

3.  Dicentra eximia (wild bleeding hearts).

4.  Spanish bluebells.  I have these all over the yard.  They're rather weedy (they'll grow anywhere), but so cheerful while in bloom.

5.  Camassia.  This is their second year.  I bought the bulbs on a whim, not really knowing what they were.  Took a chance and planted them right in the middle of the front border, where they've been quite showy.

6.  Phlox.  I've already shown off the moss phlox to the right of the tulips, but now the woodland phlox between the tulips is in full bloom.  It is unfortunate that the colors are so close, so they seem to run together. 

7.  Blueberries.  I bought a second blueberry shrub two weeks ago (to replace one that didn't survive my "you're in the ground, now you're on your own" maintenance scheme), so maybe this year I'll get berries.  For now, the flowers are cute.

8.  Columbine (Aquilegia) - three types.

 

 

 

9.  Blue flax (Linum perenne ssp. lewisii).  The truest blue in my garden.

10.  Rosemary.

 11.  Pasque flower.

 12.  Geranium.

13.  Strawberries.  I'll need to put up the critter netting soon, I think.

 14.  Ajuga.  Bought a year ago, planted Friday. 

  
15.  Nepeta (catmint).  I have two of these, not the same variety.  This one is in full bloom, the other hasn't started yet.

16.  Viburnum.  Just barely.  Of course it is also just barely a shrub, at under two feet tall.

17.  Carolina Jessamine.  Growing on the chain link fence around my vegetable garden.  I planted this quite a few years ago.  It has flowered sparingly the last few years, but is (finally) rather showy this year.  Now if only I could get it to grow laterally, to cover more of the fence, rather than up into the neighboring rose of sharon.

Seventeen types of flowers (and 22 different blooms) opening up in two weeks.  Now I just need more time to enjoy them.

January 2013 Blooms: Unseasonable

Before I post February Blooms, let's go back and look at what was happening in mid-January:

What's blooming in January?  Nothing "seasonal", that's for sure.

First, the rue has never stopped blooming:

Along the curb, this anemone is determined to be the first "spring" bulb to bloom.  Not crocus or snowdrops, but anemone.

Over in the side yard, what is this oddity?

Yep, a single dogwood bract.  In January.

 I think my "everbearing" strawberries have taken their name too literally.

Finally:  not a bloom, but noteworthy in this unseasonal post.  The weeping Japanese maple is still holding onto its leaves.  What a wierdo.

October 2012 Blooms

Bloom Day was Monday, I took pictures Wednesday, and am finally posting Sunday.  Oh, well.  Here's what's blooming on the Crest in mid-October.

(Wednesday was a beautiful, bright, sunny day, so the photos are a bit flat and washed out.)

Mums:  some in the ground, some I planted in a pot several years ago:

Asters.  The New York asters and smooth asters are done, but these Tatarian asters are in full bloom.  Most are flopping, but I found some photogenic straight specimens.

In the still-going category, Lespedeza is still putting on a show in the front, and the sedum have gotten rather dark:

 

And in the "what season is it?" bucket, the zinnia along the front walk still think it's summer, while the pink penstemon and strawberries have gone back to springtime.

 

In the strawberries' defense, they are 'everbearing'.  They just too a long summer hiatus.

Not too bad for October.

Strawberries

Over two months ago, I started this post about strawberries.  I blame my lack of blogging over the last two months on this unfinished post.  For some reason, in my mind, I couldn't appropriately blog about much else until I finished this strawberry post.  For example, there's a plum post coming (if only in my head).  But everyone knows one cannot post about plums until one posts about strawberries.  Right?  Well, maybe.  So here goes:

Last year I purchased and planted some everbearing strawberry plants.  I could have gone with a well-favored named variety, but my frugal nature won out.  You see, these plants, named only "everbearing strawberries", were about a dollar cheaper per pot than the named berries.  What's a dollar (or five in my case, as I bought five pots)?  Not much in the grad scheme of the garden, until I noticed the (cheap) pots actually contained two plants per pot.  There went my plan to buy the "good" plants.  These would do, especially since I had no idea whether strawberries would "do" in my yard at all. 

Yes, I did know strawberries run, and that I would have been just fine buying only five of those other plants because they would have muliplied enough to fill the bed by this second year.  But at that particular moment I wanted the instant gratification of berries the same year.

In went the plants, next to the weeping maple and just downhill from the dwarf blueberries.  They made a few berries last year (eaten by squirrels, birds and voles), and put out lots of runners, to try to take over those blueberries.  I got zero berries for myself, but spent lots of effort reigning in the spread of the berries.

On to 2012.  This spring I made sure the plants weren't crowding each other out, then let them do their thing.  They flowered in early spring and made little green fruits: 

And then the berries started to ripen:

I was not about to let all the critters get to my berries before me this year.  Since there were only a few berries ripening at this point, and I didn't yet have a fencing scheme planned, I tried protecting just the few berries I had:

Yes, that's a leg of hosiery wrapped around the berry cluster.  It worked well, allowing the berries to ripen in safety.

Those were some tasty berries!

There were several problems with this method, however.  First, it would be very labor intensive to put every ripening berry into a stocking-guard.  Second, I found that while the berries were in the stocking I couldn't really tell if they were ripe.  So I had to pull them out to take a look, then put them back in.  I was very concerned about bruising the fruit in the process.

So I got out the bird netting and draped it over the berries, securing it to the ground around the edges with a combination of landscape staples and bricks.  My first attempt was a failure, as I found the next set of ripe berries munched away before I got to them.

I found the hole in my barrier and staked it closed.  Success!  Soon I was eating berries for breakfast every day.

(A note about 'everbearing' strawberries:  while they do continue to bear fruit throughout the summer, they still produce a flush of berries in the spring, just as the june-bearing plants do.  Since my netting scheme made weeding nearly impossible, I removed the netting after the major crop was finished. I'll let the critters eat the later fruits.)