our maine home – zone 5b
The garden turned a corner in the last day or two from really half-hearted, barely making it, to growing too fast to keep up with. Lots of rain, interspersed with a day or two of sunshine and no real heat yet to speak of. These photos were taken late in the day, 7 pm or thereabouts, so the garden appears somewhat gloomy.
Lilacs are blooming everywhere, and while I’ve always loved lilac, they seem too civilized, predictable, tame. Here’s some more interesting flowers that caught my eye lately.
I’m very happy to have this photo of blue-eyed grass. I spotted it next to a rock in the herb border. The blue is so beautiful and the stems are so oddly flat. The next day the blooms were dried up.
This is blooming all along the roadsides. My PlantSnap app identifies it as American beech. But I’m skeptical about that. Will keep an eye on it.
Finally the lovely iris blooming in the field.
I’m planning a dye garden this year. The seeds are from Grand Prismatic Seed in Utah, except for the garland serrated chrysanthemum which are from Fedco.
These were planted in soil blocks in May 31. None of the Navajo Tea have sprouted yet. Only one cosmos, and only two hollyhocks.
I’m going to plant the marigolds in the main garden, and maybe the cosmos, for their gladdening effect (and pest deterrence). I wish I could get more marigolds and cosmos, maybe I will direct seed them in the herb garden. The four Hopi Black Dye sunflowers are going along the north border. The others are going into two rehabilitated raised beds that I dug free of quack grass and amended with leaf mulch.
For future reference, here’s a blog post from Grand Prismatic about dyeing with some of these plants: https://www.grandprismaticseed.com/blog/2019/5/1/shirt-of-many-colors.
Sam transplanted 38 tomato seedlings under cattle panel trellises this afternoon. They look really good.
Timeline:
Why is this turkey hen perched up there eyeing my garden?
I’m trying to identify more plants growing in my area. Starting with this tree, which I love to see in bloom. I realized we have a little nursery of young ones (also blooming) inside our garden fence behind the shed.
The guide “Forest Trees of Maine” says about this tree:
…not used commercially and has little value except as a protection and cover for the soil on recent clearings or burned areas.
It’s been a cold wet spring. The garden is doing okay, but lagging a bit from last year I think.
There’s more growing in the vegetable garden but it’s too small to be very photogenic: carrots, parsnips, cabbage, summer squash, cucumber, peas, and asparagus.
Thirty-nine tomato seedlings waiting for planting! Plus fennel, cukes, more cabbage, tomatillos, more winter squash, corn, pole beans and dye flowers.
No pictures, but lots of onion family planted there.
Every year I order seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm. I could probably get them cheaper, but these are very high quality seed potatoes and I like to support this very pro-organic family-owned company, located way out in Bridgewater, Maine.
This year’s order:
Experimenter’s Special
One pound of Russian Banana Fingerlings
To arrive the beginning of May.
Snow is falling thickly and drifting off the trees periodically in great puffs of white powder.
I’m not thinking about plants or gardening.
I’ve been doing a lot of stitching, some drawing and painting, making some books, reading some books.
Walking in the winter weather. Taking care of the chickens.
It’s been a quiet, peaceful time.
When we return from South Africa in early April, it will be time to plant in earnest.
Henry David Thoreau:
January 29, 1854
A very cold morning. Thermometer, or mercury, 18º below zero.
January 30, 1854
This morning, though not so cold by a degree or two as yesterday morning, the cold has got more into the house, and the frost visits nooks never known to be visited before… The winter, cold and bound out as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it…the winter was not given to us for no purpose. We must thaw its cold with our genialness.
I knew a crazy man who walked into an empty pulpit one Sunday and, taking up a hymn-book, remarked: “We have had a good fall for getting in corn and potatoes. Let us sing Winter.” So I say, “Let us sing winter.” What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season?
—from Henry David Thoreau,
The Journal 1837–1861