Was it a good year for gardening? Nah. It was hot, it was humid, and oh, stuff happened. It rained constantly, was always raining. Three straight months of complaining, oh my god, the complaining. Please shut up with the complaining. (Whispers: sorry, that was me.) Plants don’t sweat, wear bras, […]
A few of this summer’s visitors to the flowers–working on getting better at identifying pollinators and beneficials. (Click in to navigate through large images.)
Four pounds of currants and twelve beautiful scarlet jars of jelly (from The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving) to give out at Christmas time. I saved the schmutz from the juice making and added it to a bottle of vodka; so far it’s just a pretty pink color so […]
Glorious in the garden right now. It has its moments, and it definitely has its moments where nothing much is going on and there’s like two things in bloom and they’re being eaten by army worms or Japanese beetles but then there are these moments like this one in mid-August, […]
Non-stop rain and the mushrooms are standing up to salute their good fortune. There are so many chanterelles it’s possible to casually make soup, as if it is routine to go and grab handfuls of chanterelles from the woods on a whim, to make soup for dinner. The ‘grabbing’ is […]
Harvested three pounds of currants and first chanterelles and black trumpets of the yesterday. Planted seeds: daikon, romaine, chard, beets, scallions, mizuna. Started seeds in flat for fall crop: broccoli and broccoli raab; some form of bok choy; something else that I am forgetting… Propagating cuttings of: Jackmanii clematis, aralia, […]
Or the progeny of Fountain Frog. Or just a random passing frog.
Fountain is set up. If the missus and the mister or whatever they are are hibernating beneath the whiskey barrel fountain, the water is ready for them.
I grow a lot of daffodils–I wasn’t always a fan, but they don’t get eaten by rabbits or deer (no tulips here). They can be used to prevent voles from eating root systems of other plants. Hellebores work well for that purpose too, in shady areas.