Planted!

 Nearly all the things got planted the week of May 15-16.   So here's what they looked like then (I am so bad at updating this...)

This first bed is dedicated specifically to the spirits of the land.  You can see the milkweed growing on the left, and I planted goldenrod as well.  The third thing that was going in there I accidentally didn't buy and now I don't know what it was. So stay tuned. There's also a hummingbird feeder in this one but I'm about done with this design.  The humming birds don't seem to see it and it's hard to clean, so now it's all gross and mildewy inside.

Nature Spirits

 This next bed is in the other corner of the house and just by default is dedicated to the ancestors. I'm not sure what else to put in there.  That is a crap ton of sage that is blooming beautifully. There's room for something else behind it (besides the weeds I dug out) and I'm still thinking of what that might be. It gets the fullest sun of all but one bed in the garden.

Ancestors

 This is a bit of the moongarden.  If I remember right, those are some kind of primrose? They come on like gangbusters.  I think we're going to get some fairy houses to put in there, knowing full well the controversy over the nature of the Good People.  I don't think it could to give them some nice houses though, right?

Moon Garden

 First of the food beds, and it's somewhat sparsely planted right now.   One of those is the Lazy Wife beans (no strings) and the other is some sort of dwarf melon.  I have plans to add more beans (good for the soil and the peeps, too!)  but I'm also not sure how much room the melon is going to end up needing.  Up in the top left-ish corner you can see the volunteer chives from last year.

Next bed is all tomatoes all the time.  And I think one of the peppers.  Right now, something is munching on the leaves, so I applied so Neem in the hopes I wasn't too late.

(TBC...I have more pictures but I they won't post for some reason..)

aaaaand....DONE!

Finally!

I had been trying to wait until we had our first fire so we could use the ashes in the Three Sister's Garden, however that was just taking way too long.  So this morning while Jim watered the rest, I raked the dirt where the squirrels and robins had been all in it, and then planted eight kernels of Peaches and Cream sweet corn.  I put a stake near each one so we'd know where they were.  With that everything is done.

As of now, then, everything that was on that list is planted except the moonflowers and calendula.  It looks thusly:

To the very far left are the strawberries, which I have fertilizer and dirt for.  They've already started to produce...over achievers!  To their right I have sweet banana peppers (Jim's request) and green bell peppers, and a whole lot of space.  Not sure what to do with all that, but something will go there.  The middle bed has six remaining of eight pickling cucumbers, and then two zucchini plants.  It very well may also have some space remaining, even though I know how much both of those plants branch out.  On the right side is the tomatoes, where I have two Prudens beefsteaks, two Amish Pastes, and one Black Cherry...because who doesn't want black cherry tomatoes!  I also put the garlic and chives in that one.

That leaves the new bed, which is the Three Sister's bed.  Hopefully, Elsie the Owl will keep the squirrels and birds away from the corn kernels which will hopefully sprout.  The suggestion we got here I just realized I totally did not follow, planting in rows rather than in a circle.  I think I thought each kernal got it's own mound.  Oops.  But, the timing of the things I plan on following so there's that....

Next, I decided to do something with the corn dollies I had made last year and the year before.  I hadn't burned the oldest one yet, so decided they should both go out.  I picked some of the flowers in the yard, and added them, and each one got affixed to a post, one in the Three Sister's garden, and the other in the tomato bed.

I already got a start on this year's with some corn we had on Memorial Day.  Even if we don't get any ears in the ones we planted, maybe we will at least get some stalks so we can make them from our own yard.

And, just for fun, here's a picture of the Butterfly Garden:

The milkweed from last year seems to have taken off (and indeed, can be found in various other places in my yard).  I also planted the tangerine sage there, but all the pretty red blooms fell off, so hopefully more will come back.  I also put the dill there, since some caterpillars like that.

Most of the annual herbs went into containers on the patio, but I decided to try the perennials in the yard.  In the flower garden around the deck I put the chamomile, lavender, and one variety of sage., and then in the matching Garden-To-Be-Named-Later in the other corner, I put the common sage.

I still have more to do, but it's very nice. We have lots of birds at the feeder, and two squirrels (at least).  The birds sing all day and pretty soon the 17-year cicadas will bust out.  It feels very much like being out in the country, even though we are basically in the land of suburban sprawl.  It's actually fairly peaceful, and I can't wait until the deck is done and I can sit there and just observe all the life out there.

First Harvest!

Well, it has actually been happening for a while now, but the zucchini is putting out fruit like you wouldn't believe and they are BIG.  It's like I'll check in the morning, and there are little or no zucchini, and then later I'll look and holy COW!  I anticipate a lot of zucchini bread in my future.

The raspberries have finally started to come in, but this looks like it will be a low harvest year for those.  Strawberries have stopped, but then there was new foliage and new blooms, so perhaps a second harvest on those.  One of the neighborhood kids LOVES strawberries and has occasionally asked to help me pick them, although I haven't seen him since I got back from Starwood.  He is very interested in strawberry jam, however.  We have also gotten about half a serving of green beans.  And there may finally be sprouts on the brussels.

It is time to take in the last of the lettuce, I think and maybe throw some more seeds out to 'see what happens.'  The tomatoes and peppers are getting a slow start, but I anticipate that will fix itself.  Two of the cucumber plants look like they'll not make it and the bean seeds I planted later only yielded two plants that are just kinda...there.  I do still have a pretty bean pyramid structure ready for them, in case they take off.

Tonight, therefore, we'll be celebrating our first harvest, commonly referred to among druidy parts as Lughnasadh.  The calendar says that is on Aug 1, but in keeping with my plan discussed elsewhere of going with the energy of the land, we're doing it today.  I had hoped to time it with the tomatoes or the sunflowers but as those both got in later than anticipated, that may put it after the Equinox! As part of that, we'll be sacrificing last year's Corn Dolly to the fire, and blessing the new one I just finished making.  Here is last year's:

The shawl she has on was one of my first crochet attempts last year.  She's made of corn husks not from corn I grew (because I don't...yet) but from the area.  Ohio is corn country (some call it maize) and so that's what I use.  Because it's for our land, I augmented it with a piece of bean stalk, and some flowers and herbs we're growing.

Here is next year's.  She is unadorned, as of yet.

Hopefully this will bring on the harvest of many things

Janet had a visit with a social worker to get her on a program whereby they will take her to "adult day care" five days a week and maybe get some other assistance.  It's a temporary fix, however, as she continues to decline.  Today was a good day though.  We went to Goodwill so she could drop of clothes, because "Someone else might get some use out of them."  Then to Walgreen's so she could get some Gas X and finally, Tim Hortons.  Coffee and a doughnut has become our thing while running errands.

I sat outside for a bit after dinner, eating my new favorite dessert of cherries and almonds, listening to the birds.  We appear to have a late nest of robins, as a mother (I'm guessing) and juvenile were bipping around the yard.  They need to get on that eating of bugs they are allegedly so good at.

I had hoped she would participate some in the evening festivities, mainly distributing fairies and placing Elsie.  I purchased the fairies when we bought the house and hoped to decorate the yard with them.  Finally the yard feels like a place worth decorating.

I also found a place for Elsie the Owl.  Elsie had been sitting by the backdoor, looking like an extra cat out of the corner of an eye.  Elsie's head also had the eerie habit of spinning around for no damn good reason.  Sure, maybe it was slightly nudged by someone as they walked by, but it just wouldn't stop.   The first time it did that, Jim said, "Oh, that thing needs to GO."  Agreed, and now she's outside where hopefully she can freak out whatever is eating the flowers.

Regardless, Janet didn't feel good, which she blamed on having to take too much insulin (really it's because her glucose is too high, but whatever.  Picking battles.)  Jim came home and ate, we had a fire, we made offerings and got omens.  The wheel keeps turning.

Video tour!

Hopefully!  I'm experimenting with this.  I thought, instead of taking a bunch of pictures...why not video?  So let's see if this works:

I did harvest the broccoli.  The stuff that had NOT gone to seed is about worth MAYBE one salad topping's worth of broccoli, but if I'm right (which I am probably not) there will be more coming.

Spring has sprung! No, this time we mean it!

When we last left our intrepid gardening heroine, she had started some seeds in some pots, being somewhat impatient for the season to start.  A few days ago, this is what those pots look like.

On the left we have two spindly zucchini plants and then a pot of evening primrose that Jim got me because I wanted flowers, dammit.  I need to deadhead them in this picture.  (And...I still do).  In the right tray up top are two very healthy looking cucumber plants, and two yellow squash below those.  The loan pot of dirty has four spinach seeds with only one tiny plant having germinated and made it through the soil.  It hasn't really done much of anything else, so I am thinking those spinach seeds are a bust.

I just checked on the lettuce seeds I sowed during one of the thaws, and there are tiny little sprouts coming up.  I assume they are lettuce plants and not weeds, since they're in a row.  They're all very close together too, which means either I will need to weed them, or I will just let them fight out, and see who survives.  Kind of like Lettuce Highlander.

This past weekend the weather finally broke, and we think for good.  It's still very windy.  On Saturday I asked Janet to go with me to Dills Greenhouse and look for plants.  She said yes, and it ended up being somewhat cold and rainy, of course. Still we muddled through and came home with vegetables!  I got broccoli, brussel sprouts, lettuce, and spinach small plants, and then also some onion starts and a potato start.  Janet insists I did the potatoes wrong last year, and give that we only got about six of them, she's probably right. She has vowed to help me this year.  I also got a small bag of birdseed, then Janet bought me coffee and a doughnut at Tim Horton's on the way home.

Sunday afternoon was planting time.  It felt SO GOOD to get my hands in the dirt, and, predictably, I made a huge mess of myself.  I have probably mentioned before I cook and garden the same way: I get stuff everywhere.  At the end of it though, this is what I got.

(I tried to do a side by side thing with the pictures but it wouldn't let me....)

So, above, we have brussel sprouts and broccoli.  I think the broccoli is on the left.  But I am not sure.  I assume it will become fairly obvious.  Below is spinach (across the top there) and lettuce (along the bottom).

It was at this point that I learned two things.  The first I learned through various people.  While all of the things I planted are indeed "cold weather crops," they are not necessarily frost resistent, and I would still have to watch when we get the inevitable frost.  Apparently they are happy in cold weather but still not resistant unless they are in seed form.  Oh well. They don't look that big in the pictures, however, they were way too big to be hanging out inside in their seed pots until May 15.  

Fortunately Jim was going to be home which mean Jim was going to shopping with Janet at some point.  I asked him to grab me some cheap fitted sheets, queen or king size.  (They would have been going to Odd Lots or the Dollar Store.)  Janet said that wasn't necessary; she had some old sheets I could use.  She insisted on washing them first.  We explained they are just going to be going outside in the garden, but when I got home the next day, there they were.  Washed.  She's adorable.

The other thing I learned was that I had completely misread how many beds I have.  I have one more deepish bed, and still need to plant the things in the pots, the onions and potatoes I had just bought, and then the ubiquitous tomatoes and peppers.  I do have three more pallets, but they're only about three inches deep, if that (and one has my Lettuce Death Match contestants in it).  Although I was able to raise two tomato plants in pallets last year, so maybe they can go there.  Or maybe Jim will build me another bed.

I did this morning thing of a solution for the onions.  My companion planting chart says they will do well with any of the plants I have in there now, so I think I will place them in between the rows.  Maybe I'll grab some more, as twelve onions will NOT last this family long.  

All we are waiting for now is May.  My friend Teresa and I are going to exchange some plants/seeds soon and then everything can go about the business of growing.  Tomorrow is supposed to be very nice so after work I think I will do some major raking of the kindling the neighbors trees have dropped into the yard.

Spring around the corner

It doesn't seem like it though.  I just shoveled the driveway for the third time (total of four, Jim did one).

However, my friend Beth posted a picture of her hand lifting dirt out of a bag to be placed into seed pots, and it looked good.  Really, really good.  A few facebook messages later and I was on my way to her house after work in order to pick up her extra.  We talked gardening for a bit, and she gave me some hints and tips.  She saved her own seeds last year, and I think I might give it a try this year.  We'll be exchanging seedlings if they're successful and we have too many, and also the fruits of our labor (literally!).  This is how you do it people.  We only survive if we cooperate!

As I drove home in the snow, I felt better.  I was practically giddy when I got home.  I had dirt and I wasn't afraid to use it!  After shoveling snow and some coffee, I have liberated some clay pots from the deck, and they are now sitting on the dining room table, melting a bit.  Once it gets melted, I plan to dump it outside, and then get started.  There's a corner of the dining room where a TV tray (or two) can be set up and they can sit there.  It's a bit cool, but they can also get a lot of sunshine there.

Despite my hatred of shoveling, I have come to love winter.  Truly proper winter, with snow.  Not the endless bare and dry and bleak, or worse, ice upon ice.  Winter is hues of blue to me: The bright blue of a frigid clear sky; the deep blue of cloudless night with icy stars; the barely-there blue of piles of snow, which deepens as the sun sets, and fades as it rises.

Once inside, the smell of the jambalaya that had been simmering in the crock pot all morning (with my own tomatoes!), but I dutifully went to get the pots from under the table outside.  Some of them were frozen together and some had snow and ice inside that was not going to just come right out. They are currently thawing on the dining room table, as I said.  I am thinking of starting cucumbers, zucchini, and squash.  I will have to see what packets of seeds are still left.

I thought I'd also share pictures of the Back Forty Feet:

Ironically, this was taken I think two days after my declaration of an early Imbolc.  Mother Nature has a wonderful sense of humor.  I had planned to get close-ups, but changed my mind.  There are actually five beds in the shot.  There's a long pallet that's the left-most rectangle, which has strawberries which, last I could see, still had green leaves on them.  Directly next to that (I guess at kind of a downward angle) is a regular square pallet.  Last year it had two tomato plants and some muskmelon, that was gifted to me.  The muskmelon blossomed but no fruit.  The tomatoes did well.  This year it has my lettuce seeds.  Another gardener friend was doubtful that they'd sprout, since they were only covered with dirt, and now snow.  But, I figure they managed to survive growing kind of like that for millennia before we came along, so we'll just wait and see.

Above those (toward the back of the yard) are the three built beds. The farthest one in the back was the first one. Last year it had potatoes and onions, and then lettuce after that.  The lower left one was tomatoes and bell peppers and the one to the right had beans, zucchini, squash, and failed cucumbers.  They grew and vined and blossomed, but no fruit.

In the back corner are the raspberries.  Yes, you can also see the compost bin I still haven't quite figured out, and then the wheelbarrow that "someone" left out.  It has the remains of our topsoil from last year in it.  You can also see our fire pit and altar/bench/table (it serves many purposes).

This be the small herb portion on the deck.  Dead basil, and possibly not-so-dead rosemary and lavender. The two smaller pots are the ones I got to put parsley and dill in for the caterpillers I found.  Next year, we have plans for a butterfly garden, and the parsley and dill will go in there..

Not seen on your tour here:  apple tree that I was told wouldn't produce apples, but happily does, and the totally out of control mint plant.

Now I am eating the aforementioned jambalaya (which could be spicier), the spouse is home, the electric fireplace is on and I'm getting ready for the next week at school.  More snow is being called for