First Harvest

Early on, I planted broccoli and cauliflower, onions and rainbow chard. The broccoli and cauliflower had cabbage worms, and so the harvest is (literally) spotty. I cut off the big broccoli heads but left the plants. Last year, I had a great harvest from side shoots on the broccoli. I harvested one of my two cauliflowers (the whole plant came out). Both the broccoli and cauliflower were past their prime, and chewed on, so I put them in the pressure cooker with onions and a can of tomatoes, to make a soup base for later.

The onions kind of melted away into the soil. I dug up what was left of them, but there was nothing to eat.

The chard, on the other hand, is doing great! I harvested the outer leaves, which had some holes, but were basically ok. I left the chard plants in place to fill out for another harvest. I cut up the chard, stems and leaves separately, and with bacon, an onion, a can of diced tomatoes, and a dash of balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese it was dinner, with plenty of leftovers.

I finally set out some zucchini plants I had bought, and seeded some tiny watermelon plants. I have some summer-weight floating row cover that I put over the zucchini and will put over the watermelon when it comes up. "Squash vine borer" is an early season hazard to these squash family plants, and I'm hoping to deter the egg laying with a physical barrier. 

I had started lettuce, arugula, chard, basil and cilantro from seeds, and I finally set out the little plants in parts of the vegetable patch that is not currently filled with other plants. I figure they can be harvested to make room for the growing zucchini, should I be so lucky.

I've got three tomato plants in pots, and so far they seem to be doing great. I washed the pots and supports with a dilute bleach solution, and put fresh potting soil in the top third of each pot. So I've at least postponed the effects of the tomato virus, though it's far too early to declare victory. The pots are all near my driveway, but separate from each other, and off the normal deer thoroughfare through my yard. So far so good.

The Voice of the Cicada is Heard through the Land

It's cicada mania time! We are big fans of the little guys. I've got little holes all through my yard where they've tunneled up, and then they shed their skins and head for the tops of trees. At mid-day on warm days, there is a hum in the background - not actually loud enough to compete with a conversation, but clearly there. Bixby, the fraidy-dog, had to cautiously explore. But now, he's enjoying playing with them on the ground. So far, I haven't noticed him eating them.

Seventeen years ago, we celebrated big time. My sister got tshirts for the kids. We had a barbecue at my house and everybody tried a grilled cicada. My sister had in her head that she wanted to grab and grill some at an upcoming office picnic, and she thought she needed to rehearse, to see if it would actually work. So we all tried them. Charred, with hot sauce and salt, with a big beer chaser, I got one mostly down, but it wasn't an experience I am likely to repeat.

Never in a million years could we have pictured, in 2004, what we would be in 2021. We have such a big hole where my sister should be, and yet we are so blessed. And never could we have forecast how the kids turned out. Take a look at those three, and pick the most likely to be working for the Defense Department, for example!

So I had to do Tshirts, of course, and we had a smaller family celebration.

Where will we be in 2038? Will the cicadas adapt to the new, warmer and more volatile world we'll be living in?

Oasis

Here’s the entrance to the private part of my garden.

 I love my yard! I love that I can just hang out there - the weather and the bugs have cooperated a lot so that just sitting or even napping on my little private patio is the best!  I’ve even fallen asleep out there at night, reluctant to go to bed. And the first cup of coffee in the morning is often out there - hence the blanket. The chaise and cushion is absolutely the best investment ever!  

In the winter and spring the patio is sunny in the mornings, but now with leaves out it is always shady and thus mostly cool.

Here is my little outdoor sanctuary, 
With indoor plants enjoying a summer vacation
And my potting bench

My guys like it too

Rose Tree

This is not actually a “rose tree”. I planted a climbing rose under my pagoda dogwood - I may not have realized at the time it was a climbing type, instead of a bush rose. Under the tree, which grows a foot or so a year lately, it has been shaded. But nature finds a way, and its top tendrils have climbed up to find the sun. My initial reaction, as the branches between the rose and tree were weaving together, was to cut the rose back. But why? Let it find the sun! I like it!

In other news, I have roses everywhere. It’s a good year for them!

Editing

I love clematis. My fence allowed
me to add several around.

Things are of course progressing apace in the garden. I've mowed the lawn twice already - and the second time, it was too long to mulch, I had to bag and compost to avoid having it mat down and kill the other stuff. I started seeds, some veggies and annual flowers, from scratch. Until just now, it was too early to plant tomatoes and other tender things outside, but it's time to get going on that now. 

I'm starting to get an idea of how I want the yard and the gardens to evolve. I've got several distinct areas on my corner lot - inside the fence front and back, outside the fence front and side and back. I've got a few ambitious ideas I have made little progress on. But I've decided that "gardens" will be in the front - inside and outside the fence - and the rest will have smaller raised beds and containers to be planted, with the balance lower maintenance grasses and shrubs. And in the gardens, I intend to be very dense with plants, so that there is not so much area for weeds to take hold. I am thinking about views from inside the house and from seating areas outside. 

A collection from the longest-planted part.

Some of this thinking has grown from the way my oldest garden - the shady front inside the fence - has evolved. I started twenty years ago, a less affluent novice, putting in single plants, or sometimes going all the way to three at a time. Now, those individuals have either died off or proliferated. Most of my time inside the fence is editing. I either weed something out completely, or, often, serve as a referee for a border dispute between types of plants. I like having a patch of something, though they are often interwoven. But every year, something takes off and doesn't play nicely with the others and it has to be pulled out. Not necessarily excluded from the garden entirely - I actually spend some time moving things around. The entrepreneurial aggressive plant of the year differs year to year - a few years back it was Joe Pye weed, this year it's green-and-gold, weaving a complex pattern of sprawling stems along the ground. 

Golden groundsel

My current thinking is something that likes my garden well enough to be a thug probably can find a place where I'm fine if it just takes over. I'll leave it there, and try to police it's ventures elsewhere. But where it is, it becomes much less work. A good example is golden groundsel (Packera aurea). I added a few to a shady, damp spot a while ago. It took off and took over, both seeding nearby and spreading. I'm ripping it up inside the fence, but outside the fence (and downhill) it is also thriving. It has these composite yellow flowers for a long time in the late winter and spring. The rest of the time, it is a decent less than 6-inch groundcover. It will stabilize the steep slope, as long it is thriving. Outside the fence, I'll do almost nothing to it.

 

This moss phlox requires full sun,
scarce around here. This patch is huge!

 

Known as flea bane, this wildflower showed up.
It's welcome some places, not in others.
But it's easy to pull up.

 

This is green-and-gold, where it can stay on the steep slope.

Changes Every Day

Apple and redbud,
view from my bedroom window

This time of year, the garden changes fast. Especially on a warm and sunny day, I can see changes from morning to evening. Because so much of my yard is shady, plants have to hurry up and perform before all the leaves are out, shutting out the smaller plants' view of the sun. Everywhere I look, there is something unfolding that enthralls me. Just standing and looking is very rewarding. And I have the ability to focus on an exquisite lovely little detail, and ignore a bigger picture that shows trash or trash plants right next to the little thing I'm admiring. My yard contains many little vignettes, no sweeping vistas.

Rocky enjoying the tulips
(the tulips possibly enjoying him less)

Everywhere I look, there is something that needs plucking out, cutting back, or just edited in some way. I will set out on a project, and as I gather my tools and prepare to start, I catch a noxious weed out of the corner of my eye. It's like someone calls "squirrel" to my fierce dog Abbey (long deceased). Carrying out a project from beginning to end will be filled with digressions, which might be why each task seems to take twice as long as I planned.

Front yard before it's fully shady

Carolina silverbell and tulips

Bluebells and anemones

So I plug along, filling a big brown yard waste bag a day, taking out much more than I add back. And in a month or so, I'll be able to stop and smell my roses along the way!

What's Been Happening in the Garden?

Well, quite a lot has been happening in the garden. I jot some notes down as I go, but I'm not meticulously recording everything.

Early spring is all purple crocus
and yellow daffodils

This time of year, there is an enormous amount of work to do, but also I can enjoy the fruits of previous years' work. Since last I wrote in February, we've been through the extra-early witch-hazel and winter jasmine, and early to late crocuses. Daffodils are mid-season now, and the first tulips are showing color rather than foliage. (Two of the hellebores I transplanted last year are doing very well in the front bed along the house. I think I transplanted more than two, but I'm satisfied that at least two made it.)  Little plants are sprouting up everywhere, and I'm trying to remember what they will become. The redbuds and serviceberries have just started to bloom, and the dead leaves are almost down from the pin oak on the corner. Now is the beginning of the native spring ephemerals, quickly making chlorophyll and flowers and seeds before their associated native trees leaf out and shade them back into senescence. The virginia bluebells, the most showy example of these, are doing ok, but may not match the displays of some other years.

In early March, suddenly the weather turned nice, and we had two straight weeks of nice warm and sunny days - with no rain. It's not great to go that long without rain, but it sure was nice to haul the porch furniture cushions out and not have to pull them back in for many days in the row. Of course, the warm weather got me moving outside. I'm not sure, looking around, I have a lot to show for my efforts, but efforts there have been. Most of it, so far, has been cleanup and weeding, so not so dramatic as planting new things. 

I did, on impulse, buy some cold season vegetables and put them into the back vegetable bed. I haven't

Bloodroot - spring ephemeral

yet put up the net guard on that back bed. I planted four rows of vegetables in half the bed: onions, broccoli, chard, and some miniature chinese cabbage. Oddly, about two weeks later, the broccoli row was empty - something came through and ate just that. I need new plants to fill in that gap.

At the same time, I bought pansies - several different shades of purple. I put them in the pots on the corner, and as has happened before, something came by and uprooted some of the plants, leaving them lying on top of the soil with the roots exposed. I suspect deer are the culprits in both the missing broccoli and the uprooted pansies, though I haven't eliminated squirrels and rabbits as suspects.

I planted grass seed last year in the back yard, and for a while it seemed I might actually have a lawn in the back. But then, streaks of it yellowed and died. Now I have many spots of dirt in between actual grass. My research suggests a virus, but there wasn't much guidance about how to defeat it without spreading nasty chemicals. I also have some bare spots where my big dog pees multiple times a day. I did add some new topsoil to some low and bare spots, and then overseeded the whole area. That was just a few days ago, and I have no baby grasses sticking up yet, but I remain hopeful. I have to water at least twice a day now until the babies establish, or I declare the area dead. I have another area I want to dig up, add new topsoil, level out and seed, but it's a big job. I keep adding to the job, potentially making it bigger, by thinking about digging really deep and burying some drain pipes to be a dry well, as this is the low spot where the water accumulates before it finally surges over the edge and down the hill into my neighbor's basement.

I bought my first batch of perennials this week, and today's plans include planting them. I'm trying to hold off buying more until I get these planted. I do have a history of overbuying, and not getting them all in before they die. But first, I have to weed the places I intend to put them. 

The Grill-to-be

I've also bought things. My gas grill has been broken (sometimes usable) for two years, and two years of youtube fixit videos and spare parts finally made me give up in frustration. But the new one I bought came in a big, 175 pound box. I managed to wheel the box on a dolly to near where it was to go, and then it took many many hours to put it together. On my birthday, I went to Ikea (celebrating fully vaccinated!) and bought their only briefly available garden furniture - I suspect this stuff will be much easier to get together.