Indoor Gardening

Just after planting. This also provides a
handy under-cabinet light down at the dark end of the kitchen

Two weeks ago I started up my automated hydroponic countertop garden again. I planted lettuce in the unit on the left, and herbs (mostly basil) in the unit on the right. Now, just two weeks later, I ate my first lettuce! I love this!

One of the online gardening groups I belong to had a memorable (to me) post from a woman who lives on one of the Arctic islands in the Canadian archipelago that is in the Northwest Territories. She was so excited to be able to grow fresh vegetables year round! In her tiny village, they will go weeks at a time with no flights in the winter, when they are icebound and isolated. How cool is this!

Ripe for first picking! Two weeks!

Ready to stuff into my pita sandwich

Final Harvest

I finally harvested my chard today. I had let it go, and many of the outer leaves had fallen over. But there was lots of good stuff in there! I cut leaves individually and left the innermost small ones, in case we continue to have mild weather - it could continue to grow for another month! There were some spiders and slugs in there, but I carefully washed each leaf one at a time.

Chard is ridiculously good looking. The dish I made with it was actually kind of bland, just braised with rice and good olive oil. It loses most (but not all) of the color when it cooks. But it made a good substantial side for the other five things I made for dinner (I pretty much spent the whole day cooking). 

Red Blooms

 Still blooming in my front yard, roses and chrysanthemums. I have a predilection for red blooms!

Lilies

 The glory of my June garden is the patch of lilies i planted in the fall of 2018. It was a set of 25 bulbs sold by White Flower Farm called Strawberries and Cream. (WFF are masters of marketing.) They bloomed for the first time my first month of retirement, June 2019. Sadly, in 2020, I had to dig up most of them because of the gas company requirements. I put them back, and most but not all survived. I missed the peak this year by being away the first 10 days of June. They were still lovely!

I decided to refresh the patch with an infusion of new bulbs- again, the same mix from the same source. The bulbs arrived today, and went into the ground right away. I often aspire to this promptness, but rarely execute it, so yay me! Here’s hoping for a great display next year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unintended Consequences?

I love my fence and how it’s enabled my garden to thrive in the absence of deer and greatly reduced rabbits. It’s even possibly reduced the number of cats visitors, which makes the birds happy. A lot of the fence’s effectiveness at its specified role of “deer-out; dogs in” comes from having closed up the gaps along the bottom. 

Bixby's first turtle

The very first time little Sadie came over after the fence was built, she squeezed under it and was off like a flash! The day Bixby came here to live, I spent a lot of time reviewing the bottom edge of the while fence, plugging gaps with rocks, logs and soil. The fence is built on my sloping yard, so there were sometimes sizable gaps, too small for clunky Rocky but plenty small enough for an eight-pound dog to fit through.

So maybe I was too effective? Bixby has found turtles, or possibly a turtle, on and off all year. He found a smallish one back by my shed—the closest corner to the park and creek below. It was gone in a few hours.  All summer, he has found one in my shady and damp front yard, excellent box turtle habitat. When he spots a turtle, he barks at it, jumps forward and back near it, but I never saw him try to touch it with either his paw or nose.

Dogs just wanna have fun!

This week, he spotted one cruising the perimeter fence heading in the direction of the creek. But as I watched the handsome fellow, he seemed to be foiled by the fence. Finally I picked him up and cruised the whole edge. I never found a place I was sure he could fit through. So I went around to my neighbor and put him down just outside the part of the fence he had been cruising, facing in the same direction. I’ve read that turtles have a strong urge to go where they want to go, so if you rescue one crossing a road, for example, you need to put him down on the side he was heading to. Otherwise, if you put him back where he came from, he’ll just venture back across. Hopefully, this guy will get where he wants to be. 

What a handsome fellow!
But apparently stymied by the fence

 

More Plants!

 

I took my girl plant shopping for her less-than-2-weeks-away birthday. I ended up with a sizeable haul myself! Everything needs to be repotted and then I need to find places for them. I'm pleased! More green! Bring that outdoors in!

Needle Drop

In the last 48 hours all the brown needles fell off the white pine at the end of the driveway, leaving an inch of debris in a big circle around the tree.

This almost looks like a brown snowfall.