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Saturday, March 21, 2009
GARDEN. Yay!
Oh how I have MISSED doing garden posts. I didn't even realize how much until I was taking pictures for this post today. If nothing else it gives me something to post about each week, right?
(Really I've done SO MUCH STUFF in the last three weeks. Among other things, we took a week-long trip to Arizona and I typed up this really detailed and nice trip diary and took a zillion pictures and now I'm thinking that it's all pretty boring to everyone but us so I don't think I'll blog about it. Some of the pictures are in my photostream and others will be appearing as I process them. We had a FABULOUS time. Amazing. Wonderful. Delightful. Also, we had our fifteenth wedding anniversary just the day before yesterday. Fifteen years is a long time to be this happy. ALSO the day before yesterday, I took the kids on a flower-observing hike to Hite Cove to look at the river canyon's A-MAZ-ING display of poppies, and took some pictures that I really like, many of which are likewise in my photostream. Also I have a laptop. ALSO also school is going very nicely for me and for the kids. But I'm not going to write about any of that stuff. On with the garden pictures.)
IT HAS BEGUN. Let's see, today I planted:
- peppers -- three kinds:
- corno di toro russo, which sounded so good I couldn't resist it from the catalog;
- orange bell which I did last year and LOVED, and
- pepperoncini even though I hadn't planned to do them again until I found out from the picture in the catalog that I had picked mine before they got ripe; they're supposed to be red. So of course I HAD to try again.
- corno di toro russo, which sounded so good I couldn't resist it from the catalog;
- tomatoes -- also three kinds:
- Chadwick Cherry, which were HUGELY successful last year and now my mouth is watering,
- Illinois Beauty, supposed to be, um, hardy and tasty? I forget, and
- Sioux, which are supposed to tolerate our hot summers really well.
- Chadwick Cherry, which were HUGELY successful last year and now my mouth is watering,
- wild strawberries
- and basil.
I think that's all.
One of my many projects this weekend was to make my first attempt at a bed mulched with spread-out newspaper and wood chips. Claire had some onions and a couple of Jerusalem artichokes she'd started in cups at a 4-H meeting, and they needed to be planted out, so they became my guinea pigs yesterday.
For Christmas I asked for gift certificates for the local feed store so that I could buy myself some bareroot trees in January. I did get enough to do this (thank you Mom and Dad!) but I didn't buy the trees until yesterday (the first day of, um, SPRING, which is kind of late to be doing this project but I think it'll be OK). I planted a Fuji apple and a Harcot apricot in our garden, because it's fenced to keep the deer away. It's my hope that by the time they become a shade/root issue (this year they won't take up any more space than a couple of pumpkin mounds would) we'll have expanded our garden anyway. Of course, that was our rationale when we put our chest freezer in my tiny little makeshift hothouse-porch-thing -- we were going to make me a greenhouse by spring. Oops.
In non-vegetable-related planting news:
We have a whole bunch of little pine trees that are, um, doomed, because they are growing at the edge of our little woods, where they create a fire ladder that endangers our woods and therefore our house. We hope to transplant a lot of them elsewhere -- anyone want some little pine trees? Claire wanted one for a Christmas tree for her room last fall, and since they have to go anyway we potted one up in our biggest pot and she decorated it and kept it on her desk. By some kind of miracle, it actually survived. After Christmas we kind of kept forgetting to replant it outside, although we did move it from her desk to our porch. Yesterday we finally took it out and planted it by the driveway, where, assuming it continues to miraculously survive, it can grow as tall as it wants to. (I think. Did I put it under a power line? I'll have to check.)
Lastly, some more Christmas presents from my parents that finally got put to use yesterday:
Dad did the woodwork, Mom selected and lettered the verses (some of which are just AMAZINGLY apropos, don't you think?), and finally on the first day of spring, three months after I got them, I planted flowers in them.
EDITED TO ADD: Mary pointed out that it's hard to read the lettering on the boxes, so here's the text: Boxes beside door: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever." -- Isaiah 40:8 and "The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind, and God saw that it was good." (This one is more hopeful than humorous.) Window boxes: Petunia bed: For the sun rises with a scorching wind, and withers the grass and the flower falls off, and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed; so the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will fade away." (Good thing we're not rich, but I don't think this is good news for the petunias.) Pansies 1: "Consider the lilies, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, but I tell you even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these." (again, hopeful.) Kitchen window with pansies: "So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth."
All in all, this has been a fantastic way to spend the first weekend of spring. Yay! :)
Comments
I can't read the verses! Wah!
Looking forward to more good gardening stuff. We haven't really started here yet; still a chance of frost.
Also can't wait to see more vacation photos. :)
Posted by: mary at March 21, 2009 07:16 PM
Very, very nice. And that squirrel looks like it is saying, "Go ahead punk. Make my day."
Posted by: Jennifer at March 21, 2009 08:27 PM
Rachel, love the garden photos/stories, I really wish I could plant here, but living in a condo = no yard. My potted plants on the patio always manage to die, could be they needed to be watered?
I am thinking about getting one of those topsy turvy baskets and growing tomatoes this year though ...just maybe ....
Posted by: Cami at March 22, 2009 07:58 AM
Mary: I thought that might be a problem but I was too lazy to do anything about it. I am about to edit the post accordingly. :)
Cami: I have friends who have made those topsy-turvy hangers from scratch (chicken wire, burlap maybe?) and swear by them.
Posted by: Rachel at March 22, 2009 10:27 AM
those boxes your folks made you are totally stunning. I would have been in tears if I had been given them. So much work and love put into them.
Posted by: Carol at March 24, 2009 01:55 PM
Carol: I know. My parents are AWESOME.
Posted by: Rachel at March 24, 2009 03:39 PM
