The Hand-pump
Widely regarded as the highlight of a visit to the community gardens.
snapshot
Widely regarded as the highlight of a visit to the community gardens.
Category Archives: Gardens
Widely regarded as the highlight of a visit to the community gardens.
Stone Steppers
A little Mother’s Day present for the Grandmothers, some “stone-steppers” as Galen would say.
When Iain and Elijah were little we made each of our mother’s a stepping stone for their gardens. They were decorated by Iain, complete with little hand prints from both boys. Steve’s mother has her’s propped up against a flowerpot, claiming that it’s too pretty for stepping on.
We thought it was about time for the latest version, this time decorated by Galen.
(and again I say “ha!” to a certain husband of mine who got all smarmy asking how on earth I was going to manage the accent)
I have reason to suspect….
that there may be flower fairies in our midst…
because the very day after this sighting, our very first tulip bloomed.
And now look!
Tulips everywhere. Also, the late daffodils, creeping phlox, bleeding hearts; I’m very pleased with how the garden is starting to fill in.
These are the tulips that I splurged on last fall. They are not at all what I thought they would be, but they’re starting to grow on me.
No flowers here yet of course. But I just love the way that Lady’s Mantle catches the morning dew.
The plum blossoms (pictured above) have started to lose their glory now, but we are starting to see a few peach blossoms and and the occasional blooming strawberry.
And just this week the buds on the lilacs have started to swell and blosson, a very welcome sight (and scent!) for me.
It Has Come!
“It’s so beautiful! You never saw anything so beautiful! It has come! I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come, the Spring!”
~Frances Hodgson Burnett as Mary Lennox
~Frances Hodgson Burnett as Mary Lennox
Look! Look! Little green plants lined up along all of my window sills…squashes, cucumbers, kale, morning glories, calendula…fox gloves, moonflowers, even Elijah’s favorite miniature zinnias…all just waiting for the earth to warm up just a little bit more.
Every warm, dry, day finds us out in the garden now. This weekend marks our first community garden work day of the season. Birds are appearing everywhere. The first surprise bouquet of flowers has been gifted to me and is currently gracing my table and delicately scenting the air. There are buds on the trees and I’ve fished out my worn and battered copy of “The Secret Garden” once again.
In short, dear friends, Spring is finally really and truly here.
Pansies
Note: I started this post several day ago, but found myself too busy to finish. So the references to “yesterday” aren’t exactly accurate.
Yesterday I spent a beautiful sunny afternoon in the garden planting pansies.
I had some very eager little hands helping me.
Galen planted yellow and white pansies in pots to decorate the area where we are planning on holding the blessing. After that we planted a bunch of purple ones in the gardens.
It was so satisfying to be out in the sunshine, working with the earth and green living things!
Galen has been insisting on bringing everyone around to see every single little green shoot just starting to poke it’s way up. He never tires of looking at them, checking their progress and sharing his progress reports with the rest of us.
The new growing season has inspired Iain and Elijah also. They both spent a good portion of their afternoon doubling the size of those garden beds that they made a couple of years back. And of course there were pansies for them to plant too.
I’ll admit to having spent a lot of time just sitting around, drinking it all in. Often times I feel frustrated by the slow pace of our home building progress. I want to feel settled, and I want to feel it now! But yesterday as I was looking around and becoming reacquainted with the area surrounding our home, I found myself in awe of all of the things we have accomplished.
(It’s amazing what a difference a couple of days makes!)
When Galen was MÃ iri’s age, there was no sandbox, no swings, no playhouse, no benches. There were no garden beds. There was no house! Just the “Little House” in a most unlivable state. Perhaps we aren’t moving so very slowly after all.
It’s comforting to know that things are filling in, and filling out, a little bit here and there. Every year we come a little bit closer to our vision, the detail work in the tapestry fills in a little more. We move rocks and move plants and put down roots; our connections to each other and to our home growing ever stronger.
Finally! A Little Outdoor Yellow
Back in February, when I was taking part in “Yellow Week“, Andy posted a picture of a daffodil from his garden and I commented that the only yellow we had outside was the occasional patch of snow and I didn’t think that anyone would appreciate me taking pictures of that.
Well, it’s nearly 2 months and lots of melting later and we finally have some yellow!
Early Crocuses. No daffodils yet. In one sunny and sheltered spot there are some buds, but mostly they are either just starting to push up or, in some cases, still buried under ice. There are some other little bits of color popping up here and there too…
And so begins that glorious time of year when I get to bombard you all with pictures from my garden, even though you could care less. Oh but it amuses me so you see! Look, look, things growing! Isn’t that marvelous?!?The Challange: Final Counts
Ideally this post would be accompanied by a picture of all my pretty little jars, lined up on shelves, very pleasing to see. Unfortunately, said shelves are in a dark corner; flash-free photos don’t turn out and ones with the flash create a horrible glare, and I have too much to do to spend my days trying to get silly pictures of silly jam jars!
I haven’t canned anything in a couple of weeks now and I’m feeling like I’m done…too many other things to think about now. If I had a food mill and could quickly make some more apple sauce I surely would, but I don’t and the whole sitting around peeling and coring apples (and then mashing them by hand after cooking!) business has kind of lost it’s charm.
***drum roll please***
Final counts for “The Challenge“
- Apple Butter- 6 pints
- Apple Jelly- 5 pints
- Apple Sauce- 10 quarts, 3 pints
- Beans (dehydrated yellow, green and purple)- 2 quarts
- Beets (pickled)- 1 quart, 6 pints
- Blackberries (frozen)- 1 quart, gathered and frozen by my children
- Blueberries (dried)- 1 pint
- Blueberries (frozen)- 2 gallons, 8 quarts
- Blueberries (high-bush in water)- 4 quarts
- Blueberries (low-bush in water)- 24 quarts, 3 pints
- Blueberry Jam- 14 pints
- Blueberry Puree- 12 bitty jars
- Blueberry Syrup- 6 pints
- Broccoli (dehydrated)- 1 quart
- Peas (snow, frozen)- 2 quarts
- Peas (shelling, frozen)- 5 pints
- Peaches (halves canned in water)- 15 quarts
- Peach Jam (made with white peaches)- 8 pints
- Peach Puree- 9 bitty jars
- Peach Syrup- 6 pints
- Peppers (roasted Sweet Italian, pickled)- 2 pints
- Pesto (frozen)- 2 pints (stupid broken food processor…grumble, grumble)
- Plum Jam- 9 half-pints
- Salsa- 17 pints
- Sauerkraut (live cultured with a mix of green and red cabbage)- unsure what I will end up with as it is still fermenting.
- Strawberry Jam- 5 pints
- Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam- 3 pints
- Tomato Sauce- 1 quart, 4 pints (pathetic)
- Violet Jam (frozen)- 3 pints
- And various dried herbs.
Not bad, not great, but not bad. I know it was a lot of work, but it already seems to be flying off the shelves so quickly that it’s hard not to think that I should have done more.
Can anyone guess what all of our friends and family are getting for Christmas this year??
Now, if no one minds, I think I’d like to sit down for a bit. Of course, sitting down these days means sitting behind the sewing machine, working through my list of “to-make” baby things and holiday things, but at least it’s sitting, right? Right.
Thinking of Spring…
Yes, I know that Autumn has only just barely begun. And as I type, with the first snow falling outside my window, I am well, well, aware of the long winter yet to come.
But a couple of days ago, when the weather was fine, we were out, in the golden late afternoon, thinking SPRING thoughts.
Weeding the strawberry patch before tucking it in for the winter, pulling up the last of the bolted lettuce, cutting back faded perennials, planting garlic, with thoughts of the bright green shoots that will appear after the snows…and then there were the daffodils.
Every autumn I consider them a frivolous expense and every spring I deeply regret my frugal decision. This spring I told everyone to remind me that if I didn’t plant at least a few, I would be sad in the spring. And so I splurged (a whole $7.50) on 10 ‘Camelot’ daffodils. Just enough to impart a bit of spring cheer in my favorite garden bed. Perhaps they will thrive and spread. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll consider it a reasonable expense to add to them just a bit next year (I still covet ‘Avalon’ daffodils to go with them. And now I sounds like a silly romantic, don’t I? Well, I can’t very well help it if they are my two favorite varieties!). And perhaps there will come a spring when we are greeted with a sea of golden glory. Now, that is a most pleasant spring thought.
I bought a few more bulbs this morning. It should be illegal to send out advertisements for 50% off bulbs on the grayest of dark days. Had the sun been shining, I would have been completely immune to their ploys. I know that I shouldn’t have, but oh, the dark grayness of everything did me in! Not so very badly though, just one small packet of an interesting looking tulip and one small pack of English bluebells, both destined for the very same garden as the daffodils. I think I’ll be quite glad of them in the spring.
It seems that what started off as a little cold, that seemed to be on it’s way out, has now come back in with a vengeance, in a more dramatic form. I’m so very glad not to have to leave the house in the morning. It sounds wild out there and I am quite content in my little nest. I foresee a day of chicken soup and tea (yes, my teapot came! I’m on quite the spending spree lately, aren’t I?). I think lessons are very likely to be taught on the futon, rather then at the table. I have a good bit of hand-sewing, as well as a pile of library books (for both little people and big) to pass the day with. Yes, a bit of rest sounds absolutely necessary.
Pumpkin Time
I feel as though I redeemed myself a bit today. I’m about to head off to bed, but my stock is bubbling away on the stove and there is apple-pear sauce cooking in the crock-pot so that it will be all ready for me to can in the morning.
I made two huge pans of brussel sprouts this afternoon. We had the most gorgeous brussel sprout harvest from our garden this year! So I made these two large trays, thinking that they would be good for snacking on throughout the week. Only I suppose I forgot to tell my children that. Of the two big pans, there are currently a total of 12 sprouts left!
People always seem suprised when I say that my children love brussel sprouts. I don’t really see why. They are quite good when they are prepaired properly. I think they just got a bad wrap from people cooking them poorly. Our favorite way to prepair them is roasted with garlic and coconut oil, then tossed with lots of sea salt and fresh ground pepper just before serving. Yum.
So, I got a bit of a leg up on the cooking and the playroom has been mostly set right (there will be pictures of that soon!). Of my 5 packages, 3 are totally packed up. Two went out today. The third came back home with me for consideration, once I found out that it was going to cost me $50 to ship it! And I’m finally, finally, finally almost done carding the wool for the pillow I’m making. It’s a bit of progress anyway.
Tomorrow I’m hoping to fit in a full day of homeschooling, can the apple-pear sauce, make a batch of straight apple sauce, get the saurkraut started, and start on dinner, all before heading off to our homeschool group in the afternoon. Oh yes, and I still have to make the black beans and squash that I want to bring with us! Should be another busy morning! Then again, aren’t they all?!? But while we are on the subject of squash, I have some of the decorative kind to share…the results of our Friday night craving!
Iain’s:
Steve’s (lower) and Elijah’s:
And an angle that you very rarely see…
When I transfered my pictures, I discovered that one of my children had decided to take their own jack ‘o lantern picture, with a view from the inside out!
Galen’s sweet little glittery pumpkin shines best in the daylight:
Happy Autumn all!
Gathering in the Last Little Bit of Summer….
News that our first frost was imminent sent us out into the gardens yesterday, bringing in house plants, transplanting herbs to be brought indoors for the winter, harvesting tomatoes, basil and sunflowers….lots of sunflowers. There are now sunflowers spilling out of every vase in every room of the house, and I must say, it’s rather pleasant!