A Weekend at the Farm 12/25 - 26/10

My husband built a fence around The Orchard. We will paint it green. I might staple rabbit wire along the bottom of the fence to keep out the armadillos.

Arrived late Saturday evening. My husband left early Sunday to go hunting.

• All day, all I did was rake, shred, and spread leaves. I worked on the leaves around the boardwalk. Work, work, work, and it still didn't look like I'd done anything at all! There are billions of leaves on the ground. But I intend to shred as many as I can. It's good mulch. I worked until the machine gave out. I don't know why it quits, I don't know if it's over heating or if it's something else. It did the same thing last weekend, and I feared there would be an expensive repair bill. But my husband was able to get it started. I never could get it started again yesterday. So I put everything away and went home.


• Bulbs popping up everywhere! Bulbocodium conspicuus and Rolf Fiedler. So cute. The Erlicheer are just peeping out of the earth.
  
• It was bitter cold yesterday. Never warmed up.
  
• Came home to find out my son, Max, had gotten a tattoo. He turned 18 two days ago and went with his brother. They both got the same tattoo, their name down the entire length of their side. I cried and cried. Tattoos are hideous.

Our Garden Art

My husband's artistic side has really come out since we've built this house. I am of the opinion that anything that is erected on a pedestal becomes art. I mean, who is to say, right?

I spotted this interesting piece of pier washed up into some rocks while taking a walk in Galveston. We dragged it home. My husband put it up on a pedestal and - there you go - art.

Sometimes the pin oaks on our property curl over in the most interesting way. I would never cut one down if it was still alive, but these two trees died . My husband suspended them on chains and there you go - art!

A dead tree with the top chopped off, some plaster of paris and broken Sky Vodka bottles and he created - you guessed it - art.
An uprooted tree turned upside down, erected on a pedestal, and spray painted becomes an homage to the seventies - art!

My husband lops the tops off of dead trees, cuts out interesting shapes at the tops, and paints them. They are very interesting to come upon during a walk through the woods.

Herb Seeds Ordered From the Catalogues

The pictures below are of Feverfew (Chrysanthemum parthenium). It's easy to see that they are part of the chrysanthemum family (albeit a less showy member of the family). Feverfew is a great addition to a medicinal garden.

I just received some of my herb seeds. I ordered these from Johnny's. I recently found a fantastic website for ordering all sorts of unusual medicinal herb seeds. The ones in the Johnny catalogue are fairly common but good ones to grow nevertheless. My interest in herbs has grown enormously, and I am going to build a bed in full sun to house some of the new herbs I plan to grow. The garden I have now is in partial shade. I cannot grow the herbs that require full sun right now, in particular the flowering herbs. The herb seeds I just received are as follows:

• Borage - ancient herb, the Greeks thought it instilled courage and they drank borage tea just before marching off to battle. It makes gorgeous blue flowers that bees love. Great for the vegetable garden to attract bees for better pollination. The flowers are edible and decorative. Tea from the leaves dispels melancholy. It soothes bronchitis, pleurisy, and rheumatism. It is a sedative. Eating the seeds stimulates lactation in nursing mothers. Borage slows the aging process. It has high levels of gamma linolenic acid which is effective against cancer. This is a great herb! The seeds are large and easy to grow.
• Feverfew - will reseed easily once established. It relieves migraines and fevers and muscular tension. The seeds are teeny tiny. If you order them, order LOTS of them the first time in order to get the plants established.
• Valerian - called nature's tranquilizer. It is used in teas (the roots are dug up for the tea) to induce sleep. It can become addictive. It doesn't taste good and the tea should be steeped with something tasty such as licorice or mint. Fragrant flowers, good as a backdrop plant in perennial borders. It is a perennial. Likes morning sun and afternoon shade. The seeds are large. I always like to know how big the seeds are. I have ordered packets of 50 seeds of certain varieties in the past assuming that was plenty and they were as small as dust. The germination success of seeds can be iffy sometimes, so if I know they are tiny I will order many hundreds in order to get a good show.
• Pyrethrum - makes a very, very powerful insecticide. The leaves, stems, and flowers are dried and ground into a powder then they are sprinkled onto plants. It is very toxic. The flower centers are the most powerful part of the plant for use as an insecticide. It has very pretty daisy-like flowers. The seeds are small, but not tiny. Full sun.

The View From the Orchard

Now that our new landscaping encourages foot traffic down to The Orchard, the view of the pool equipment needed to be covered up. Below are the before and after shots of the structure that surrounds the pool equipment.

This picture is taken from a bench in The Orchard.
The flag is not visible from the house, only from The Orchard.
My husband painted this.

New Growth

Some of my bulbs are starting to emerge. They are so sweet and full of the promise of spring.

This is a Petticoat Daffodil just peeking out of the soil. I planted 200 of these sweet little flowers underneath the La Marne Rose hedge that lines the driveway.

These are Montbretias. I planted 25 of them next to Living Easy rose. Montbretia flowers are orange and Living Easy has orange flowers as well.
These are 10 Grand Primo Daffodils. They are surrounded by 90 Erlicheer Daffodils that have not yet appeared.

What's Blooming Now - Yuletide Camellia 12/12/10

These Yuletide Camellias will grow about 6 feet tall. As they mature they will bloom much more heavily. The blooms start out very red and fade to a dark pink. They are really pretty and, of course, are named after the Christmas season due to their bloom time and their bloom color. They should be fed camellia fertilizer or some sort of heavy nitrogen-based fertilizer. I love the look of them growing on either side of the faux door of my Greenhouse. So cute.

A Weekend at the Farm 12/11 - 12/2010

This is a Debutante Camellia just opening.


Nice Weather!

• Came alone. Bert went hunting.


• Shredded leaves until the shredder died on me. I filled it with gas, but I couldn't get it started again. I don't know what's wrong. Used the shredded leaves in beds around The Greenhouse as mulch.


• Finished off the mulch pile I bought two weekends ago. It went all around the pool before it was all used up. I pulled up all the freeze damaged salvia in the process.
• Fertilized my 'Frostproof' Gardenias. They were looking a little yellow.


• Tried to fill in the path I created last weekend with crushed granite that was sitting out for about a year. Hard as a rock! I'll have to bash it with a sledge hammer I guess. Moved on to another project.


• Put our suet for the birds. Filled the bird baths.


• Watered here and there.


• For dinner on Saturday ate collards from the garden.


• Fertilized all the Dianthus.


• Some of my little bulbs are springing forth around the La Marne roses. So cute!


• Worked in The Vegetable Garden. Cut back all the dead asparagus vegetation. I was sick of it! Asparagus get very unruly. Now I can easily bury citrus to ward off nematodes. Fertilized. Don't neglect vegetable in the winter time! They need fertilizer - more fertilizer than spring veggies.


• Raked out The Vegetable Garden.


• Watered the plants that have been moved into The Greenhouse for the winter.


• Cleaned out the pool skimmers. Saved a little frog in one of the skimmers that was surely going to die. He'll probably jump right back in.


• Cleaned the big oven. That's a messy job.

A Weekend at the Farm 12/04 - 05/2010

These are the last of my Cosmos. Winter will take them. They are so delicate looking.


Saturday very pleasant. It got very cold Saturady night, but it was sunny on Sunday so the cold felt really good.

• Spread mulch in the Rose Garden on Saturday. Poppy seeds springing up everywhere! I covered them all up in the rose boxes. They mask my beautiful spring flush of roses - I can't have that! But I will still have a wildflower show to remember in spring, but it just won't be in my rose boxes. They are springing up everywhere.
  
• Put out suet for the birds.
  
• Marveled at the beauty around me. Mother Nature is an awesome woman.
  
• Albert extended the wall around the pool equipment. That was good a project. Now that The Orchard has become a destination, the pool equipment was exposed from that vantage point. Now it is closed off.
  
• Pulled up some plants that have died due to the cold weather. I plant either perennials or re-seeding annuals. Once the annuals have died they can be pulled up. I leave the dead debris on the perennials because it helps insulate them throughout the winter.
• On Sunday I raked leaves and dumped them into the compost bins.
• Mulched in the Star Garden on Sunday. Pulled up some plants that are crowding out plants that I like more.
• Also mulched the Hydangea Bed and moved a Hot Lips Salvia to the new bed behind the house. This bed looks much better without that Salvia crowding the Big Daddy hydrangeas.
• Mulched the Hollyhock Bed. The Montbretias are popping up.
• Put water in the bird bath.
• Moved the tender perennials I have growing in pots into the Greenhouse.
• Fertilized all my sweet peas.
• Began laying down a path along the Long Border. This flowerbed needs some help. A crushed granite path edged in green landscape edging with stepping stones will do the trick. This project took a long time. The landscape edging used to be around each of my fruit trees, so they were all bent into curves. I had to bend them straight (that wasn't a huge success, the path is very wiggly), then bang out the stakes that had rusted tight so that I could re-use them. That was time consuming. I will need to buy some more stepping stones and some more crushed granite to finish this project, so it will not happen this month. December is not a good month to buy expensive landscaping materials.

Pretty Herbal Rose Hips

These are rose hips on a Ballerina rose. They are very small rose hips. When I go to the farm next weekend there should be red rose hips on all my roses - some of my roses make very large hips - they were all green last weekend. I expect with the frosts we have had the last several mornings that they are red now.

Roses are considered an herb. Rose hips are very high in vitamin C. In fact, compared to an orange they have 30% more vitamin C, 25% more iron, 25 times more vitamin A, and 28% more calcium.

To make rose hip tea, harvest the hips when they have turned a rosy red. Wash them off, and let them dry on wax paper or some dry surface. This will take several weeks. They will look shrivelled and they will harden and get darker. Drop some into boiling water and let them steep. Add some honey and there you have it - rose hip tea. You may, of course remove the hips before drinking, but you certainly do not have to.