What's Blooming Now - Erlicheer Daffodils 02/26/11

In this bed I am growing 90 Erlicheer daffodils, 10 Grand Primo daffodils (which did not bloom this year because they were in bud when the hard freeze hit), daisies, Candida rain lilies, 50 Feather Hyacinths (Muscari comosum 'plumosum'), 10 Magic Lilies (Lycoris Squamigera) and Corn Cockle seedlings.Daisies, daffodils, and Corn Cockle seedlings.

Erlicheers smell very, very sweet. They multiply.

A Weekend at the Farm 02/26-27/11

This is the Star Garden with all the dead debris cut away. You can really see the star shape in the early spring. There is so much just beginning in the garden right now. It is such a joy to watch.

• Shredded leaves for mulch.
  
• Mulched in the Infinity Garden.
  
• Finished laying down gravel in the path I built next to the Long Border. Looks good!
  
• Sprayed fertilizer over my Frost Proof Gardenias.
  
• Cleared out a flowerbed of dead vegetation and leaves. This is the bed that my Blue Mist Flower grows in.
  
• Sowed lots of flower seed in The Orchard: scraped away the mulch, spread some compost and potting soil to give the seeds something soft in which to germinate, and watered it all in. Several varieties of agastache and echinacea.
  
• The peach trees and plum trees are just beginning to flower! So beautiful.
  
• Sowed some herb seeds in the Infinity Garden: borage, pyrethrum, feverfew.
  
• Fed the bees some sugar water. Two to one sugar to water. This helps get the bees through the spring dearth. The spring dearth is the period of time when the bees are becoming really active and want to begin collecting nectar and pollen, but there are not many flowers blooming. Clover will be the first vegetation to flower. To add sugar water to the hive, the hive top is removed, and a tray is placed on top of the hive. The sugar water is poured into the tray. They can access the tray from inside the hive. Then the lid is placed back on the hive. Nothing to it.
  
• Pulled up some Homestead Purple Verbena that was overtaking everything in the Star Garden. Dug some up and transplanted it to the Rose Garden.
  
• Cut away dead vegetation in the Star Garden and raked over the gravel. Looks much better!
  
• Admired the beauty around me.
  
• My Erlicheer daffodils are blooming. They smell wonderful. Really sweet.


• Put up some additional stakes for my peas to climb.


• Watered here and there.


• Began the long process of cutting away all the dead vegetation in the grass garden. All of the grasses will look like small round mounds when I'm finished. My husband suggested I use the weed eater to do it. Good idea if I can control it. I've weed-eated before and the thing tends to get away from me. I end up with big bare patches of dirt where I've not only torn away all the grass, I've churned away all the dirt as well.
• I walked up on a mole coming up out of the ground in one of my rose beds. They can't see you if you stay really still. You can stand directly over the hole and watch them as long as they don't detect movement. They're actually very cute, but they can really make a mess. He cam up time after time pushing dirt up into a mound.

New Growth of Spiderwort

I love the pink / purple / grey color of the spiderwort new growth. So pretty. And soon flowers of the most gorgeous true-blue will bloom. Too bad the vegetation doesn't stay so mannerly. It gets really tall and flops over eventually. Spiderwort requires staking.

What's Blooming Now - Johnny Jump Ups 02/22/11

Johnny Jump Ups are so cute. All of mine are coming up from seed. I threw some seed down several years ago, and there are still some strays popping up in the Vegetable Garden and the Rose Garden. The flowers look like little faces.

A Weekend at the Farm 02/19 - 20/2010

These are my Excelsior Spanish Bluebells. Chicken wire is guarding them against armadillos.

200 bluebells along the boardwalk down to the Orchard.

It was hot on Saturday! Windy and warm on Sunday.

• Turned over the beds in the Vegetable Garden. Getting ready for spring.
  
• My husband built an arbor for the peas to climb on.
  
• I shredded leaves and mulched various areas.
  
• I cut away dead vegetation in the Long Border, the Star Garden, and the Shade Garden.
  
• Pulled the dead Morning Glory vines away from the arbor at the entrance to the Long Border, but first I collected lots of the seed to replant in various places.
  
• I bought a Candy Corn vine at Buchanan's on Friday, so I planted that. I planted it by the arbor in the Star Garden.
  
• Sprayed herbicide in the Vegetable Garden, the Star Garden, and the Rose Garden.
  
• I pruned some roses that I missed last weekend - the two Ballerina roses and the three Mme Antoine Mari roses in the Long Border.
  
• Fertilized with nitro-phos my Anacachoe Orchid tree, the Christmas tree, all the azaleas, the Possumhaw, the Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum, Walter's Viburnum, the daffodils, and the Charity Mahonias. Also fertilized my "found" bearded irises - the ones I dug up from the ditch.
  
• Watered various areas.
  
• Cleaned out leaf debris from the Infinity Garden. That has to done almost exclusively by hand around each herb. Painstaking.
  
• Moved 3 wheelbarrows of crushed granite into the path I'm making next to the Long Border. I'll be finished soon, but I'm not in so much of a hurry that I'm going to break my back doing it. A few loads each visit is enough. That stuff is incredibly heavy!
  
• My Rolf Fiedler Star Flowers are just beginning to bloom. The Erlicheer daffodils have buds on them. And finally, the Lycoris Squamigera have come up, only 3 of them, though. I guess the other died from lack of water.
  
• Pruned the apple trees. The Gala apple is a mess. I never should have bought it. It was already several years old and had not been pruned properly. It does not have a dominant terminal leader. Bought from a big box store. Mistake.
  
• Sprayed the roses for blackspot.
  
• Planted some nasturtium seeds in the Star Garden.
  
• Planted 5 parsley plants in the Long Border to attract butterflies. It is a larval food for caterpillars.
  
• Planted 6 bronze fennel in The Orchard, also a larval food for caterpillars.
  
• Dug up some daisies in the lawn that are growing wild and planted them in the Bulb Garden.
  
• Finished painting the fence around The Orchard. It looks good.
  
• Started painting the planter boxes in the Rose Garden.
  
• Washed the 5 sets of french doors at the front of the house and the light fixtures.
  
• Came home exhausted with an aching back.

A Weekend at the Farm Feb 12 - 13 - 2011

I started painting the fence around The Orchard. I have the inside of the fence finished. I didn't notice until I was finished with one entire side that the paint is a different color. But it's close, and frankly I don't care. This view is the side of The Orchard. You enter the front of The Orchard by the boardwalk. Bert put the gate in this weekend because I realized there was no way to get a wheel barrow into The Orchard. That was a problem! It looks good!

Beautiful weather!

• Pruned the peach trees, the grape vines, and the plum trees. Still need to prune the apples.
• Planted 2 White by the Gate Camellias in the beds that line the boardwalk down to The Orchard.
  
• Planted 1 Fairie Blush Camellia, also in the beds that line the boardwalk.
• Potted a Clementine Honey Mandarin Orange tree. The winters are too cold to plant permanently in The Orchard. I'll wheel it down the hill in the summers to rest in the Orchard, in the winters it will rest in the greenhouse.
  
• Weeded in the Vegetable Garden.
• Raked and shredded leaves, and spread them in The Wave Garden and The Star Garden.
• Sprayed herbicide in The Rose Garden.
• Raked the Rose Garden.
• Pruned the rest of the roses - about 20 shrubs.
• My peas are coming up. Exciting!

Snow at the Farm - Feb 4, 2011

When we arrived on Thursday evening the well pump and tank were frozen solid. We had no water to the house. The next morning we put a heater on them and thawed them out. We went into town to the plumbing supply store to purchase one inch insulation to wrap around the tank. The store was closed due to the "treacherous" conditions. We kept a trickle of water going in the sink, and we had no more trouble.