Weekend at the Farm May 24 - 25, 2014

•  It is my sister Terry's birthday today.  Gone too soon.  It's also the birthday of my first husband and my daughter-in-law.  It's a happy day. 
• Woke up early Saturday morning and picked squash blossoms, stuffed them.  Picked green beans.   Vacuumed the house.  Mopped the living room and put down floor shine.  Cleaned the guest bathroom, kitchen sink, and Master bath toilet.   Cut back the unruly shoots on the blackberry patch.  The new shoots come out right when the berries start turning black.  They will totally block the paths if I don't cut them back.  My folks arrived a little before eleven o'clock.  
• My parents came for lunch on Saturday.  I served Pasta Fagiola  soup, marinated green beans tossed with arugula from the garden, and the squash blossoms.  
• Drove my mom down to the Orchard to look at the Larkspurs.  They remind her of her mom, and they remind me of my mom.
• Watered with my watering can most of the plants on my list.
• Carol Montgomery stopped by to say hello while my parents were still here.  I told her to come by and pick blackberries since we won't be here next weekend.
• Ray stopped by for about an hour on Saturday .  
• Austin, the 17 year old that lives up the raod came by.  He and his friends like to ride around on our trails.
• Lucinda came by and invited us to their place.  We went over about 9:00 on saturday evening and sat by the fire for a couple hours.  
• Mulched in the Star Garden with my leaf mulch.
• Picked blackberries on Sunday evening so I can make a cobbler for Max before he leaves for Spain.
• Getting pretty hot.  I don't work much.  Just try to keep the weeds down, that's all there is to do.  Weeding and watering for the rest of the summer. Once the Larkspur and the other spring wildflowers go to seed I will turn over the beds in the Orchard and sow Zinnias.  But that is about all the heavy lifting I will likely do over the next several months.  The lake is the place to be in the dead of summer.  
• Mulched the front bed where I have the Rudbeckia Maxima transplants.  
• The Hyacinth bean seeds I planted in the gravel by the front arbor have sprouted.  Yes!  Hopefully that will be pretty.  I've been watering all the seedlings that have sprouted over the past several weeks.  I really want a good show from my arbor vines.  
• Several of the Castor Beans I sowed in the Vegetable garden last weekend have sprouted.  That should be fun to watch.  They are very fast growing plants.  All parts of the castor bean plant are poisonous.  But it is what the old cure-all castor oil was made from.  Funny how something so dangerous can be a medicine.  That is the same as Foxglove.  Very poisonous, but also the ingredient in Digitalis.

Hollyhock May 25, 2014

This is the only Hollyhock in my garden.  I love them, but they always get rust, no matter how conscientious I am about spraying.  I am only just now seeing the rust on this one which is pretty good.  Usually the leaves are covered with rust before the flowers get a chance to bloom.  

Red Canna May 25, 2014

 I got these cannas from Janine Snapp.  The foliage is so pretty.  This is a very vigorous canna selection.  It has not yet reached its full height.  The stalks get about 6 feet tall.

More Squash Blossoms May 25, 2014

Autumn Sage May 25, 2014

Autumn Sage will root from branches that hang down to the ground, or you can pull a branch down and weight it down with a rock.  It won't root quickly, but it will happen.  The leaves have a very pungent smell which is probably why it's deer resistant. 

My Black-eyed Susan Border May 18, 2014

It is always thrilling when a plan comes together.  After we cleared the woods at the front of the house I created a border using thin cedar trees as the edging.  It runs along the side of the Rose Garden.  I did not seed the area with Black-Eyed Susans,but I knew they would show up if I did nothing.  All they needed was a little water for encouragement.  This border is meant to be completely natural.  Yes, I will seed it through the years with wildflowers, but mostly I let the pretty Black-Eyes be the stars of the show. Once these re-seed next year we will have an even thicker stand of them.  My expectation is that they will crowd out a lot of the weeds, and it will be a naturally healthy stand of relatively weed-free grasses and wildflowers, no maintenance required.  Over time I will expand the border, making it a little wider each year until - who knows - the whole cleared area in front of the house (about a half acre) will be a wildflower meadow. These results are the effort-free planning of only a few months.  Think of how lovely this area might be in a few years time!

Love-in-a-Mist Gone to Seed May 18, 1014

The flowers of Love-in-a-Mist are so pretty and unusual-looking, it isn't surprising that the seed pods are equally as unusual.  They look like striped balloons, and they are about an inch long.  The seeds are edible.

Verbena Bonariensis May 18, 2014

This is one of my favorite plants.  They grow 6 feet tall and sway in the wind.  The color is unusual and vivid, sort of electric.  Each of the purple pom poms is a seed head of a billion seeds the size of dust.  They spring up everywhere.  They are very tender perennials.  I have had some live through the winter, but it doesn't really matter if they survive the winter since you get so many volunteers the following spring.

Larkspur May 18, 2014

The Larkspur have not peaked yet, but they are quite beautiful.  Spring is the time for blue flowers.  There are not many blue flowers that bloom in the dead of summer.  The summer is a time of reds, yellows, and oranges.

Blackberries Everywhere May 18, 2014

I have 4 beds in the Orchard with Blackberry vines.  Nasty thorny things, but the only fruit in the Orchard that I can manage to get to before the animals do.  They won't be ready for about three more weeks.  Even the ones that have turned black right now are still sour.