Spider Lily June 30, 2018

My spider lilies are just beginning their bloom time.  Very tropical-looking, but tough as nails and they spread quickly.

Torch Lily June 29, 2018

Scadoxus multiflorus is a weird, tenacious bulb.  I mean, I give this little fellow absolutely no help, no water, no fertilizer and every year it blooms.

Violet Ruellia June 28, 2018

This is a wild flower, often referred to as wild petunia, that showed up one day in my garden, probably brought in with some soil or mulch because I don't see it anywhere else on the property.  It is a perennial that hangs on after it blooms in the summer and looks pretty scraggly (but it's not a dense plant, so it's not really a problem).  I end up cutting it back after it blooms and releases its seed.

 

Weekend at the Farm June 16-17, 2018

Friday night dinner at Damien's and Guys and Dolls with Mom and Dad.  Saturday morning Bert and I drove separately to the farm so I could drive in to work on Monday morning.

• As soon as I arrived I made a pie, baked some cookies, put some beans on to soak, and marinated a brisket.
• I watched Netflix until about 1:00 and Bert mowed the whole place.
• We went to Ray and Deborah's house for her retirement party.  Jeff and Amy came over late in the day.  We had dinner and talked late into the evening.
• Sunday.  Vacuumed, mopped.  Cleaned the bathrooms.  Cooked the beans, made a fruit salad and coleslaw.  The brisket was in the oven all night.
• Mom, Dad, Nan, Will and Kim and family and Nathan and Jess and family cam over.  We ate and swam.  Fun day.
• Watered in the Rose Garden.  Really dry.  I lost my Graham Thomas rose.  It was just hanging on, so not a complete surprise.  I was a little surprised though.  I will replace it with something new in the fall.  I always thought Graham Thomas was a stingy bloomer.  But it's a yellow rose, so I valued it for the color.  I won't re-plant it.  I'll find something new.
• I cut the tops off of all my Mexican Sunflowers in the Vegetable Garden, hopefully to make them stronger and more branched.  There's also an amaranth out there, and I cut the top off it as well.  

Weekend at the Farm June 9, 2018

Tomatoes from our garden.  Sliced tomatoes with salt, pepper and olive oil, Caprese salads, and BLTs all weekend.

Arrived Friday early evening.

• Saturday up early to beat the heat.
• I deadheaded some of my blue salvias, and I cut my Blue Bedder down to the ground.  I've never cut a plant back to the ground so early in the season, but it was spent.  We'll see how it does.
• I weeded in the Star Garden around the La Marne roses.  I cut back all the coreopsis and pulled up more Nigella.  Scraped all the seeds to the ground.  Manured the La Marne nearest to the house.  Mulched in the spot where I weeded.
• The goat wire arbor in the Vegetable Garden collapsed under the weight of the birdhouse gourd vine.  It took both Bert and I to lift it and prop it up with a board.  I also have several cantaloupes growing on the arbor.  Obviously these goat wire arbors can't handle all that weight.  Well, we just have to get through this season and then we can work on an improved design.
• The racoons got into the corn and ate some of it.  At least they don't waste it.  Every kernel was eaten on the half dozen they ate.   When they go after the fruit they take a bite and leave the rest to rot.  So I picked some this morning for our dinner.  It's so exciting!  Corn!  And it looks just like the grocery store corn
• Robert Knight and his associate came by Saturday morning to look at the arbor.  It is being pulled over by the wisteria.  We agreed on a solution, and they will come back with an estimate to repair it.
•  Watered in the Rose Garden and Star Garden.  Everything is really dry.
• I cleaned out the back bed.
• For dinner we ate some of our squash, tomatoes, basil and corn.  That felt really good!
• We drove out to the cul d sac and watched the night sky for a long time.  There was a breeze and the mosquitos are not out yet.  
• Sunday I worked in the Rose Garden all day.  I pulled up most of the brown eyed Susans and carted them over to the meadow and threw them on the ground in various places.  I will see the fruits of that labor next year when they seed the meadow.  I did lots of weeding in the Rose Garden and mulched all the places I weeded.  I cut away dead wood on the Noisettes and cleaned up the paths around the Noisettes.  Watered in there all day.  Sprayed herbicide.  It was hard, hot work.  
• The racoons ate more of the corn over night.  Hmm.
• I trimmed my grape vines in the Orchard again.  I'm committed to keeping them trimmed so that my grapes get better sun and so they are not so tedious to prune in the winter. 
• Watered the pots around the pool.
• I flooded the house when I was handwashing a bra.  I forgot I left the water running.  By the time I noticed the entire bedroom, bathroom, Bert's closet, and part of the living room was flooded.  That took a long time to clean up.
• Did the final picking in the Vegetable Garden.  Three more tomatoes and four ( ! ) eggplants.  I already have eight eggplants in the fridge...
• Headed to work on Monday morning.

Day Lily June 10, 2018

This was such a pretty stand of day lilies this morning that I took a picture.

Double Tiger Lily June 10, 2018

One of my double Tiger Lilies came back this year.  I planted half a dozen three years ago.  They bloomed beautifully that year, they did nothing the next year.  This year one came back and bloomed.  I think we are just a bit too warm for these beauties.  Zone 8 is a little iffy for them.

Double Orange Daylily June 10, 2018

These are my double common daylilies, sort of one step up from the native daylily.  They are good bloomers (look at all the buds), but I'm not a huge fan of double daylilies.

My Paw Paw Tree Has Born Fruit June 10, 2018

Well, I am shocked / stunned / thrilled that my Paw Paw tree has fruit on it!  I can hardly believe it.  I have read in many books that the Paw Paw is not self-fruitful, and yet here it is with fruit on it.    Actually, one native expert told me that it is self-fruitful, but so many other authorities indicated it is not that I discounted his contention.  So either there is another Paw Paw nearby which I doubt (it is not native to this area) or it is in fact self-fruitful.  The fruit in these pictures are just babies, the paw paw fruit gets very large.  Fun facts about the Paw Paw.  It is the larval food of the Zebra Swallowtail, the only plant the Zebra will lay eggs on.  It is the only citrus that is native to North America.  The fruit is said to taste like banana custard.  George Washington loved paw paw.

 

Standing Cypress June 9, 2018

I sowed Standing Cypress last fall.  I've been very pleasantly surprised at how well it germinated.  Especially in the meadow - I have quite a few little stands of it.  I sowed some in the Star Garden and Rose Garden as well.  What a stand out wildflower.  A real winner.  I will seeding more of it this fall.  Very ferny foliage and some grow 5 feet tall.

Birdhouse Gourd Vine June 2, 2018

Adorable, but the gourds are so heavy that the arbor keeps collapsing and falling on the corn that Bert is so excited about.  Uh oh.  These pictures were taken 2 weeks ago, and since then we have propped the arbor up three times but it keeps collapsing.  The gourds probably weigh 5 pounds each.

 The gourd flowers are so fragile-looking and delicate.

Weekend at the Farm June 2 - 3, 2018

I made plum jelly this weekend.

Arrived Friday evening.  Lots to do.  Bert was here since Thursday because I had a load of mulch delivered Thursday.

• The Vegetable Garden is incredibly bountiful this year.  Opening up the area to more sun and the application of mushroom compost have been miracle workers.  The corn is looking really good.  We have lots of ears developing - three rows in a bed that's about 35 feet long.  There are some red tomatoes, and I waited to pick them at the end of the day on Saturday.  We had Caprese salad for dinner.  And there are lots of birdhouse gourds on the trellis - adorable!  Also, many onions are in the garden, we let them sit in the ground until we need one, then we pull one up and use it in our cooking.  Fun.  The Dragons Tongue beans are on the wane, but there are green beans full of blooms - I sowed those seeds late as an after thought.  And of course, the eggplants are incredibly plentiful.  Too bad the only think I know to do with them is fry them...  I should make some ratatouille. 
• I fertilized the asparagus and corn, both are heavy feeders.  The one you really have to remember is the asparagus.  Since it's a perennial you tend to forget about babying it.  But it needs fertilizer.  Also, asparagus hates competition.  No weeds!  Keep your asparagus beds clear or your asparagus will disappear.  I weeded in the Corn bed and throughout the Vegetable Garden.  
• Bert and I started cleaning out the Greenhouse.  It was infested with wasps, not where you normally look, such as the rafters.  They were in buckets, attached to bags of fertilizer, and one was in a koozie.  I picked up the koozie and it was alive with wasps in a nest.  I threw it down and ran!  Bert fell back on top of a wheelbarrow as he was escaping.  That's going to hurt later.  I can't believe I didn't get stung.  Both of us ended up unscathed, there is nothing more painful than a wasp sting.  The red wasps are worse than the yellow jackets, but both are bad.  We finished the job finally:  pulled everything out of the building, raked out the debris and brushed the dirt off the shelves, threw lots of stuff away that I'm never going to use, organized the tools and fertilizers and chemicals, put in some nails to hang shovels and rakes etc.  Nice and clean. 
• Watered in the Rose Garden.
• Cut seed heads off my Columbine in the Greenhouse Gardens and shook the seeds in the beds.
• Pulled up most of the Nigella in the Star Garden and threw the seed in the beds.
• Weeded in the Star Garden.
• Went inside around 2:00 and made plum jelly with the last of my plums.  There's not a single plum left on the tree.
• Amy came over for a drink on Saturday evening and she and Bert and I went into Round Top for dinner.
• Sunday.  Pulled some weeds and picked some egg plants in the early morning.
• At 9:00 I met up with Polly, Joe, Amy, Ann and Jane to collect seed along the side of the road.  I got lot of treasures to seed my meadow!
• We drank mimosas afterwards at Amy's and then I headed home.
• Watered in the Greenhouse Garden and the Rose Garden.  Mulched in the Rose Garden.
• I pulled up the Dragons Tongue beans and sowed some Carmine Splendor Okra.
• I picked blackberries and made jelly.
• I mulched with a truckload of mulch - a rose bed and various places in the Star Garden and the back flowerbed.
• Drove in to work on Monday morning.

Coneflower June 2, 2018

There is a real feeling of pride when you finally grow something that you've had trouble growing in the past.  I have tried to grow Echinacea for years.  It is an excellent herbal, and pollinators love it. But year after year I tried to grow it and had no success.  Over the past several years I finally have developed some healthy clumps of Coneflower, and I am so proud of them!  And I have lots of seedlings, so I'm destined to have some really impressive stands of it.