Flowers In The Garden

And yes, I do mean that literally. Is winter almost a memory? Let's hope so. I'm ready for it to be over with, although the other night Max was sitting on the deck and a mosquito buzzed his ear. I'm not ready for mosquitoes. In fact, I'm never ready for mosquitoes.

Saturday we spent driving up island to a regional public speaking event for one of the kids. Long drive up, long drive home. Fun, triumphant, but tiring.

Sunday dawned clear and warm, so I went out to see what I could do with the weeds and quack grass. I spread a tarp on the lawn, for the weeds, and got to work. (dry the weeds in the sun until they are good and dead, then it's easy to dispose of them)

Here you see my nicely edged...edge. I'm all about appearances, you know.

I sprinkled some alfalfa meal over the little pots de pois sucre in the greenhouse. (and yes, I am being silly, no one in their right mind calls a sweet pea a pois sucre)

They are looking pretty green considering the size of their pot. They were the smallest yogurt pots around, I'm sure, but perfect for a seed or two.

I know, just call me Cruel Sweet Pea Potter.









Fuller's Teasel in the background. Tomato seedlings in the foreground.










Another view of the yard. At this time of year clear plastic features heavily in my yard decor.

The boards are keeping the birds from eating the freshly sown lawn seed.

They don't seem to be deterring the cat, though. Silly cat - he's terrified of my new runners but nonchalant among my wire and board traps.



Garlic and strawberry leaves. I like how green the leaves are. Such a warm, clear, glowing green.

Asparagus - we have liftoff.

Finally. Its ears must have been burning because I was on the verge of getting rid of this until-this-moment-non-existent asparagus bed.

Now they're sprouting up all over the place.

And don't be telling me it's all the kelp and rock phosphate I've been feeding it, either, because it sucked that up last year AND the year before, without doing anything.

I am clearly not an asparagus whisperer.





The rhubarb has already given us several pints of jam, two crisps, and a few Chomps In The Garden for the twins.

Nice rhubarb.

Good rhubarb.

Low maintenance pet of mine.










Brunnera.

Jack Frost.









Pulmonaria.

No idea which one, though. Got it at a garden sale and they had no idea either. It's extremely pretty though, considering how cheap it was and how expensive the awful Raspberry Splash was (and how underwhelming IT'S been as a plant).












A bright red and yellow note to end on...

Heat Memories

Look at that big slab of cat lying there in the sun.

That's Toffee, also known as FatCat, also known as 'the cat who would prefer never to move again if he could help it' (unwieldy but apt). We had a very sunny, very warm Easter Sunday. Then we had a warm sunny Easter Monday. So warm I dug up the herb bed. So warm I divided the artichokes. So warm I transplanted some roses. I did a number of late but necessary garden chores.

All the while our Toffee lounged in the sun.

Basking.

Sleeping.

Letting ants crawl over him even.

Now THAT is lazy.



Twirling and curling and twisting, all the better to sun his furry furry coat.

And now it's raining. Still warm, but wet.

His memories are of warm sun, while mine are of warm earth.

The Flowering

Happy Easter!

Return Of The Ruminant

Yesterday morning, after retrieving yet another badminton birdie from the gutters on the roof (no one in this family seems to have very good aim or perhaps that IS what they're aiming for...) I heard Max exclaiming from the back deck.

"Wow!" he was saying, rather loudly. "Wow!"

Now, this kid is a relatively normal teen at the moment, by which I mean the sort of personality not generally given to exuberant expressions of approval unless they involve i-somethings, music, or food, so I went out to see what he was exclaiming over. Was it my charming garden, I wondered. Or the new Seckel pear, gloriously in bloom? Or maybe those riotous blossoming nectarines? I should have known better.

I got there in time to see a large ruminant mammal in my yard, the kind that are currently menacing our fair city with their non-stop molars. Yes, Gentle Reader, I speak of The Deer. The young female, whom I THOUGHT I'd thwarted in the fall, the one who used to chew her way through my kale and purple sprouting broccoli, seems to have left her mother and was in my back garden, being pursued rather ungently by Calypso, the Schnorkie (was there EVER a more unfortunate moniker for a mix?) from next door. Little Calypso was in fine form, despite being about a twentieth the size; she bounded, she barked, she growled, she raced, and in the end that annoying deer fairly flew over the new deer fence Richard and I installed a few months ago. Yes, that, right: The. New. Deer. Fence.

Sigh.

Stay tuned for the Further Adventures Of...in the very near future. Methinks there will be a Part II. Don't ask me how I know. I'll even go out on a limb and say that it will likely involve wire and posts and other mysterious items of the sort.

Sigh.

In Which I Muse On The Sweet Pea

I finally found some seeds for those astoundingly gorgeous ruffled pansies that are popping up all over the place, but it took me long enough. I could never find the bedding plants yet all the farmers markets seemed to have baskets of them. They just weren't for sale, which was frustrating. Lo and behold this year I found a packet of Chalon Pansies and just now planted them. They require dark to germinate, according to the packet, so I dutifully placed them in an upstairs closet. After a few days I removed the plastic bag they were sitting in and saw this little intruder. Methinks it's no pansy, but medoesn't know what it is. It looks like a bean sprout.

Upstart! Begone from my ruffled pansies.





Is there anything more heartening after the long dark days of winter than trays of sweet pea seedlings?

I was at a garden sale the other night and I noticed a lot of trays of sweet peas at one table - they were the same size as mine, a fact which gave me enormous satisfaction, because it meant that I was getting rather more organized in my seed starting abilities. Either that or they were just as hopeful (and deluded) as I was about the promise of spring bloom.
Sweet peas are one of the few plants I don't have qualms about cutting for indoor bouquets. Other flowers give me a sharp pang when the scissors snip snip snip them from their rather longer life in the garden, but not sweet peas. As a plant they are less than spectacular. Mildly interesting at best. If they were just bloom I might feel differently, I suppose. Love those blooms.
Some of us took paint brushes to the nectarine trees, because they blossomed before the bees - even the mason bees - were out. And full on bloom, too. There they were, with their almost indecently pink blossoms, flowering all over the place when it was still mid-March. So I sent out the Garden Club members to do their bit, although one of them lost her paintbrush at some point and never did find it, despite the heckling of her compatriot.

Compatriot Doing His Bit To Help Nectarine Pollination (mollified by the prospect of featuring in a blog photo op)


We were rather transfixed by the strange appearance of this squonking band of Canada geese, until we realized that they weren't Canada geese, but Trumpeter Swans instead.

The clue was not just the, errm, white appearance, but those great long necks.

Look What The Pot Forced Up!

We're making Early Rhubarb Jam today. I've mentioned before how you can force your rhubarb (although I prefer the idea of being a Rhubarb Whisperer) by covering it with a large terracotta pot at the first sign of emerging nubs, but I'm going to mention it again because it's such a useful trick. The photo above shows the rhubarb I picked yesterday - real live fresh rhubarb - just in case you think I'm tricking you instead of the rhubarb.

Our recipe comes from the ever so charming River Cottage Handbook No. 2: Preserves, but I see that it's also available online, here.

What We Did On The Weekend

— watched bits of the Junos (specifically the performance by Max's fave Deadmau5). It was hard not to wonder aloud what it must be like inside that mouse head of his, all that flashing and light-popping. Wondered also how Michael Buble's Christmas album won over Drake's (not Christmas) album. Yet another peculiar judging experience we've witnessed in the past month (and yes, we DID all comment on this).

— went to the beach and noticed, amid the sun and waves and wind, that dogs were distressingly ubiquitous on the landscape. I was unable to get a single dogfree photo. And all those curious doggie names: Oliver, Christopher, Jason, Angela, Olivia, Penelope, Jane.

Two words: baby substitute.

— finally cleared the brush from the front garden. Seven wheelbarrow loads of clippings, trimmings, dead stalks, and weeds. S-E-V-E-N L-O-A-D-S. Now reposing damply at the end of the yard.

— noted with dismay that someone in the LEGO contest won with 413 votes. I do not have that many friends on Facebook so my children, despite their delightfully creative designs, did not win. Mostly because I only 'friend' people I actually know. It's a quirk I have.

— watched Sherlock AND Titanic in the same evening. Titanic isn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be, but it still has some good moments. Sherlock, while completely implausible (Irene Adler naked? Methinks this stretcheth the conceit rather bizarrely) is fun. Benedict Cumberbatch is evidently having a good time in this role.