Three Plus Two

Country Diary: Memorial Day Week

(I am really bad at using forms so I'm afraid that my diary entries will never end up the same way twice.  I just occasionally feel the need to document what's going on in my garden. Maybe I should buy a garden journal.)

Weather: The weekend was about half and half for good weather: Saturday it rained most of the afternoon, which was good for the garden but bad for us, since we still had an enormous amount of stuff to plant.  Sunday was cool and cloudy until late afternoon.  Monday was gorgeous: sunny and 70. A stiff wind kicked up in the afternoon, heralding cooler temperatures.   Andy covered all the tender annuals he could -- tomatoes, peppers, melons, winter squash, okra. Good thing, too, because we had a little frost Monday morning. The rest of the week has been fairly rotten -- more rain than we need, cold, blah.

Blooming Now: Lilacs (finally); peonies getting ready to bloom (finally); irises just purple at the tips.  Saturday when we went to the farm to buy plants, there was a dogwood in full bloom.  Andy and I laughed; it's been nearly 2 months since we saw dogwoods blooming in Tennessee. I have seen some roses blooming at lower elevations, but alas, my rose seems to have contracted some disease which is turning the leaves yellow.  It usually blooms in June anyway, so maybe it will recover enough to have a few blossoms. We splurged on an enormous fuschia for the front porch on Saturday; I am hoping it will attract our hummingbird pair.

In the Garden: Rabbits ate half the pea plants. Something ate my asparagus. Half the new strawberries died. Ditto the pawpaw.  I fought an extended battle against bindweed yesterday afternoon, trying to clear out a grow bed to plant melons.  (Michael Pollan agonizes over bindweed in Second Nature.  I knew it was a pain but I had no idea it was so insidious.  New plants can grow from every part of its broken root.  Every little piece!  I combed through that bed for nearly an hour pulling bindweed and sorting through the dirt to get more pieces of root.  It's a losing battle, but hopefully I made a little progress.) I think our water (even after it's been boiled) is killing the shiitake mushroom kit.

On the plus side of the equation (the negative is on my mind this morning, sorry): potatoes are up; we found the carrots in the bed that was a weedy disaster; and somehow in all the other activities of the weekend we made time to plant corn, beans, summer squash, my beloved Italian zucchini from last year (also, Zucchini Rampicante, another Italian zucchini), cucumbers; and as transplants -- more cucumbers (I have rotten luck with cucumbers); 4 kinds of pepper, a bunch of tomatoes, brussel sprouts, a few cabbages; two flats of okra (in black plastic this year for warmth); and roughly half of the melon plants I started from seed.  Still to go: watermelons, Charentais melons, pumpkins, and Gareth's experiments of the year: Chinese noodle beans and a couple different open-pollinated varieties of corn (he wants to see if they'll cross.)

I'm also putting in a modest herb garden this year by the deck: cilantro, parsely, thyme, rosemary, oregano, basil, chocolate mint (in a pot!!), dill.  I already have invasive amounts of lemon balm and mint from the previous owners.

Barnyard: This is not going as well as I had hoped.  We got 15 turkey poults last Thursday - 5 Blue Slate, 5 Naragansett, 5 Bourbon Red. We've lost five so far. So now we're down to 4 Naragansett, 4 Blue Slate, and 2 Bourbon Red.  Unfortunately, heavy losses of turkey poults seem to be the rule rather than the exception.  This doesn't make me feel any better. Those little poults are terribly cute. 

From the kitchen: I think I'm going to be able to pull radishes this week.  What to do with radishes when the salad greens aren't ready? I also have mint.  Radishes and mint?  I don't think so!

What else is going on?: Maybe a better question would be, what's not going on? Sports. Sports are not going on. Otherwise... Katydid is getting ready for a violin recital, we're preparing for the arrival of 52 new chicks next week, various children have had eye exams and well-child checkups, I had to go to Urgent Care for oral steroids since my regular doctor's office was booked solid (but I feel almost human again, so it was worth it), Andy's in NYC again this week (only once, though), we're finishing up school books, I'm trying to write a guide for Gareth's study of evolutionary biology, Gareth marched in a Memorial Day parade, and Katydid and Andy got up really early to attend the annual Early Morning Birdwalk at our local arboretum. And the snapping turtles are trundling through our field and yard en route to their breeding sites.

A few pictures:

 

Pip is a deep sea diver, isn't that obvious?

 

Katydid in her element. (Photo by Andy.)

 

The snapping turtle we found in the field last weekend.  The females apparently come out this time of year to lay their eggs.  This particular turtle was fairly large -- probably about a foot long -- but apparently they can grow much larger.  Later in the weekend we saw another, much smaller snapping turtle on our front steps.  All children now know how to identify snapping turtles and have been warned to STAY AWAY from them.

 

The snapping turtle's head. (Photo by Katydid.)

I have only ONE picture of Gareth in the Memorial Day parade, and it's hard to pick him out.  Then my batteries gave out.  Andy and Farmerboy got to march along with Gareth's Scout troop so Katydid and I "had our hands full" with the twins and Chipmunk.  It is therefore doubtful whether I could have gotten any more pictures anyway, but just so you know... they all looked wonderful.

Our Lady's Eyes

 

Otherwise known as forget-me-nots...

Hello, Orioles

(This post is for Dawn, who is trying to lure her orioles out into the open. I would link directly to the post, which is entitled "Yoo-hoo, Orioles!", but for some reason I can't get it to open so I can get the permalink. Ah, technology. Anyway, Dawn, you know what you posted!)

The orioles are back in our neck of the woods, too.  As usual, we first heard them singing loudly in the trees by the garden.  I have never been able to get one photo of an oriole, so of course I rely on Katydid.

 

Orioles make it hard even for Katydid to get a good picture, though.

 

They're constantly doing gymnastics.

They always come back when the apples are in bloom.  We have two crabapples in our yard -- one of which is flowering spectacularly right now, the other not so much -- but there is an abandoned orchard in the woods behind our house.  Last year, Katydid got some really good oriole photos in the apple trees. (And I notice that the apples bloomed a week later last year. Hmmm.) 

My mom gave Katydid an oriole feeder complete with freeze-dried mealworms for her birthday. (Your 10 year old girl gets excited about freeze-dried mealworms as a birthday present, too, right?)  As soon as we heard the orioles, she hung it on the pole outside her window.

 

She set it up with oranges, grape jelly, and mealworms.  She hasn't seen an oriole yet, but she is optimistic that they'll eventually find it.  Maybe when the apples have dropped their blossoms.

 

All photos in this post by Katydid.

Wordless Wednesday: Spring Goldfinch, by Katydid

 

 

Country Diary: May Flowers

Weather: Temperatures have been in the 50's and low 60's this week, with lows down into the 40's. We've also had rain almost every day -- not much in sum, but a regular drizzle.  Andy was able to plant two long rows of onions, but that's been about it.  We're supposed to get a steady rain today, and rain for the next 2-3 days. The kids have been saying, "May showers bring June flowers," which is actually how it works here.

  

Katydid took some pictures of flowers blooming in the yard after she and Andy came home from her birthday trip.

 

  

 

At a lower elevation, the crabapples and lilacs have already started to bloom. Ours are still in the bud stage... but swelling more every day.  Coming home from church on Sunday, I looked at our land from a different perspective, wondering why our blooms lag behind everyone else's.  Elevation is certainly part of it - we're at 1100 feet or so -- but I think the slope of the land behind and around us means that we may be caught in a mild frost pocket.  We always have more snow, too.

In the Garden:

Not much to report.  I've started about 6 flats of seedlings in the dining room window: 2 of okra (just done last night); 1 watermelon (all up and beginning to get their seed leaves); 1 winter squash (not doing so well, but a few are up); and 2 cantaloupe (not up yet).  I don't have room to start cucumbers.  I need a greenhouse.  (I say this every year.)  In the actual garden, Pip's radishes and chard desperately need thinning, since he dumped an entire packet (or two) out in the same place.  The spinach is coming up -- and probably likes this rain -- and the peas are beginning to grow quickly.  Two of five of the rhubarb plants we planted last year have made it.  No asparagus yet.

Gareth has started both of the mushroom kits I ordered: shiitake and portabello.

In the Coop:

We're down to 10 hens, and Andy has ordered electric poultry netting.  Our turkeys are scheduled to ship May 18. I have heard so many bad things about turkeys -- how fussy they are, how they'll crowd into corners and suffocate, how they're more prone to disease -- that I am not sure I'm looking forward to brooding them.  Andy wants to get a stock tank to use as a brooder because it has rounded corners.  At least they won't be in my laundry room this year.

From the kitchen:

Fiddleheads! 

They don't look very appetizing, do they.  I didn't forage these -- I have no idea if our ferns are the kind you eat or not, though it seems like they might be, since these fiddleheads here came from 30 minutes away -- I bought them at the farmstand we frequent when we can.  I had never eaten fiddleheads before, and I could only find two recipes in my books.  One was for a fiddlehead and morel risotto.  I didn't have morels or arborio rice, but I did have a nice big portabello.  So I decided to saute the fiddleheads and mushrooms in butter with garlic the way the first part of the recipe said to, and then I salted them with sea salt and gave them a few good shakes of pepper.  Then, tentatively, I ate one.

Wow! So much better than they look.  All the kids liked them.  Let me repeat that, in bold.  All my super-picky kids liked fiddleheads and mushrooms.  They taste a little like asparagus, except better.

Garden Notes 4/28

So I won't forget... and because something is finally happening out there...

• The peas are coming up! Close observation was required to see the seedlings just pushing up out of the ground, but they're there. It took a little over a week for the seeds to germinate, which is not bad. I think we have the warm temperatures to thank; some other years it has seemed to take forever.
• Over the weekend we noted that Pip's chard and radishes had sprouted. He may also have dumped out some lettuce seeds in that space, too.  Right now the seedlings are indistinguishable, and it's going to require some merciless thinning.
• Gareth planted a long strip of carrots (Red-cored Chatenay, Cosmic Purple, and Thumbelina) and beets (golden) on Saturday.
• One of the Aronia bushes has already been snapped off by someone who isn't telling.  The remaining bush is already starting to leaf out.
• Blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries are all leafing out now.
• Crabapples are beginning to leaf, as is the oak tree.
• Wild strawberries have blossoms!

This is what it feels like to be warm

 

Yesterday temperatures climbed pleasantly into the low 70's, and Andy's big delivery from Miller Nurseries arrived. Puzzling it out this afternoon we had to retrieve the catalog in order to remember what some of the plants were.  Aronia, for instance. Beach plums. Was there a paw-paw tree?  What does a high-bush cranberry look like after it starts to grow?  When the bushes and trees come out of the long, brown paper wrapper, they're all just bare sticks.  It takes some imagination to make them into an 8-10 ft. bush covered in pink blossoms, or a small tree laden with purple or yellow fruit.  I don't think Pop had it in him; when I told him the stick he was standing next to was a cherry tree, he looked at me like I was insane. "It's a baby tree," I told him, but he just giggled and shook his head. Obviously it was a stick his father had shoved into the ground for vague and mysterious purposes, and his mother was a moron.

 (It's a beach plum.)

I made Andy's life harder -- the latest incident in a long line of incidents, I am sure -- by suggesting that we plant some of these exotic fruits in our yard and not way out in the "orchard" on the hill.  (I have to put "orchard" in quotes because right now it is a motley collection of bare sticks shoved in the ground.  Nothing has leafed out yet, and even the 3 and 4 year old trees look pretty pathetic.  Planting an orchard is an act of faith, even more so than planting a garden.)  The Miller catalog suggested that the highbush cranberry would make a lovely specimen plant.

"It grows 8-10 feet tall!" I said. "And, look - the flowers!"

Andy gave me that look that husbands give their wives when they've been moving furniture all day and a place for the couch has still not been decided upon. But, longsuffering husband that he is, he dug up the cranberry bush from where he'd already planted it near the blackberries on the other side of the garden and planted it instead in the sideyard where the big tree fell the summer Chipmunk was born. He and Katydid planted the aronias -- which the Miller catalog suggests as an ornamental that will attract birds to your yard with its fruit 10x higher in vitamin C than... strawberries... I think -- next to the gate to the "little boys' yard" near the deck, and the beach plums along the back of the fence there. Or -- one beach plum was planted.  Somehow the second beach plum necessary for pollination was not ordered.

You may be asking yourself what I was doing while my husband was rearranging shrubs for me. Well, I did run some errands in the morning. I took the 3 older kids to Agway, which was PACKED because it was 80 degrees and everyone was running outside to see the strange yellow ball in the sky, and then, of course, they felt the need to plant something. I bought my seed-starting supplies for melons and okra, and then we hit the library, where I searched in vain for penguin books but happily succumbed to the temptation to check out many spring-related titles:

Well, some spring-related titles anyway.  I couldn't neglect the transportation books, or I'd have gotten a mutiny when I got back home. I did pick up a few botany-related books which I hope the big kids will find (and read):

 

...and I carried Chipmunk around like a baby monkey for most of the afternoon and evening, stopping only for him to help me plant a tray of watermelon seeds, make a quick dinner (salmon patties, broccoli, pineapple), and to eat some ice cream.

And now we are listening to the spring peepers and getting ready for bed.  Life is good.

Country Diary: Getting Ready to Garden

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Weather: Blustery and cold right now (36 degrees at 8 AM), with rain and snow showers predicted. (A check of the radar reveals pockets of ice all around us, but none here yet.)  The 10 day forecast, however -- wow! Temperatures in the 70's and 80's predicted for the next five days, and sun - sun! - for ten days.  Amazing! I feel like doing a happy dance, but I'm sure the twins would think I was a lunatic.

Out my window: The chickens are staying close to the coop this morning. They still haven't eaten that big butternut squash I put out for them, though. The blue plastic tarps that cover the coop billow and snap in the wind, but the chickens ignore them -- calmly pecking in the straw around the crabapple tree.

What I'm hearing: The twins building a "road" out of wooden blocks, pressing light sabers, swords, and electronic magic wands into service as construction equipment... the muffled ring of windchimes whenever the boys step back to review their work.

From the kitchen: Tea with cream and honey. I'm battling a cold, and a long night with Chipmunk, who has just come down with it, too.  (Fortunately, I have the forecast to keep me happy this morning!) I just ate Raisin Bran for breakfast, but we've been eating a lot of eggs since we got home... we're getting 10-12 a day. I made a quiche the other night for dinner which was really good -- our own eggs, local cream, local raw milk cheese, portobello mushrooms.  It tasted fantastic and puffed up in a way that my quiches don't, usually, when I just make them with milk and regular old Wal-Mart cheddar cheese.  We still have some leftover, which I'll probably eat for lunch with a green salad.

From the learning room(s): Not much planned -- we've been unpacking and cleaning this week, and now -- have I mentioned the forecast? Katydid will be traveling with her father next week, since he has to make a business trip over her birthday.  So schoolish things are going to mostly wait until after next week. And on the other hand, Gareth just finished reading Animal Farm and Katydid has been writing a long story whose main characters are all birds... owls and hawks, I think... and the little boys are playing with penguins and other sea life toys. The big kids have been working on a little math every day, too.

What I'm reading: Hmmm.  That's a tough one.  I'm kind of in the middle and in-between books. I've been paging through the books that come in this "homesteading" package.  We watched the breadmaking video yesterday, and the little boys immediately wanted to make bread.  I was mostly struck with envy for the West's pantry!

Around the house: I'm working on the kitchen.  Andy finished up the painting while we were gone, so when we got home, there was all the painting clutter to clear, stuff to rehang, etc. I'm taking this opportunity also to declutter, to organize the pantry (such as it is), to order some curtains and a bookcase for gardening and cookbooks, and basically to clean.  I've gotten the pantry re-organized, the pots and pans cabinet sorted out, and one of the counters looking a lot better. Progress is a little slow due to sickness.

In the garden: Hurray! We broke ground over the weekend.  Peas, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, chard, and radishes are in the ground. (Well, Pip and Pop did the radishes and chard, so who knows how they'll come up.  We'll see.) We'll start on potatoes and onions this weekend, and I expect we will begin to get shipments of berry bushes and strawberry plants next week, too.

A few pictures:

 

 

Trying to keep the chickens from scratching up seeds.

 

I call this one, "Pea Fences at Dusk.  With Trucks."

Family, Friends, Dogwoods, and Azaelas

Dogwood blossoms, Chattanooga Nature Center -- by Katydid

I feel as if I should fling myself into a chair with an anticipatory yet relieved sigh, and say, "We're back! Now let me tell you..."  Well, I'd probably do something of the sort if I was meeting you for coffee, but it's hard to get the same kind of frame with a blog post.  And actually, there aren't so many stories to tell... We were gone for 3 weeks, and yes, we did drive; my mother flew up to make the drive down with the kids and me, roughly 1000 miles, and probably the thing about that trip which was most exciting was the GREEN line -- at that point almost exactly at the Maryland/Pennsylvania border.  It snowed on the hilltops the day we left, which made green grass and roadside daffodils all the more exciting, and when we got to Tennessee and saw redbuds and dogwoods in bloom, the effect was almost delirious.  The weather bounced around while we were there -- up to the low 70's, then plummetting into the 40's with even a few snowflakes -- but for the most part, it was kinder than a New York spring, and the kids had a good time.  I confess I had a little garden envy, because my parents' next door neighbor had already tilled up three large plots of ground and his onions looked as if they were progressing nicely.  Back home, Andy told me glumly, all we had was cold rain, and he was trying to get our new chicken coop built in spite of it, but the garden was far too wet to till.

While we were visiting my parents, we had the pleasure of meeting a few online friends, who are now -- happily -- friends in real life as well.

 

Jennifer graciously invited us to play at her (beautiful) home, and the kids had so much fun I had to carry a kicking and screaming Pip back to the car because I think he wanted to live at her house.  (And just in case anyone is wondering, her learning room is even better in person!)  Unfortunately my kids came down with a cold and so we couldn't get together for a second time as planned, but -- maybe next year!

Right before we left my parents' to visit Andy's family in Memphis, we did manage to meet another online friend, though...

(Does anybody notice that one of my kids is missing in this picture? Was he standing behind someone? I can't remember. I thought I got everybody...)

This is Marjorie's lovely family, whom we met at the Chattanooga Nature Center.  Katydid was most happy to make the acquaintance of several girls on this trip.  Although I think one of the high points of the Chattanooga Nature Center for the kids (girls and boys) was the decidedly ungirly owl-eating-a-white-rat moment.

Katydid had the camera at the nature center, so, predictably, I have lots of pictures of horses, snakes, and flowers, and not very many of children or even one of the nifty tree house they have there.  On our way out, though, we drove through the attached arboretum and I did manage a picture of this:

Now the story goes that a storm carved the image of an Indian warrior into the side of the mountain.  Can you see it?

About a week and a half into our trip, we picked Andy up at the Nashville airport (my parents live in middle Tennessee) and drove over to Memphis to see Andy's family for Easter.  By this time -- predictably -- most of the kids were sick, but not seriously, so we had a chance to go to the zoo (a tradition).

 

 It was a little cold -- we should have been wearing our New York field trip apparel -- but the kids had a good time with their cousins.   And we got to see penguins.  More on penguins later, as they are currently a Big Deal around here with a certain three year old (Pip).

The polar bears were a big hit, too.  Katydid had the camera:

We also went to Dixon Gardens, a garden, art gallery, and a once private home -- all donated and now open to the public.  The gardens are incredible, especially in mid-April with all the azaelas in bloom.  Dixon Gardens deserves its own post (or photo album), but here's a glimpse:

Andy and his family took the big kids to see a Memphis Redbirds game... an outing that resulted in the most memorable and scariest story of the trip, as Farmerboy decided to attempt to get back to the seats on his own and instead, got lost.  Security had to be called.  Mercifully, the first I heard of this was when everyone got home with Farmerboy safe and sound.  Farmerboy is now required to HOLD HANDS under pain of death.  I'm thinking about handcuffs.

He had an early birthday celebration while we were there:

 

at Joe's Crab Shack.  (Today -- April 22 -- is actually his birthday.  We opened presents at 7 AM, but he won't technically be 6 until 9:22 PM. No sense in speeding up time... hard to believe that he's already 6 when it doesn't seem that long ago that I was staring at an ultrasound, counting movements and wondering whether I would be sent home from the hospital or not... and then those midnights dragging myself back into the hospital bed after late visits to the NICU.)

And, of course, there was Easter:

 

Well. After all that, we're taking a week to settle back in, recover from the new colds some of us (me, Katydid) have, clean house, and reacclimate to ordinary life.  As soon as we got home, Andy grabbed the tiller and went to work in the garden, so we have our garden work to keep us busy and to make up for the lack of azaelas.  Sort of. ;-)

What part of spring are you?

You Are Blooming Flowers

You are an optimistic person by nature. In even the darkest times, you are hopeful about the future. You feel truly blessed in life and can sometimes be overwhelmed with emotions. You have an artist's eye. You are always looking for beauty in the mundane. You have a good sense of aesthetics, especially when it comes to shapes and color.

What Part of Spring Are You?

 

(HT: Dawn, of course :)