June 07, 2003
First poppies
The first poppy came out this morning! Of course it was raining, so I waded through the sopping grass to get over to the poppy garden and take a picture or two.
I wish I'd had the camera out a bit later, when a finch came by to check out the poppies, and sat on one of the buds for a while. When it stops raining, I should scrub out the birdbath and get it into the garden.
June 06, 2003
Salad days
After the salad last night, I need to rethink the lettuce I'm growing in the garden. I don't like the endive-type lettuces. They're too bitter for my taste. And the broadcast seed means that I need to spend what seems like an excessive amount of time picking and preparing the salad. I'd rather use square-foot gardening methods and wait a little bit longer to harvest larger leaves without needing to thin.
June 02, 2003
First salad
Today we ate the first produce from our garden. Salad!
June 01, 2003
Watching things bloom
All the rain has been good to the gardens.
The first iris burst into bloom in the rain yesterday. I love the closeup -- it just says "feed me".
The iris by the mailbox have budded out nicely, but haven't bloomed yet.
The poppies are also budding, and will probably bloom in another week or two. They're usually in bloom around Father's day weekend.
Grape leaves on our untrimmed grape vines. This particular vine is growing on an old clothesline that I'd like to replace with a more permanant arbor. This would have the added advantage of being at a better height than the clothesline, so it wouldn't be necessary to duck under the grapevines every time we came into the yard from that corner.
Ferns and hostas in the bed by the corner of the garage. I like the fancy hosta with the ivy-style leaves even better this year. Only two of the ferns made it, as I expected. The furthest hosta is a little chewed (see why) but still seems healthy.
Daisies or black-eyed susans (I forget which) in the bed under the front bedroom. I'm hopeful that the vent from the new downstairs bathroom won't affect plants near the back of the bed badly. The more likely problem in this bed is plants getting stepped on by people working on the house. The person who came to clean the air conditioner, for example, couldn't locate the path around the other side of the bush (off the left side of the picture), and walked right through the bed. Perhaps I need some stepping stones?
None of the impatiens I interplanted in this bed seems to have come up yet. Perhaps it's been too cold, or I got a poor seed mix from Home Depot. If they don't sprout, I should think about growing inside from seed or buying plants next year.
A bleeding-heart plant. These always remind me of my grandmother, who had several of them in the garden by her back door, and a story about the parts of the flower. I can't remember the story, and will have to ask my father and my aunt if they do. I do think she had a different variety of bleeding heart with slightly larger flowers.