Walking the front...

In keeping with my recent invite on the garden walk, I realized that I hadn't shown you any of the color that's been popping up in the front yard. I mean the bees do need to have a little something to bring them to us don't they?Can anyone identify this one? I've forgotten the name of it. Sure is a bright little bit of orange in the garden though.This is an Iris that a neighbor of ours offered to us last spring when she was thinning hers. You have to love freebies right?And speaking of freebies. These are a couple of our favorites (above and below). They're our never-never snapdragons. That's not an actual common name for them by the way, just a little something I came up with because, although in our climate snapdragons are considered annuals, these guys keep re-seeding themselves every year somewhere else in the yard. Get it? The "never never" stop coming back! It's fun every year to try to watch for them as they peek out between the other perennials.And not to be one to completely leave edibles out of the front yard of course, We have Tarragon that held over from last year.This one was a surprise for us both. I had no idea it had such cute little purplish blue flowers.
So, here's a question for all of you more experienced herb growers amongst us...do they bloom all summer? If so, do I need to prune off the old blooms. Any help is appreciated. Either way though this one will remain.

More is coming and some have passed but all are welcome in their time.
Best to you all!
P~

Beauty in the garden

It does truly abound there doesn't it? I sometimes wonder how anyone, and we all know them, can not like to spend time out in a garden? Whether that be a flower garden, vegetable garden, container or water garden. I get such pleasure and relaxation from just wondering around the yard and finding what it holds for me that day. I took these pictures last week and have been wanting to get them up online. I hope you enjoy!

This baby is my pride and joy as far as flowers are concerned. I call it snow white. It's a columbine that I picked up four years ago at one of the local stores, Wal-mart, Home Depot wherever. It has come back every year without fail and as you may be able to tell from the picture below, has grown bigger every year.
As I think about it now, I should have placed an object in the picture with it to give an idea of how big it is. The head of flowers on this plant is probably near to a foot and a half wide; quite big for a columbine. I let the heads go to seed every year and I think it's just multiplying on itself. The flowers are huge too, almost three inches across. I've been thinking of seed saving from this plant this year. Anyone interested in trying some out?
Here is a volunteer from a snapdragon that I allowed to seed last year. I've talked about this before, and I'll do it again. It is a great boon to me to be able to almost count on the "free" plants that we get every year because we let a few heads of flowers go to seed. Plus, I love finding out where they will pop up the next spring. It's like Easter egg hunting for flowers.
I thought you all might like this. We've been having a couple of Robins visit us almost daily lately. The bird bath in the corner has become a regular stop on their way through the neighborhood. Those are strawberries growing through the "urbanite". They're just turning ripe now, and every day or so I'll find one of them with a couple of nibbles in it. I've taken to calling it the "Robins Share", sort of like the "Angels Share" in whiskey making. Maybe the Robins will be nice and leave the big strawberry patch on the other side of the yard for me. (Just in case it's been netted.)
This little guy took himself an nice cool bath, and then jumped next door to our apple tree for a little grooming.
Oops, I'm caught, he saw me. Oh well, he'll be back. The lure of the bath and dine Strawberry spa is just too great!
P~

Cycles

Spring is coming, or it's here, depending on your perspective. I guess it's kind of a glass half full / half empty kind of thing. Any way you look at it, things are changing.

To the left is a sorry looking dead bunch of sticks that was once a very full and very pretty snapdragon. Why is it still in the yard? Because those pretty flowers, when not dead headed toward the end of the year, will dry up and do their natural thing; go to seed and propagate. In fact this particular snapdragon is the second generation as it is. In fact there's another one just around the corner where we had never planted a snapdragon before.

Here's another favorite waking up for the season. Can you name it? Did you guess Honeysuckle? Before long, the kids will be sitting on the porch swing, sucking on fistfulls of these and leaving Mom and Dad to sweep em up, can't say I blame them though, (or that they're the only ones to ever do it.)

Here we have another little volunteer. This is a columbine that we planted our first summer here, three years ago. This flower has only one flush of blooms each season and after every one I let the plant go to seed. It's not the most attractive thing in the world I guess, but it's the cycle of things. It's the way it's meant to be.

And last but not least, everyone has their favorites, and here's one of mine, Daffodils. I can't help it, ever since I saw that kid having tea from a tulip and then eat it on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", I've loved em. They come up early every year, give us a big ole splash of color and, well heck they just make me smile.

It's fun to watch the cycles come around. Enjoy this time, it is fleeting and before long it'll be full blown summer, and though that brings many gifts of it's own, there's just something special about Spring.

Finally got some work done

I got out into the yard again today to get working on the garden area and here it is. I pulled almost all of the plants from the garden during the week to get ready for today so that I could concentrate of getting the work done, or nearly so.

You may remember a list that I posted a little while back with so much to do and so little time; I thought I'd update you to the progress. I know it helps me to see others posting their goals and how they go about accomplishing them, perhaps I can inspire one of you.

• Pull the summer veggies that are now, thanks to an early and hard fall, dieing.
Check. I pulled all the squash, pepper, tomato and other plants that were still left in the garden beds.

• Pull the annuals from the front beds.
Check. Petunias and other annuals pulled, potted plants pulled and soil sifted to remove roots. Next spring I'll add some fresh compost and vermiculite to re-energize it and get it ready for a new planting.

• Dig out, split and replant the Rhubarb so we can have more next year.
Check. Look at this thing! I thought it looked like some kind of strange alien life form, I know, time to lay off the star trek huh? I dug out carefully around the outside of the crown and root ball. For those of you that are not familiar with it, the crown of a plant like rhubarb or strawberries is that area at the top of the root ball that sits generally at the soil level. It is where all the growth of the plant comes from. After I had dug out the whole plant, I used a flat shovel to split the crown into three pieces each of which a bit of rootstock still attached. I gave one to a neighbor that was interested in growing some of her own. The two I kept were added to part of the new area of garden that A~ and I cleared out last weekend, right between where my raspberries and strawberries are growing, I thing I'll call that the pie stretch of garden from now on.

• Decide which large perennials we will leave where they are and which we will move and then actually move them.
Check. A~ and I got this done last weekend, and opened up a good sized area of our back planting area for future gardening. We've decided that the front is largely for show and the back is for food. Works for me.

• Cut up and consolidate all of the pulled greens from the garden for composting.
Check. I also collected the bagged grass from the last lawn mowing (yeah our lawn is done for the season.) I've found that our gas lawn mower works great as a garden waste compost prep device. That's a really technical geeky way of saying that I can chop the heck out of all the greens and browns collected in the garden before adding them to the compost pile. This makes the breakdown of the compost go much faster and the finished product much finer. Speaking of compost, My wife thinks I may have become a little, well, let's just say she says I've gone a little overboard when I referred to this area of the yard as "Compost Central". You can see behind the bags of grass clippings that I've added an area for an actual pile to sit over winter. I haven't added all the clippings and greens yet, I need to get some straw to make sure I get adequate carbon to nitrogen mixture and that I have enough room for air movement. This is what keeps the pile from smelling and gets it hot, helping it to break down quicker.

• Prune, thin and support the raspberries and strawberries.
Yes, check. I finally got around to doing this. This year my strawberries really went crazy. I got a decent amount of berries from the small patch (4' x 5') that I had last year. Then after harvest, they began to drop runners and new growth. Whoa, they spread like fire. I pulled a good bit of the old growth to allow the new plants to come up better and thin the patch. I also made a distinct edge to the spreading patch. final size of the patch is about 4' x 8'. Not quite twice the size, but with the thinning and some care, I hope to get nearly twice the harvest next year. As for the raspberries, I learned this year that raspberries will only fruit on the second year growth but not thereafter; I cut out the two year old growth and strung up and supported the one year old growth, hopefully I can get my two plantings on the same schedule from here on out. Last year one of them gave a lot of fruit, this year the other did; if I can get them both producing together I'll be a happy sorbet eating man!

• Weed some of the bad areas of the yard to get a head start on next year.
This part is an on going project. I am trying to get a handle on weeds overall, the grass looks good, but I still have to weed and till the new garden areas before winter sets in.

I hope your garden chores are coming along. This is that time of the year when it is so easy to neglect the garden, but at the same time is one of the most important times for prepping and putting the earth to sleep before winter. I'm really pleased with my progress so far this year. I spent much of the spring this year going through the beds and getting them ready for planting. I hope to be able to get seed in the ground much earlier next year and enjoy a greater and earlier harvest. Don't throw in the trowel yet, there's work to do. (Yeah I stole that line from Mother Earth News, it was just to perfect I had too. LOL)

Namaste
P~

Sad to say we're back.

This is where we were...I'm sad to say it, but we're back. I am of course glad to be back home, but this was a really relaxing little jaunt. This cute little red cabin is the one that we stayed in while up in the mountains. I can't say enough about this place, The accomodations were absolutely top notch! Clean and modern while not making you feel like you were just staying in a hotel that happened to be in the woods; very cabinee for lack of a better word. Bonnie and Pat were the camp hosts, and were great. They explained everything to us, showed us a couple of the other cabins that were available, let us look at the one we're gonna have for October, and told us about a couple of nice little hikes from the camp.

On Friday morning the boys and I grabbed the fishing gear, camera and a little adventurous spirit and headed out to Lyman Lake. This is little Lyman, it's neighbor. We fished a little, and got skunked, actually we fished a very little so I don't feel too bad about it. The lake was beautiful, but was surrounded by about 15 ft of thick grasses, and we couldn't really find a good spot to fish from. We were lucky on the trip to and from the lake to get to see what we counted were 7 or 8 deer. (The count differs depending on which boy you asked.) We snapped a piture of this little guy munching a late breakfast not far from the road. He was with a doe who is not in the picture. All together this trip we counted about 12-14 deer and somthing like 4 or 5 of them were bucks. Which is actually pretty darn good considering most of them were seen from the road just casually glancing around. There are definitely deer in them thar hills, I think it should be an interesting hunt this year. (Did you hear that dad!)

That afternoon we took a drive up one of the local four wheel trails and found a beautiful meadow with a pond and wild flowers.
Oh, the wild flowers, I can't leave them out. I was shocked to see that there were so many of them. This is the last weekend of July, and we haven't had a lot of rain (Although it did rain a little each night that we were there.) so I was happy to see them. I am a bit of a flower geek I guess, I could take a whole disk full of flower picture, I just love them. This is the pond and the meadow area that I was talking about. I loved the way this old trunk was slowly becoming a part of the lake. This whole area had been burned about 5 yrs ago I think (It was burned, but I'm not sure on the dates.) and everything was coming back to life. There were new trees poking up, and wildflowers flourished on the rich burn compost that was everywhere. I had to think to myself that Mother nature really does know what she's doing! On the way up and back down the canyon, we were playing dodge the sheep. One of the things that you get used to in Utah when you go up into the mountains is that there will be sheep in your way at some point. This herd (or is it a flock? Anyone, anyone?) was the biggest one I've come across yet. Whenever I see them in the mountains though, I always think about my grandfather Dan. He was a sheep herder in the Colorado Mountians when my dad was born. I always remember a picture that I have of him sitting on a big horse with his hat and chaps. That will always be my image of a cowboy! Everyone tells me how much I am like him; that he loved to have his hands in the ground, and be outdoors. I'm glad he passed those things to me.


This morning, Saturday, we cleaned up around camp and got ready to go, then took a couple hour hike up the canon to a place the Bonnie and Pat had told us about. The beaver dams. I kind of slapped two of them together here to make it easier for you to see. Really though, it does no justice to the work these guys have done. we hiked up past three dams that were all I'd say 20-30 yards across and between 5 and 8 feet high. I have seen beaver on the rivers here before, but I have never been able to see their masterpieces in person. If you are at all interested in architecture, these are a feat to behold.

We finally had to leave, and come on down into the heat again, but we did make one more quick pit stop on the way; Devils Slide. Devils slide is one of those places that you drive by a hundred times, but always say, "Eh, we'll stop next time." We stopped this time. Mind you it's a formation of differing types of limestone, so it's not gonna make it to the wonders of the world list, but hey, the kids thought it was cool and got the railroad conductor on the passing train to whistle at them, so the stop was worth it. I am glad to be back, but I can't say I'm not looking forward to our next trip there. I think I even managed to get permission to go fishing myself tomorrow. Yeah I know all you ladies reading this are laughing, I said permission.

Hope you all had a great weekend few days and I'll talk to you later.
P~

Some spring beauty!

I thought everyone would enjoy a little glimpse of the great rebirth going on in my yard. I know I love seeing it every day.


Apple on the left, pear below.















A cherry blossom just "popping" out!














And what garden doesn't light up every year when the bleeding hearts come out!

Fire wood storage.

At our house, there's one thing that we all love about summer. Campfires! Every year we love to have campfires in the backyard at our little coleman firepit. A~ and I have found that there's really not a lot of foods that our boys won't eat if it comes off a stick. Yeah, I know, they're boys through and through. So anyway, I have a couple of businesses that I drive by everyday going to and from work that are always putting piles of firewood out for free (My favorite price). The problem is that every year I try to make a nice orderly pile on an old palet that I keep back in a corner. I always start out good, but by midsummer I have a messy unsightly heap that is falling all over the place. So this year, I was able to recycle some construction materials from a home that's being built next door and set out to build a firewood storage rack. I have most of it framed up and ready to store wood in, but I still need to build a roof over it so it doesn't all get wet. I do have to say I am pleased thus far. I'll get some pictures of it soon. Next yard project, compost pile. I am looking into a couple of different ways that I can accomplish this. My wifes concerns need to be given the utmost consideration, if I want to keep it that is. She doesn't want an eyesore out back, and is worried about pests. I want to find a way that I can do it cheaply, I am leaning towards either building a wooden frame and covering it with wire or possibly using a recycled water barrel to build a rolling composter.
Any suggestions appreciated.
P~

Square foot Garden.

Can you tell I finally got out to take some pictures. This is one of my square foot beds with the overhead frame that I use to vertical train my tomatoes. I swear by this method!














Here is one of my five bed garden.

A picture is worth a thousand words

A~ and I planted bulbs for the first time this last fall. We're really happy with our first showing so far this year. We have Tulips, Daffodils and Hyacinth poppoing up all over. We have been taking regular walks around the yard to check out the progress. We're like a couple of proud parents.