Designing in Life

Early Planting

The frost date in my neighborhood is around May 26.  That means don't plant too early.  Cold hardy vegetables, however, can be started in late April.  My peas are in.  There is 1, yes 1, poking it's little green head up.  I'm hoping there will be more.

It drives me crazy to look in my trash can and see so much plastic, so I decided to plant some romaine and fennel in some of the lettuce containers. (do we really need lettuce in a plastic clam shell?)  I'll plant some zinnias in a couple of them this week.

This is what I did –
Take a philips head screw driver and carefully make holes in the bottom of your plastic clam shell, by gently turning the screwdriver back and forth until it pokes through.  Make about 5 holes.

Fill your clam shell with potting soil, (the kind meant for garden vegetables) plant your seeds and water gently, but thoroughly.

Close the lid and put outside in the sun.  You now have a mini greenhouse.  It's a good idea to open the lid once-in-a-while to allow some air into your greenhouse, keeping it from getting too warm.  The window box behind the clam shell has lettuce growing in it.  I keep a box of lettuce on the back porch for easy access. 

Someone mentioned to me today that they thought there were far more dandelions than last year.  After digging up about 500 of them out of the garden yesterday, I tend to agree.

Hope you're growing something right now that you'll be able to munch on later!

Magic Beans...Sort Of

Nick came home with some wisteria seed pods. 

He thought we might be able to plant them and watch beautiful wisteria vines blossom in the spring.

It was a wonderful thought, but then I looked up information on growing them from seeds.  Seems it takes about 15 years before you'll get any blossoms, and sometimes it takes years before the seeds germinate and sprout. 

So I guess if there are to any wisteria growing around here any time soon, we'll need to buy some plants.  Still, I think I should just plant the seeds outside somewhere.  I'm sure in 15 years I'll have forgotten and may be pleasantly surprised to find some wisteria one warm spring day.

Rhubarb!

The weather here in the Northeast has been unusually mild.  Because of the warm weather there are plants emerging that should go back into hiding.  This week's night temperatures will be in the high 20's, which means some frosty ground in the morning.  I know that perennials are hearty, but wonder about some of them.  Most of all, I'm hoping the rhubarb that is now pretty big (and too early to be so big) will be OK.

And why am I hoping that?  Well, I'd love to make some rhubarb upside-down cake.  My dad loved this cake.  It comes from a Good Housekeeping cookbook I've had since 1970.  It's falling apart, which just makes me realize how often I pull it out.  I haven't figured out how to substitute the sugar with agave, but the flour can be subbed with spelt flour, the butter with vegan margarine and milk with soy or almond milk.

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

 

2 Tbs butter or margarine

½ C granulated sugar

¼ C brown sugar

2 C Rhubarb cut in ½-inch pieces

1/3 C butter or margarine

½ C granulated sugar

1 egg

½ Tsp. vanilla

1 C sifted flour

1 ½ Tsp baking powder

¼ Tsp salt

½ C milk

 

Melt 2 tbs. butter in 8x8 in pan.  Stir in ½ cup sugar, brown sugar and rhubarb.  Spread evenly over bottom of pan.  In small mixing bowl, cream 1/3 cup butter and ½ cup sugar.  Add egg and vanilla, beat well.  Sift together dry ingredients.  Add alternately with milk to creamed mixture.  Spread over rhubarb.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes before inverting on serving plate.  Serve warm with whipped topping.

Happy Spring and I hope you try this cake.  It's delicious.

Invasion of the Carrot Turkey

How many of you picked a carrot from your garden that looks like this?

Aside from how that one looks, the carrots have been very tasty.  I grew Burpee Short Round because I have clay soil with some stones. These were a good choice because of their short compact shape. I picked the rest of the Brussel sprouts yesterday, and it looks like there will be more to come if the weather stays mild as predicted.  As much as I complained about my garden this year, here I am still eating what I grew.  Yea, I'm lucky.

Don't forget to look at Saturday's post for the give-away.

Night Blooming Cereus

On Saturday morning I noticed something very exciting.  My night blooming cereus had 2 buds.  I've had this plant for 5 plus years and it has never blossomed.  Some cuttings were given to me from a friend.  Honestly, it's about the ugliest, ungainly plant I've ever owned.  It was on the list of "time to get rid of" plants.  It must have known this.

As you can see, the blossom looks a bit scary. 

This is the small blossom.  Take a close look and you'll see that the blossoms just pop out from a leaf.  As soon as it got dark outside, the first blossom started to bloom.

It was amazing watching it unfurl its petals and finally open as a flower.

You can see how big the bloom was.  It had a wonderful flowery-sweet scent...and lasted the evening and night until the first light of day came through the window.

And then it was gone.  There is still one blossom left, but I'm not sure when it will bloom.  Maybe tonight or in the next 3 days.  If you'd like to see a short time-lapse video of one blooming, I found this one on YouTube. 

Now I understand why the people of the Victorian Age had parties that lasted far into the night celebrating the blossoming of the night-blooming cereus.  They sure knew how to have a good time!

Peonies

Although the peonies are soon to be on their way out, I saw some today that were still pretty spectacular.  I had a photo shoot in Shoreham and when I was driving back to work, I decided to pay a visit to my favorite flower farm, Golden Russet Farm, also in Shoreham.  I bought a few things and as I was leaving, spotted all of these along the driveway.

It had rained this morning which caused all the heads to droop, but the sun had come out before I saw these and they were starting to dry out.  The white peonies are the most scented and since there was a bit of a breeze, it filled the air.  I love the single petaled ones with the big yellow center.  These add wonderful scent and color to a garden.  Why don't I have any?  I brought one with me when we moved into this house 11 years ago, but it didn't make it.  I'm putting these on my "must have" list knowing they'll go on sale when the blooms are gone.  But they'll be back next year!

Designing in...My Garden

I've been really busy trying to get my gardens in order.  I've almost finished planting the vegetables – leaving a few rows for later crops and just trying to get all the seeds in the ground.  Now on to the flower gardens.  Sunday (with Nick's help)  I made this bench.  I still have some things to put in the planter.

It was a busy weekend.  A wedding on Saturday and 7 hours of yard work on Sunday.  Weed whacking, planting, cleaning up and a trip to the roof to clean out the gutters.  We haven't quite gotten our pool up and running with the solar panels yet.  It has been pretty cool out there and not really swimming weather.  I'm hoping that by next week we'll be spending some evenings floating around after work. 

I was able to clip some lettuce/arugula for our salad tonight.  Maybe a few days early, but it was delicious.  I've planted more of this mix in the garden, but it's great to have a small window box of greens on the deck to pick at the last minute.

I have so much more to do and I sure do hope I can squeak out the time after work to get it all done!

Rain, Rain go Away...Please

Cold, rainy and just plain icky out there.  I decided I needed to work at home this afternoon so that I could pull together some things for a photo shoot tomorrow morning.  My heart isn't in it because my garden is calling my name, and I just can't do anything out there until it stops raining.  We needed some, but probably not this much. But still, there are things happening out there, in spite of the continuous downpour.

A bit out of focus, but here are two lonely lily-of-the-valley – must be related to that one lone daffodil a few weeks ago!

The hostas seem to like the rain.

The wigellia from Jersey City is blooming nicely.

The Jackaronda clematis is starting to climb.  So, I guess I should be happy that there are some things out there that are loving the rain.

And this is my half-hearted attempt at pulling some things together for the shoot.  I think you'd better wish me luck!

Memorial Day and Frost?

Yup, they're once again predicting frost and by the daytime temperature today – 60's– it feels a bit more like fall.  The sky is clear and blue and the wind is a blustery stiff one that makes it feel more like it's in the 50's.  So, instead of planting, I stayed inside most of the day moving furniture around, baking and sewing.  Not much of a Memorial Day celebration, I guess, but a day off is a day off and I always welcome one.

I picked the last of the French double lilacs from the yard.  Their fragrance is intense and heady.  They are here for such a short time, so I try to have a vase-full from the time they bloom until the very last one is gone.

The flowers, herbs and vegetables are going to have to wait another day to be planted.  Tomorrow the garden is being tilled, and then, I hope, all possible frost will be a thing of the past.  Gee, if I wanted to live in Alaska, I would have moved there.

Hope you all have a nice day off, and take a moment to remember what this day is really all about.

In Hopes of Cherry Blossoms – Some Day

As I looked out the back door at work the other day – dreamily, I might add, because the sun had come out and the sky was blue and I really, really, really wanted to be on the other side of the door – not confined to a cubicle, I noticed that the ornamental cherry tree which is blossoming out back had some new shoot growth coming up.

Hmmm, I wondered, maybe I could get a cutting for my own beautiful spring tree.

So, out I went with shovel in hand (my answer to all questions about where I was going resulted in "Digging to China" since I wasn't really looking for spectators) and started to dig.  I got one very good somewhat rooted sprout.  On my way home I stopped and bought some Root Tone (aka root take or root start). 
I dipped the root part in the powder and planted it in a small cup, then went to get my camera to show you how I did it.  Well, it seems as though our DSL modem died so there was no connecting to the internet last night.  I told Nick I can certainly live without television, but I need to connect to the internet.  Hopefully the modem will be here tomorrow, but in the meantime, I'll just post these from work.  So, anyway, I'm hoping that there will be a little ornamental cherry tree to plant this fall - a very little one to say the least!

And here is a picture from my Amelia Island vacation.  I asked the piano player to play "My One and Only Love" which he didn't know, so I settled on "Moonlight in Vermont" which everyone knows!