Missing Blogger

Well here it is going into summer time and my usual devotion to blogging, facebooking and other online endeavors has taken a back seat to my current lover..... my yard and garden.

Something happens to me when the weather finally clears up and the plants begin to grow again.  Some might call it an obsession even.  Whatever name it goes by, I just can't get enough time in the outdoors and my favorite place to pass the time is in the backyard.

Over the dreary winter, I often sat and day dreamed about the garden and projects I might try this year.  Now it's been all action.  Between the veggies, the herb beds and my flowers I'm so busy tending to the yard that I'm sorry to say I've neglected all you wonderful blog readers.

So here I am with a little check in to let you know I haven't dropped off the earth.  I'm still here and still trying to live green!  I promise, devoted readers, that I will try to post a little more often throughout the summer.  I have some great recycle garden projects to tell you about and of course I'll have updates on the garden and what's growing on.  In the mean time, here's some photos from the yard and garden where I've been hard at work.  Enjoy!

New Tomato bed interplanted with garlic.  The bottles are recycled into a watering system that takes the water to the root zone and avoids any water getting onto the tomato foliage.  This is good because water on the foliage can bring blight.

Nasturtium after the rain.

Flowers in the vegetable garden?  Why not!  They bring beauty and bees into the space and most importantly they bring me joy when I'm weeding :0)

Yes!  We've got raspberries on our bush this year!

Last winter I lost a beautiful climbing clematis that was here.  Now I'm using the support that was left behind and growing a native honeysuckle that I found started growing on the hillside in my backyard.  When mature, this will have beautiful bright orange flowers that are a draw for hummingbirds and butterflies.

I expanded the area between the fire pit and the native bed behind it by about 3 feet this year so we could set a bench there and roast marshmallows this summer.  From here you can look out the other way and see the water and the city lights from Bellingham at night.

Another planting extension.  I added about 2.5 feet all the way around this bed.  Yep, I moved all of those rocks again.  Rock work is like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Finding the right stone to fit is half the fun!

Not to be outdone by Ben's new dahlia bed, I built one too!  Mine is the rock wall with posts and his is the cedar one.  Both will be equally beautiful when those flowers bloom!

My planting around the "stairs to nowhere" has filled in very nicely this year. 

Along the back stairs.  This bed is nice and lush this year.  Those irises in the front were a beach combing find after a storm 3 or 4 years ago.  I soaked them in fresh water for a few days and planted them.  When they bloom they're gorgeous yellow iris

The new earth stairs I built are now planted.  I'm hoping to have blooms going up both sides of the stairs later this summer

Garden view from our front porch.  I'm thinking of naming her "shipwreck garden".  What do you think?

Can you name this flower?  I've got this pink running all around the house and keep adding it to the new gardens.  It gives a lovely overall effect and consistancy to the yard.  But, I don't know what this plant is called.  It grows from chunky tubers about 1/2" thick and forms clumps.  Anyone?

A friendly frequent garden visitor.

This rocky outcropping is a challenge in the garden, but I'm pleased that this year I do have pockets of pretties growing there.  I'm trying to fill any of the crannies with sedums and such.

Dill weed and pickling cukes went in along this string line.

This year I'm using this fine net to protect things from the hungry birds.  Looks like we'll be the only ones eating our strawberries this year!

Another day in the sun for Echo and another day of gardening for me.

I added this terraced herb bed last year.  It's filled in beautifully.  Here you can see the old log stairs that are now just decorative.  I love the way the moss has covered them.

I built an "island style" flag pole from wood, copper pipe, rebar and aluminum & moved the flag back to our driveway enterance.  Then I spent a day clearing blackberry vines out of here.  OUCH!  Seems like most days I'm pulling blackberry thorns out of my hands lately.

Another feathered friend.  This little goldfinch suprised me when he chose this seed feeder over the thistle tube that is hanging about 2 feet away.

Moving rocks again!  I find it a lot easier to take small loads in my little wagon than to try to take large ones in the wheelbarrow.

Here's a full view of my herb bed.  See how lush!  this is 3 working terraces with a 4th terrace (in the back) that I put trimmings in each spring.  Thinks like sticks and brush.  This offers the birds some nesting material.  It also is where I allow some nettles to grow for the butterflies and it springs up with new ferns and native flowers.

These beautiful flag irises I've divided each year and scattered them throughout the yard too.  Most of the summer they just have long green leaves almost like clumps of grass, but at this time of year they're blooming and beautiful!  This year I top dresssed with alfalfa meal and I have LOADS more flowers than previous years.  Also great because the slugs seem to leave them alone unlike my large irises.

There's so much more I could share, but that will keep for a future posting.  I'm off to do some more gardening.  Oh and by the way, I saw my first pea forming on the vine today.  :0)

Wednesday What's Growing On?

Well here we are starting into May and my garden is looking very green.  This week we had our typical spring showers one day followed by sunshine the next and my plants love that.  Everything is growing like crazy and you know what that means..... time to clean up! 

Once an over grown path, now a big burn pile

My yard has all kind of nooks and crannys and I've tried to make each one into a garden of sorts.  In the side yard behind the burn pile we have a couple large native beds with paths running around each one.  It's been about 2 years since I did any pruning in that area and I was starting to lose the paths.  No worries though.  This week I grabbed the pruners, donned a long sleeve shirt and got to it!  I cut back the native Saalal that had crept into the pathway. With a the path reclaimed, it was time to head into the beds and pulled out the native ground gowing blackberries that are always trying to take over.  They seem to grow about 2' per month in the spring! 

It's a dog's life :0)

With Ben's recent purchase of a push reel mower, I decided mowing our lawn wasn't so bad.  I had always had trouble starting the gas powered mower and hated the noise and fumes.  This new people powered mower was great to use.  It was quick, quiet and easy!  And Echo really appreciated a freshly mowed lawn!

Rhubarb ready for harvest

While I was in the backyard I noticed my crazy rhubarb was ready for a pruning too.  I don't know why I ever planted this in my flower bed, but it's going to have to stay there until fall transplanting time. I decided to cut it all back and see if I can find a good recipe to use it in today.  Rhubarb is my favorite plant in the earliest part of spring because I can see the growth every day.  Now that I've got other plants growing in around it I'll spend the rest of the summer battling to keep it harvested.  It's such a great producer!

Great germination rate for my own saved seeds!

Not too much work going on in my veggie patch this week.  I've already planted all my available beds and am just waiting for things to grow in.  As soon as the weather stays dry, Ben will be building me some more raised beds for my tomatos and other warm weather plantings.  I did notice a lot of sprouting action on my Romaine planting from a couple weeks ago.  That's extra exciting to me because these are seeds I saved from my garden last year. 

Such a sweet smelling flower

Everything else is growing in nicely in the vegetable garden.  Ben has decided to be a gardener too this year and has taken over on the potatoes so that's one less chore for me.  He also decided to have his own bed for planting utilizing the square foot gardening technique.  So far he's added some garlic sets.  I'm excited to see what else he'll be planting in his bed throughout the spring and early summer.

I do have a few pretties in bloom now.  In the rock garden the sweet woodruff is in full bloom.  It's so pretty with it's delicate white flowers blanketing the bank.  In the evenings this tiny flower sends out a huge fragrance too!

Lovely lilacs in white

Speaking of pretty flowers, the dahlia planting has been put on hold for another week.  We've done most of the work of making planting beds and adding ammended soil already.  Now we are just waiting on a run of dry weather.  They'll need to get in the ground soon, but we don't want the soil to be too soggy when we put the tubers in the ground.  The general rule of thumb is to plant them when your lilacs are in bloom, but we'll be fudging that by a couple of weeks just to be sure the soil is in the best condition.

So that's what's been growing on in my gardens this week.  How is your yard looking?  Anything new in bloom?

What's Growin' on? Wednesday Garden Walk

We don't get a lot of visitors to the house. That could be the $10 per car plus $4 per passenger ferry fee or maybe just that we're well off the beaten path.  Either way that means I don't get to show off all my hard work and the beauty growing around my yard too often.  That's why I'm so glad to be able to share it with you here on my blog.

This week we've had a quite a bit of rain, so my gardening has been limited to the sunny and dry periods between April showers. I was able to spend a couple of afternoons in the sunny times out tending to some chores.

1 of 3 pea plantings throughout the garden

These peas have reached up to about 5 inches, so I'm pretty sure they would now be safe from the curious birds that had been uprooting them.  I removed the recycled fish net covering that had been protecting them from probing beaks and fashioned a trellis from part of this netting.  Now they've got some thing to hang onto as they reach ever higher toward the sun.  No flowers yet, but it's just a matter of time.  We've got the bee house nearby so there are lots of little pollinators ready when they do come into bloom.

Over wintered celery

I removed the netting from another pea planting.  On this one I just tossed the netting up on this big granite boulder that is the centerpiece of our vegetable patch.  I'm hoping those peas and some nasturtiums I planted will just vine up the net onto that big rock.  In that same bed I have the June bearing strawberry starts that I planted last fall and my celery that I overwintered.  I've been told by other local gardeners that it's common for celery to take 2 years to maturity around here.  It's growing up nice thick stalks this year so I'm hopeful to have a good harvest.  With store bought celery, the harvest is made of the entire plant, but in the home garden it makes more sense to selectively harvest stalks as needed, so that is what I plan to do.  

Recycled fishnet to stop curious critters

I have tried growing sunflowers each year that we've lived here but never had a single flower or plant.  This year, determined to have some sunny color in the garden I've planted a mixed batch in this container.  I'm using the netting here to keep those hungry chipmunks and birds from getting the seeds before they have a chance to sprout up.  We've got feeders all around the yard, but for some reason they LOVE to eat the freshly sprouted seeds from the garden.  It must be a tasty treat for them.  Of course I can't rationalize with the wild life, but if they are patient, they'll get a whole lot more food if only they let these sunflowers bloom!

The last frost date for my area is sometime around the end of March, so it was time to open up the greenhouse cover on the original boat garden.  You can see from the photo that everything in there is growing like crazy!  It's so fun to have a little head start on Mother Nature by using a greenhouse covering.  

From the boat we're already harvesting lettuce I planted last September!  I made Lummi Island reef net salmon sandwiches with homemade tarter and oak-leaf lettuce from our garden this week for a special 90% local lunch.

The new lettuce I planted a month ago is sprouting up for our future salads.  With lettuce and other salad greens I try to put in a small new planting every 3 or 4 weeks.  This allows us to have different plants ready to eat at different times and keeps our salad bowl full all summer long.  

Another reason I needed to get the cover off of our boat is the strawberries.  They've begun to bloom!  The plants are looking very healthy and are at least twice the size of our other strawberry plants that weren't under protective cover.  They have more than double the blooms too!  The only thing they need now is some exposure to pollinators and sunshine.   The boat garden greenhouse project is such a success that we are planning to enclose all of our raised beds this fall and reap the benefit of extra early and late season harvests throughout the garden.

I did have a few visitors in the garden this week, but they were friends of the feathered variety.  This wild pigeon came back to visit.  He and his little family live in the woods behind our house and I hear them in mornings and evenings cooing away.  It's a very soothing pretty sound.  The coloring on these is much like a "city" pigeon, gray with blue/green incandescence, but unlike their cousins, these birds are shaped more like a dove and have a distinctive squared off beak and neck ring.  I don't know if these guys are one of my pea pickers, but they do come and feed at our feeders.

And one last bird item from the garden.  In case you missed this on Facebook.  I keep one hummingbird feeder under cover on our front porch and the little birds flock to it on rainy days.  Here's a real short video I shot of them on one of the wet days this week,

Thanks for tagging along on my weekly garden tour.  Come back next Wednesday and see what's been growing on this week. 

What's growing on Wednesday

Chocolate mint for a tasty sweet tea

It's raining again & you know what they say...  April showers bring May flowers.  Well with our weather lately ranging from 70 degrees one day, to heavy rain the next, we have got flowers and greenery shooting up all around us right now in April.

This week Ben built me another new raised bed and placed it in the corner of our new garden area.  It's about 2' deep 2' across and 4' long.  I'm not sure what I'm going to plant in there yet.  Maybe the leeks since this is one of the deeper beds I have in my veggie patch or possibly peppers since this is a very sunny spot.

Back in the more natural and native part of my yard I noticed the Saalal and Oregon Grape are both showing signs of spring with new growth and even buds on the Saalal.  This is good news for the 6 or 7 hummingbirds I have hanging around my yard.  They really loved sipping from the tiny white blossoms  of our native saalal last year.   

Mushroom in moss

I noticed some new leaves and growth on the huckleberry bushes too.  Huckleberries grow wild here in the Pacific Northwest.  They seem only to grow where an old tree has died.  They favor old stumps and decayed duff piles.  The berries, when ripe,  are quite small like a pea, but still a  tasty treat when added to summer pancakes.  That is if the birds and chipmunks don't get to them first.

Ajuga, aka bugle weed

In the backyard herb and flower bed things are really filling in nicely.  A few days ago I chased a momma and her 2 yearling fawns out of the herb patch where they were happily munching on my day lilies again.  If only they had an appetite for weeds.  But it's fun to see them so close to the house even if they are eating machines.

Big color on  tiny violet

How wonderful to be on year 4 in a garden.  When we moved into this house it did have a lot of established garden area.  I added to that year after year and moved starts of this and that into place.  I'm really enjoying seeing how it all has come together and to see those tiny starts are now fully established plants. This year I'm really beginning to see my plan take shape as different colors and textures of plants are co mingling in the herb and flower beds.

Well, if it stops raining anytime today, I may get out and pull a few weeds.  It always seems easier to pull them up by the roots when the ground is wet.  Other than that I'm ahead of the game with my spring chores.  

unfurling fern

This weekend we plan to plant our dahlia tubers from our recent buying spree at the Whatcom County Dahlia Society's tuber sale.  Ben and I each picked up a mix of sizes and styles of blooms, so we've got our work cut out with planting and labeling them.  It will all be worth it to see them in bloom this summer.  I can hardly wait!

How's your spring garden growing?  Any big plans for new plantings and projects?  Veggies, flowers or both?  Are you going organic this year?  Send me links for your gardening blogs adventures and even mis-steps stories.  I love to hear and see how other gardens are growing too.  Just click on my photo below to email me or leave a comment.

What's growing on Wednesday

We had some nice sunny days this weekend, so of course it was back to the garden.  If you've been reading along my gardening journey this year, you know I've planted all the beds already this year.  That could be a problem!  Well no problem here, my wonderful other half, Ben made an extension to the garden area and got the deer fencing up too!

The hard work is driving the metal posts in to our rocky ground.Once he got those in then he added wooden studs to support the fence high enough to keep out any determined jumping deer, then he added the netting and tied it into the fence between our house and the neighbors. This almost doubles our planting area!

As for me, I started on a few random garden chores. I trans planted some oregano into movable pots.  I'll use these as bee attractors and move them around to whatever plant I have in flower.  I planted a few pots of bulbs to add some beauty to the garden while bringing the pollinators in too.  One is a beautiful purple daylilly that I thought was unique, another is a pot full of hardy gladiolas.  The box said they are deer resistant, but I'm not taking any chances!  They will add some pretty color in the veggie patch too where they will be safely fenced away from hungry deer.

I pulled out my dahlia pots from last years spot.  I figured they were probably dead from freezing over the winter.  I had meant to pull them out and store them inside, but just never got around to it.  As I started pulling out what I thought would be dead tubers, I was surprised to find that most of them were actually still firm and viable!  Hooray!  So instead of recycling the soil and pots, I just moved them into a sunny spot and added a tomato cage to the pot.  The cages work quite well as support for these bushy beauties.

I was in and out of the garden shed  throughout the morning and saw lots of birds munching away on my homemade suet cakes.  I was able to snap a nice photo of one little chickadee, but when the Northern Flicker was eating, he got sight of me and flew off before I could get the camera out.

This gardening hobby is a lot of work, but that's ok by me.  I enjoy it so much and the added bonus is I'm getting a lot more exercise.  I even had to tighten up my belt the other day!