the week in gardening

Posted on Posted in food and garden, projects, spinning and fiber

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what a week for the garden; finally i think we are completely out of the chill and into the early summer weather. though we started out a week ago after a frosty night and spent several drizzly, cold days away—even some tornadoes and hailstorms over the weekend—bit by bit the temps crept up so that by monday we were driving home from kentucky in sunny weather (more on our lexington trip in tomorrow’s post)

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we saw the last of the tulips fade, but we’re still welcoming a new, frilly thing on a daily basis it seems. i managed to get outside between showers on the day before we left to take some photos—oh how things have matured in just that short time.

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my beloved fiddleheads finally cracked their shells and started the slow expansion of their webbed fingers and curled spines into mountain pose.

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it never gets old for me; each year i want to sink into the earth of the back planting bed to watch them rise.

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heaven help me.

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just next door the painted ferns are also unfurling, though in a slightly different way. their fiddleheads are a bit more delicate and curiously twisted.

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it’s hard to believe that leaves so large were compacted into such fine tendrils.

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and the hostas! so fresh and lush, especially in all the rain.

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speaking of rain, i seem to have caught the plants at one of the best moments possible—just close enough after a shower to have perfect beads of rain clinging to their leaves and petals, yet just past enough that the sun has lit each one like a fairy light.

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this isn’t the greatest photo but i had to take it form inside, behind the kitchen window glass. it’s our robin, caught in the act of pretending NOT to be building a nest in the hydrangea arbor. i noticed the male and female robins as soon as i woke up; while brushing my teeth i witched them gathering grasses and stuff from around the edge of the garden.

while i ground beans and filled the pot to make coffee, i saw that they were flying yup to this tee with their nesting materials, hanging out very conspicuously on that branch, then ducking quickly and covertly into the thicket of the arbor where they were actually building a hidden nest. meanwhile, the squirrels all over the yard pretended not to see this maneuver. hilarious.

i’m keeping an eye out for the robin chicks to appear; should be about two or three more weeks before they emerge, i guess.

meanwhile, for the last several weeks, david has been turning our enormous compost pit and taking out the rich, dark earth from underneath to spread over the vegetable patch. he still has to till it under before i can plant, but we’re hoping to be all ready by the middle of next week. normally i plant everything a bit earlier, but it has stayed pretty cold this year and now we have shows during these two weeks that will prevent me from planting until at least next week.

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while i was away in lexington, our local ecology center held their annual organic plant sale and david took a ride up with list in hand to procure plants for our vegetable patch. we’ve got peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, herbs and all sorts of things. i’ve also got a wide variety of seeds for greens, beans, carrots, parsnips, and potatoes. i can’t wait to get out in the dirt.

this weekend we’ll be at wooster for the great lakes fiber show; stop by and see us! we’ll have lots of great stuff, including some skeins from our latest shipment of fresh breakfast blend fingering yarn. we are restocked on bakery rye, morning smoke (and just in time, too; we ran out in kentucky),  cream ‘n’ sugar, and we have an old favorite back in stock as well.

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and none too soon—the breakfast blend cubbies are mighty bare right now . . . so as soon as it’s labeled it will be listed.

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it’s late now and i’m ready for knitting, but tomorrow i’ll get back to work, updating the blog with all the knitting i’ve gotten done in the last week . . . which is quite a lot.

10 thoughts on “the week in gardening

  1. I’m so happy to see some of your garden photos again…I hope you can do a little digging in the dirt before the next show!

  2. Here’s hoping that lovely fiddlehead inspires you to design something…hint, hint, hint.

  3. And me – I’m envious of the cubbies! I’m looking for something to organize my stash and every time I see the cubbies my mind spins. LOL.

    So good to see the pictures of the garden again. I don’t think my “lilies of the alley” as Jorgie called them have come up this year. Hmmm…yours look lovely.

  4. Yay flowers! I’m so glad REAL spring is finally here, I was so done with all that cold…

  5. Lily of the Valley is one of my all-time favorites! How lovely and delicate!

  6. Oh, how I love those fiddleheads! When my ferns are emerging for the new year, I swear, I just sit down in the back yard and watch them. Like I’m waiting for them to unfurl. For some reason, this is one of the most relaxing things I can do. Well, except for knitting, of course!

  7. I too am so excited to see the pics of your garden again and to read that you will be doing some veggie gardening again this year. I get tons of inspiration from your blog on most of my favorite things; knitting, gardening, and running. Thank You!

  8. Love the fiddleheads, so I googled them. I’ve never seen them (much less grown them here in Colorado). They apparently do not like low humidity which is normal for Colorado. Also, there was lots of information on the culinary use of the “heads”. Have you ever cooked them. Like you, we are getting in plants late ’cause the weather has been insane!

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