Spring Dreams

SPRING.............HERE WE COME!!! Just awesome!!!

On Saturday, February 28, 2015, Marni Vos wrote:
The shelves are up, the lights are hung and the new baby seeds are in the seed starter soil and working their wayto the community garden.

What has been planted:

We’ll give the leeks one more year to prove themselves.

First year for starting onions in the house, we’ll see, I plan to put onion seeds in the ground sometime this month, keep an eye on which is most successful:

Red onions
White onions
Yellow onions
Shallots

Hello cucumbers:
Homemade pickle cucumbers
Marketmore cuc.’s
And first year for Japanese Climbing cucumbers…from seed savers exchange, “Japanese in origin; listed by Thorburn in 1892.
A distinct climbing sort with strong grasping tendrils, ideal for growing on a trellis or fence but can also be grown on the ground.
Tender, crisp, and slightly tart fruit up to 9” long.  Excellent for slicing and pickling.”

Bell Peppers
Red, from an organic pepper…just an experiment.
The rest from seed packs…yellow, red and green.

Hot peppers:
Jalapeño
Anaheim

Basil:
Lettuce Leaf
Italian Genovese

Lacinato Kale (For Mary) :o

Tomatoes:  I will keep them all labeled so we can be more selective of which ones are more productive,
or taste the best:

Tomato Bush Ace
Brandywine (Sudduth’s Strain)
Nebraska Wedding
San Marzano
German Pink

Lastly, I planted Aster; China Aster Blend…for the butterflies, and for us :) Again, we’ll see!

Christy does a great job of saving seeds…I plan to get better at that!  In the mean time, I have
gotten seed packets for:  The below are direct in the ground seeds:

Cilantro/ Coriander:
Sabor
Long Standing

Carrots

Lettuce:
Forellenschluss
(We’ll need to get spinach, more lettuce, like that…)

Okra: Star of David

Squash: Marina Di Chioggia

Pea: Tom Thumb

Purple Prairie Clover

Winter 2014 Books in the Garden

This is not a regular garden post; I am indulging my own interest in reading. Much of my fair weather reading takes place in our beautiful garden. And since every media outlet feels free to post best of year end lists of movies, books, songs, foods, electronic gizmos, I'm posting the list of best books I read in 2014, in no particular order. 

My Struggle Book Three by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Book three centers on K’s boyhood. While not as compelling to me as Book One, I am still enthralled by this six-book enterprise. Impatiently waiting for Don Bartlett to finish the translation of the remaining books. Book Four is due this spring.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

The third volume in Robinson’s gorgeous examination of two families in Gilead, Iowa.

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

A perfect, fleeting English summer in the life of a World War I veteran, recalled many years later.

Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie

A terrific literary debut about the invention of printing by moveable type. Comparable to the kind of thing Hilary Mantel does for Cromwell.

I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place by Howard Norman

Norman, always thoughtful, beautiful, and slyly humorous, memorializes five incidents in his life.

An Unnecesary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, aging Aaliya lives a reclusive life in a Beirut apartment stockpiled with books. Each year she translates another book into Arabic.

Honorable Mention.

Before I Burn by Gaute Heivoll

Fictionalized account of Norway’s most dramatic arson case. Translated by the great Don Bartlett.

Adelle Waldman. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P

Weeks after reading this I looked at every young man with deep suspicion.

Garden Maintenance: Pruning the Fruit Trees

It was a good day for pruning the orchard trees: two peach, two pear, and one cherry. Thank you, Brad, Dick, and Marni. Photos by Christy.

Seasons

 
I meant to post in October, about autumn and the changed light and leaves but the month got away from me. With November about to do the same I offer this from Howard Nemerov:

Late in November, on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

I know of one ginkgo tree in the neighborhood; it's not in our garden and its leaves are gone. If they fell in synchronicity I do not know. The ginkgo family has been around since before the dinosaurs, who ate their leaves.

The garden at 30th Street has not been here nearly so long. It is falling to its winter slumber. The garlic has been planted (thanks Dick and Marni), and the the debris cleared away. The beds have been dug and the orchard  grounds cleaned up. New mulch on all the walkways. All that heavy lifting credit goes to our full time and overtime gardener, Dick. I cleaned up and shored up the herb bed.

Pergola Dedication

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."- John Muir

The year's major garden improvement reveals an expanded brick patio and a pergola. On a glorious late September Sunday afternoon, neighborhood musicians fill the space with gorgeous sound. Jeremy, designer and construction foreman, speaks of his inspiration and the wisdom of John Muir. We celebrate the generosity of Greg and Emily for the land, Dick and Christy for financing this extension, Daniel for the brick work, the entire gardening community.

Photos: Mary

Gabe's artistry

Christy reels Scots and Irish ballads

Virtuosity from Phil

Appreciation

Albert refreshes

This part is kind of boring

August After Rain

So much green and glorious bounty

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone."  ~Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

Okra flower-gorgeous!

 

Pears

 

Can She Make a Cherry Pie?

On Sunday we made a trip to Hastings to harvest Oriel's cherries. The full day festival carried over into Monday morning to finish the pitting. Oriel is Christy's mom and is nearing 100 years of age. She still makes a mean cherry pie. See the proof here on NET's Nebraska Stories: http://netnebraska.org/interactive-multimedia/television/nebraska-stories-oriels-cherry-pie
Her two laden trees are mere babies at around 15 years old.

the trees

cherries, cherries, and more cherries

full sun, over 90 degrees, heat stroke avoided

15 buckets

On Monday morning the rest of the gang got in on finishing up the cherry pitting. We see pies, clafloutis, jam, jelly, focaccia in the future.

All photos courtesy of Christy.