flowers

Let’s think of flowers and warmth!

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After the damage to our tulips, plus our dropping temperatures, I thought it would be nice to post pictures of things that are actually blooming right now!

The ornamental apples in the old kitchen garden are blooming quite nicely right now! They always tend to start blooming before any of the other crab apple trees.

The double lilacs in the old kitchen garden are also starting to open up, quite a bit earlier than the other varieties. They all seem to bloom at different times, which leaves us with months of lovely scents around the yard.

Late this afternoon, one of my daughters and I headed to town for some errands and, as we came back and paused to lock the gate, I remembered to grab one of the trail cams facing the gate. It is now set up, low on a tree across from where the tulips are planted. Hopefully, low enough that even a short critter like a skunk will trigger the motion sensor.

The girls and I later went out to check on things and talk about our options. Of course, we also checked on other areas and were very excited to see some purple in a sea of green!

The flower stalks on the grape hyacinths have started to shoot up! They are all so very tiny! :-D One of my daughters was kind enough to carefully step through the greenery to get a picture of one for me. Meanwhile, my other daughter spotted some more flowers.

The little patch of wild strawberries is starting to bloom, too!

Thankfully, everything we’ve got growing right now is quite hardy. As I write this, we are at 2C/36F, but feels like -5C/23F. Or -7C/19F. depending on which app I look at. My desktop app is showing frost advisories and possible snow tonight. My phone’s app thinks we are warmer, and is showing no frost warnings. Either way, it’s cold, wet and windy out there. Chilly enough that I just finished setting up the heater bulb in the sun room again, under the seed trays in the mini greenhouse. I’m still holding out home for the purple sunflowers and gourds.

This chill is supposed to continue through tomorrow, before things start warming up again. Current long range forecasts now show that the first couple of days of June – which is our average last frost date – are supposed to get as high as 27C/81F again! After that, it’s supposed to cool down a couple of degrees, but we’re supposed to get almost a week of rain. If the forecast stays the same, we’ll have about 4 hot days to put our transplants out. We haven’t been able to take the trays outside every day to harden them off, so I’m really hoping that leaving the inner door to the sun room open, and the ceiling fan running on high, will be enough to provide them with the conditions they need.

We shall see how things turn out!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove, west side

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Today, we continued work cleaning up along the west side of the spruce grove, between the garlic beds and the old outhouse. We haven’t really done anything there since last year.

Here is how it looked before I started.

I could see some poplars in here that would make good upright support posts for the squash arch.

I broke out the little electric chain saw for this job, but only used it once. The rest was just too small, or had too many even smaller things growing around them, so I ended up doing most of the job with the loppers and the baby chain saw.

Here is how it looks now.

Yes, there are even spruces left in the spruce grove!

My goal was to clear enough to reach the apple tree (to the right of the spruce in the middle) and an old, rotten bench.

Yes, there is a bench in there. Can you see it? To the left of the spruce tree in the middle?

There had been cherry suckers growing on either side of the seat. I’ve left it for now, and will clean it out another time. We are finding the remains of benches and seats all over the place. As we work around the yard, we have often found ourselves wishing to have something to sit down on, and plan to put seating areas all over. It’s interesting to find that my parents had already done the same thing! Sadly, none have survived time and the elements.

The apple tree had a lot of things crowding around it – and a piece of tree stuck in its branches!

I cleared as much as I could to the apple tree. The next time I work around here, it’ll be with the chain saw, clearing away the fallen trees. At least for now, the apple tree is open and getting more light. When I dug my way to it last fall, to try it’s apples, I found it quite tasty, and we’re always happy to find a tree with apples that are actually edible! There are way too many that are not. :-/

Several trees were cleared out of this patch of flowers my mother planted, many many years ago. I’d found them while cleaning up the area behind the garden beds, but I don’t think I saw any of them bloom. Now that they have light, I look forward to seeing the flowers!

I also uncovered other flowers. Unfortunately, I had a hard time not stepping on them!

I think one of them might be tiger lilies, but I’m not sure.

I suspect we’ll have quite a few new blooms this summer, now that things are cleared up!

Much of what I took out were suckers of cherry trees, grown up around the remains of older, dead ones. Some were so old and rotted, I could pull them out with my hands.

The big branch on the top of the pile is the piece of tree I pulled out of the apple tree.

We really need to invest in a chipper.

Meanwhile…

My daughter did short work of cleaning up the poplars I set aside for building material. We not have more than enough larger, stronger ones to be our upright supports for the squash arch.

The smaller and thinner ones will also be used in various ways, including cross pieces and supports on the squash tunnel. My daughter added quite a bit more to this pile, then everything got moved to the stacks by the side of the house, closer to the garden. A nice shady place were we will be able to pre-assemble parts of the squash tunnel.

Temperatures were reaching 27C/81F by the time I headed inside, while my daughter finished the job. The winds were high, which at least made it feel cooler. As I type this, things are getting dark and and even windier. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings happening right now – with the potential for hail! Looking at the weather radar, it does look like the worst of it will pass us by, but…

I think it’s time to finish this and shut down the computer. Just in case!

The Re-Farmer

A tulip explosion!

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The girls headed outside this afternoon, and were excited to ask me if I’d seen the tulips.

I had, when I did my rounds this morning, but clearly, something had changed.

The tulips have exploded with flower spikes!

Most of my daughter’s tulips were planted in this spot. Over 50 bulbs in 6 varieties were planted here. We haven’t tried to count how many have come up. I think, by now, any that haven’t come up were casualties of February’s polar vortex. :-(

While just to one side, another group of very different tulips were planted. These are Bull’s Eye tulips (which Veseys apparently no longer carries). Of the 8 bulbs that were planted, it looks like only 3 survived the winter.

I can’t believe how quickly these flower spikes shot up!!

They are not the only ones.

The flower spikes in the grape hyacinths are a bit harder to see, but they are certainly there! Pretty much all of them that we can see have these tiny spikes emerging. Once they start blooming, we’ll finally be able to get a better idea of how many of the 200 we planted survived the winter! :-D

Meanwhile, the winds have only gotten stronger – I had to fight just to open the door to go outside and get these photos! – and the temperatures are still rising. I look forward to the cooler weather and, hopefully, rain to come!

The Re-Farmer

Morning flowers

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My daughter’s orchids are looking beautiful this morning!

They have been doing very well since she starting using kokedama, though finding a place to hang them where the cats couldn’t get at them was more of a challenge!

Unfortunately, one of them seems to be struggling. You can see some of the dead leaves behind the flowers in the above photo. My daughter has figured out that, when we had the polar vortex hit us in February, it simply got too cold for them at the window, and one in particular is having a much harder time recovering.

Now that we have the aquariums converted to cat proof greenhouses, next winter we will be able to move them into one of those to keep them warmer.

I also saw some fluffy, furry flowers this morning. ;-)

I was able to bring them some meaty treats from the kitchen this morning, and they were very happy!

I love how Creamsicle Jr. is licking his chops! :-D

We’re supposed to have a nice, warm day today, and I’m looking forward to getting some garden preparations done outside. The cats have already discovered the soil my daughter moved to the old kitchen garden. They LOVE rolling around in dirt. We have several trees with bald patches at their bases, because the cats roll under them so much. One of them is an ornamental apple tree in the old kitchen garden, and now they have bonus dirt to roll in.

I don’t mind them rolling at the bottom of the tree. We can’t plant anything under them, anyhow – but it’s going to be a problem if they decide to roll in the new soil after we’ve planted!

We’ll work it out. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

A little hint of sunshine

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We’ve got some lovely mild weather right now. It’s kind of deceiving, to look out the window during our cold snap and see bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine when it’s bitterly cold, but now that we’re warmer, it’s overcast and deary looking. Those insulating clouds, however, are part of the reason we can enjoy these milder temperature.

The outside cats like the warm spot on the roof of their shelter, above the terrarium bulb! They were quite active when I came out to do their food and water.

Note in the background, a certain Nicky the Nose, tucked under the lilac by the storage house. He shelters under the building, when he’s not sneaking into the cat shelter to visit the ladies. :-(

Inside, we have tiny little bursts of sunshine of another sort!

This is the first time we’ve seen this succulent blooming! When we got it, it was one of 3 succulents in one pot that they soon outgrew. The other two varieties are still struggling along, but this one seems to finally be thriving! We’ve had to move it a few times because, apparently, it is delicious. The cats kept trying to eat it! Even when it was hanging in the dining room window, they would manage to clamber up and reach it. We finally seem to have found a spot where they haven’t been able to reach it. At the rate it’s growing now, we’ll have to keep an eye on how low it starts to hang, or they’re try eating it again!

Meanwhile, we have these lovely little busts of sunshine in our window to help us thing of warmer, sunny days!

The next couple of days will be even warmer, which means we’ll finally be able to start working on the main door that’s falling off its hinges, and see what we can do to fix it until we can replace the door and frame. Until then, we’ve been using the door as little as possible; mostly, just when we have to unload the van or something, which we do assembly line style. That way, only the storm door gets opened and closed frequently.

It should be interesting to see how damaged the door is, once the hinge plate is moved away. That will determine what we end up doing to get it usable again.

The Re-Farmer

Fall planting: iris

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I needed to make a run into town today, and by the time I came back, my daughter had selected a place to start planting, and gotten started.

She had selected Eye of the Tiger Iris, and I must say – Vesey’s really missed an opportunity for a punny name! :-D Eye-ris of the Tiger? Eye of the Tigris? :-D

But I digress!

These needed to be planted in a location with plenty of sun and good drainage. She decided they would make a good border on the south edge of the old kitchen garden. She had been digging holes with a trowel for each of the 15 bulbs in the bag. She had forgotten that I found a good spade, buried in the garden shed! Things went much faster when I could just dig a trench for her, instead.

She just had to contend with a few rocks, instead!

We should now have a border of irises extending from the laundry platform, to the chives at the edge of the retaining wall corner.

The only thing left to plant now (until the back ordered items come in) are the Bulls Eye Tulips. These are a little more complicated. They need hard winters (we’ve got that), hot summers (we usually have that) and full sun (we can find that) but they also need to be in a dry location and NOT watered or fertilized in the summer. So we can’t plant them around anything we will be watering or fertilizing. One of the areas we were talking about planting in was by the stone cross, but that’s an area that collects water when the snow melts, so that’s out.

Pretty much the entire West yard is quite dry, though. We might plant them in where the crab apple and plum trees are, south of a row of lilacs. One end of that area does get full sunlight.

We have to decide soon, though. Those bulbs need to get into the ground!

The Re-Farmer

Fall planting grape hyacinth, day one

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So a few things we’d talked about before have changed a bit, as we decided where to start planing the grape hyacinth (muscari).

This is the area we settled on, before clean up.

Two summers ago, this area was quite overgrown. Some of the lilacs and carigana I cut back have started to encroach again. I deliberately did not mow around here, because I wanted to see what would come up.

Not much, it turns out. Lots of crab grass, and a few of a type of wildflower we have all over the place.

In this area, there are rows of trees planted varying widths apart, with a path to the old garden that splits it into east and west sides (this is the west side we are working on). After clarifying where we wanted to keep walking paths, one of my daughters and I started raking, and I also cut away some of the encroaching lilacs, caragana and the maple suckers that were coming up.

The row of elm and maple on the left has a narrower space between them and another row of trees to the north. Then there is a wide space that will be kept open as a walking path, followed by several more rows of trees planted way too close together.

We will be planting a bag of bulbs on either side of the row of trees on the right of the photo, and not too close to the lilacs and caragana. We want to encourage them to spread outwards from that row of trees.

There was quite a lot of debris, so we ended up using the firepit to burn it. When my other daughter was able to come join us, they continued the hard physical labour, while I tended the fire. :-)

This sort of stuff makes for a very smoky fire!

After the dry debris on the surface was raked away, they went over it with a thatching rake to get even more up, and try and loosen the soil. The piles from what were not appropriate for burning, so they’re going to be used as a sort of mulch, elsewhere.

The girls even kept going and raked up the next area we’ll be planting in.

Just not today!

They also remembered that auger I bought, intending to use in the old garden area. On realizing how much rockier it was than expected, we never did.

So I got it out, attached it to our drill and tested it.

Yeeaahhh…

No.

That didn’t work. Too many roots! The auger would jam and stop turning, almost immediately! Those circles you see where as deep as I could go before it got hung up and starting making some very unfortunate noises.

Which may well have been a good thing, I guess.

After scattering a bag of bulbs fairly randomly in the prepared area, the girls got to work, digging 4 inch holes manually (the recommended depth for muscari) and planting them, while I continued to tend the fire.

We are now down a trowel.

There it is – with the rock that broke it!

We have another one, but no one can remember where it ended up, so they found another tool and continued.

Hitting a rock like that with the auger probably would not have broken the auger.

It would most likely have broken my drill, though!

Here is one section they worked in. It’s hard to tell where they planted the bulbs from the ground scuffed as they worked! It was a very difficult job, with many roots and rocks in the way. The soil is very hard. I know, however, that grape hyacinth can handle that, since I’ve seen them growing in much worse conditions!

The entire area has been watered and, tomorrow, we will work on the next section.

The crocuses will also be planted in this side of the maple grove (the east side still has piles of dead branches waiting to be chipped), but the iris and tulips will go someplace much more prominent and visible. They don’t have the spreading habit the grape hyacinth and crocuses do, so we’ll be more particular about bulb placement, too.

I’m so happy! When I was a kid, going through catalogs, grape hyacinth were among the things I always wanted to grow. When living in Victoria, BC, where they grew like weeds on the sides of roads (which is how I know they can handle the hard soil of this area just fine!) that only solidified my desire to have them. Now we finally do! And with a couple hundred bulbs planted, I think we can be assured of a decent number of them sprouting next spring.

As long as the skunks and squirrels don’t dig up and eat the bulbs!

The Re-Farmer

Full bloom

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A patch of my mother’s flowers that she still constantly asks about is now in full bloom.

These are all about 3 feet tall. Can you make out the two markers hidden in them? That’s where the haskap berries are planted. The flowers are actually cleared away from around them, and they’re still hard to see! :-D

Does anyone know what these are called? I’ve tried using Google Lens on my phone, but the possibilities it offers up have included things like a type of coneflower, and even dandelions!

These pictures were taken yesterday, with the top one taken just as it was starting to rain. By the time I was out again and took the second one, it was bright and sunny again. For all the thunder and winds, we didn’t get much rain at all. More than we have in a while, to be sure, but it’s a good thing I needed to empty the patched rain barrel by the garden, because I still needed to water the squash beds.

I would really like to know what it is about where we live that pushes storm systems away. Watching the weather radar, the storm did not miss us. It passed right over. My mother told me they had a solid downpour at her place, yet we had only a light rainfall.

Microclimates can be strange and perplexing things!

The Re-Farmer

Just One

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This year, I’ve been allowing various things to come up in between the sidewalk blocks by the sun room, instead of taking the weed trimmer to them, to see what is there.

Quite a lot of flowers have come up through the cracks and crevices between the rain barrel and the clothes line platform. Most of them are either the purple bell shaped flowers we’ve got all over the place this year, or a taller plant with bright orange-yellow flowers.

Then, there is this one.

And it is just one. A single stalk with a single flower! I can’t see any other part of the plant.

I don’t know what this is, other than something from the allium family.

What a beautiful little surprise. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Mystery critter, and order placed

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Just minutes ago, we saw our mystery critter again – this time out by the compost pile!

We ended up bringing the DSLR, with it’s 700mm lens, and tripod over to try and zoom in for some pictures.

Unfortunately, the window we were looking through is the one that was not replaced, when all the others were. It has a sheet of plexiglass mounted on the inside, to keep the drafts out. Which means that there was nothing we could do to keep the auto focus from focusing on the glass, instead of the critter. I even tried manual focus, and the pictures I got were actually worse.

So these are the best of the bunch. I cropped the photos and resized them, but that’s it.

The question is: what is it?

It was eating grass and what I think were dandelion leaves. In one of the photos, it looks like it has a stuffed cheek!

It’s surprisingly large. About the size of our big skunk, but bulkier. Almost as big as a beaver! It kinda has a beaver shape, too, but the tail is completely different.

So it is a gopher? Groundhog? Prairie Dog?

Whatever it is, it’s adorable!

In other things, I just finished making our fall plantings order from Vesey’s. This is what we have ordered (all links should open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place!):

Fall garlic collection 2: This collection of hard neck garlic includes Porcelain Music, Rocambole and Marble Purple Stripe. The Purple Stripe is supposed to be really good for roasting. The collection has 1 pound of each. We are planning to plant these where we currently have the beets and carrots.

The rest that we ordered are flowers.

Muscari: aka Grape Hyacinth. I’ve wanted these since I was a kid! When we lived in Victoria, BC, they grew everywhere, like weeds. I loved them! We’ve ordered 2 packages of 100 bulbs.

The girls picked the rest.

Snow Crocus Collection: “This collection contains 105 bulbs including 25 Dorothy and 20 each of Blue Pearl, Tricolour, Snowbunting and Spring Beauty Snow Crocus.” Our plan is to mix these bulbs with the Muscari, then plant them randomly in the areas we have picked for them.

Double Tulip Collection: “This collection contains 58 bulbs, 8 of Black Hero, Pamplona & Vanilla Coup and 10 each of Pinksize, Orca and Brownie Double Tulips.” The girls aren’t big fans of the typical tulip shape, but they really love the more unusual shapes.

Speaking of unusual tulip shapes, definitely click on the next link!

Bulls Eye Tulip: We got 1 package of 8 bulbs of these. What an unusual tulip! I can hardly wait to see how they grow.

Eye of the Tiger Iris: They could have had so many punny names for this one… :-D This one comes in a package of 15. We do have some irises in the flower garden the bird feeder stand is currently in. They’ve been there for as long as I can remember! Only 2 of them bloomed this year, and they were done so fast, my daughters never saw them!

Gardenia Daffodil: These come in a pack of 6, and quite different from the usual yellow daffodils I’m used to seeing. When we lived in a PMQ in Victoria, BC, there was a field between our duplex and the military hospital that was just filled with bright yellow daffodils. It should be interesting if these will have the same spreading habit!

And spreading is something we actually want, and they will be planted with that in mind. Especially for the muscari and crocuses. For those, we are hoping they will form a floral carpet to fill in areas between trees, so we don’t have to mow such awkward places.

For our zone, we expect these to be shipped to arrive in the second half of September, in time for immediate planting.

Looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer