Category Archives: my garden

Winter and Spring

my garden, nature, , , ,
bearded iris

Last night just as I was ready to go upstairs to bed, I thought about how I hadn’t checked my fountain in the back garden for a couple of days, and the rain had fallen in very small quantities of late… so I went out in the dark with my flashlight and sure enough, I had let it go dry.  I could hear the pump whirring inside but there was no water for it to pump up to tube, so nothing was trickling down.

I grabbed the hose and filled the bowl, but still nothing happened, even after a few minutes. So I turned it off for the night and decided I would deal with it after the sun came up. When I went out this morning I had rolled up my sleeves to pull open the “door” to the inside of the fountain where the little pump does its thing. I had put several inches of water in last night and had to shove my arm through all of that and wiggle the pump out of its cramped space inside.

Usually some leaves and debris have clogged the intake, but nothing much was there this time. I rapped the pump against the side of the fountain, because the people who sold it to me told me to do that if it stops. In the few seconds that all that took, my hands were going from painfully cold to numb. The water was like snowmelt. I didn’t bother to put the pump back but I turned on the switch again and water immediately began falling from the upper bowl. I just left the pump sitting in the water outside its compartment and ran indoors to rescue my blue hands. That was my winter’s morning.

But the afternoon was Spring. I drove only fifteen miles inland to the dentist and it was a sunny 72°. When I came home more flowers were blooming – the hellebores are going to town, and a new bearded iris had opened.

For my town they are forecasting 75° for next week – yay! But by then, we will have Sprung Forward for the sake of our crazy time-tampering 😦  Should that be the definitive sign of Spring in our Northern Hemisphere? I don’t think so! It is more like a trial and tribulation of the season, but at least that has the potential to make us pray more, and that’s very appropriate to Lent. God can use anything! Glory to God!

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Lovely new things…

my garden, nature, other gardens, , , , ,

So many newly sprung buds and flowers to be seen around here — also some not so lovely, even ugly things in my garden. One of the most pure and fresh is the bloom on the plum trees:gl-p1060882

I spent hours in the garden over the last few days; one task was to provide some more strings for the snow pea plants that keep growing up and up and have even formed two infant pods so far. Why do they keep on – how do they do it, on the stems that seem rotted and dried near the ground?

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I wouldn’t be surprised if I go out one morning and find that they have keeled over, but strangely, life flows through those brown and emaciated tubes. The sugar snap peas did not survive long enough to get flowers, and I removed them yesterday as well.

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Evidently being beaten down by rain and then frozen every night is not their idea of seasonable weather. Truly, October is the month we are supposed to plant peas in our area, but this hasn’t been a typical year weather-wise….

For a week we’ve been having more frosts, so I brought the Christmas Cactus indoors by my computer table and it is giving us Christmas in March.

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The arugula and pak choi have gone to flowering, so I pulled them out and planted some parsley and new pak choi, purple this time. From the flowers you can guess that it is in the Brassica family.

This first week of Lent we have so many wonderful services, I’ve been at church a lot, and am glad to have my phone with me so I can save images like this. Somehow the camellia escaped getting brown spots from being constantly wet. It is giving us a picture of the purity and beauty that is God’s will for our souls.

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Finches say No to microgreens.

my garden, nature, ,
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euphorbia

I wondered wp1060683crphy I hadn’t seen any goldfinches on the feeder lately. It hasn’t been pouring rain all the time, and a couple of weeks ago they liked feeding even during showers. The weather has been mostly a big cloud, and then added to that, I have personally been Under the Weather. When I came out from under, and the sun also came out, I explored my estate this morning and discovered that the nyger seed has become sprout soup.

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tarragon

 

 

The Christmas cactus missed Christmas, being shut up in the dark greenhouse. Now it is blooming, and frosty weather isn’t imminent, so I took it out where I can see it from my kitchen window. The tarragon is growing well in that greenhouse, though.

 

 

 

 

 

How many pictures of poppies can I post here before my readers start to rebel? How would you show your ennui? Probably you all are too kind to say anything. It’s really not that easy to get a good picture of an Iceland poppy; there is just a moment when the delicate petals are fresh and new, and the sun is not too bright. Yellow flowers are almost always too bright even without the sun. They blooms can’t be too wet, or they hang their heads soggily. This one was the morning’s gift.

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Snowdrop Blessing

my garden, nature, ,

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It seems to be a modern rite of spring for those of us lucky enough to have snowdrops in our gardens, to take pictures of the lovely things to share online. My snowdrops are not as showy as some, but they are sweet. [Update: I learned from a commenter that these are not true snowdrops!]

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I don’t enjoy them enough. They start blooming in January — I see them from afar out the kitchen window, just little white spots on the landscape, inconveniently located under the manzanita. Sometimes I delay venturing out into the weather to stoop down close, until the first blooms are starting to fade.

I read that it has been a tradition in Ireland not to bring them into the house until St. Brigid’s Day, and maybe I thought that I could also wait that long.

But most of mine are fading by the first of February. This morning when I saw pictures of two different snowdrop variations on blogs, I wondered if I could find just a couple of newish flowers on mine, and I did find more than that. Now they are on my windowsill in a place of honor, blessing the kitchen.

Update: It has come to my attention that these dear flowers are not called snowdrops, but snowflakes. They are in the same tribe as the snowdrops – or maybe not! It depends on which Wikipedia page I look at. Anyway, they are called Leucojum and snowdrops are Galanthus. And now I’m even more determined to get some Galanthus to plant next fall!