A Garden Amongst The Weeds

A Garden Amongst The Weeds

Saturday, July 16, 2011

658 Square Feet of New Gardening Space!

Boy, you know, I always knew he did, but even after 23 years of marriage, he can still surprise me!


But more about that in a minute.
I got up this morning and grabbed a cup of coffee
(clearly not my cup! ) 
and went to see what I could see.
 I love gardening! We already knew that, but a reaffirmation every once in a while never hurt any body. 
One eventual flower from one tiny carrot seed can produce a zillion new babies. How I love that part! 
These are Danver Carrots. Medium in length, sweet and crisp.

I've had at least one Taro plant in my garden every year since the gardening bug bit me. I've always known them to be thirsty plants. This year I went to extremes and sunk their pot in a large metal bucket, as part of a small water garden. They like it!
Danged Grasshoppers!


The sunflowers seem to be doing well this year
Especially this volunteer in the greenhouse



Here it is, mid-July and the peas are just beginning to bloom!
This is a first for me, I've had these Hens and Chicks for years and I'd venture to guess that this one is going to make a flower and set seed.

Looking forward to the seed from this one as well. This is lovely Larkspur.

This Sedum takes on an odd appearance as it flowers.

Dry Please!

This is the sticky vetch I was telling you about. It's taller than I am.
It does my heart good to come out here and listen to the bees buzz!

Heading up hill now.

 Lovely Thistle
 Sipping the Bachelor's Buttons
Careful, thistles are sharp!

But oh, so lovely!

Let's go see what we can see.

Can you hear the hum? Walk lightly, this one is home to bees or wasps.
Nice choice guys! Lovely home.

There are blue bachelor's buttons

And purple ones...
And even a few white ones.

A whole sea of them!

Plenty if you'd like to gather a bouquet.

I'm heading up there, to what use to be the barn.
Feel free to wander around. It's a lovely day!

Know what this is? The locals call her Jewel Weed.
It's the remedy for stinging nettle.
Where one grows, the other is sure to be close by.
We'll keep a look out.
Here's the fencing I'm lusting over. Isn't it lovely? Too bad it's Monsterous!
Buried down in here good too. Here, you hold the camera while I yank at this!
Took most of an hour, but I win! It's out. Now what to do with it? I wonder how long it is? Big enough for me to not want to drag it home, that's for sure!

See that hill? That's Black Butte.
The old timers here say that you never attempt to plant anything outside
before all the snow is gone off  the mountain. They're right too.
Do it and you risk it all.
The lovely, fickle Mount Shasta

As the wind blows this field takes on the appearance of an ocean.
It waves and shifts in the most amazing patterns.
Let's follow the old corral a while.
Can you hear the sound of rushing water from here? I can.
It's calling to me!
Wish I could have seen this many years ago when the old barn was here,
when these silvery pieces of wood held a whole herd of horses and cattle.
An old tractor hub. I bet you know what I want this for!
I love this old bridge. If you stand on it and close your eyes and listen to the creek roar by,
you can almost imagine what it would have sounded like with horses and an old wagon crossing it.
Pretty Lupine!
That water is icy. Fresh snow melt off Mt. Shasta
That's a healthy stand of Jewel Weed!
Oh, here's why.
Left side of this picture is Stinging Nettle. It's up there amongst the rushes and on the top of the hill amongst the thistles as well.
I'll not venture into the middle of it today. I like my skin non-blistery, thank you.

Even if the remedy is quite breath taking!
I revisit this post all the time.
There are no other posts anywhere nearby.
I try not to let it get too lonely.

Ok, so we ventured on home and I went to tell David that I'd managed to get the fence wire off the posts. We always have piles of young people around and this morning was no different. We had our 4 and 5 house guests. 9 extra sets of hands? Yay! We hopped in the truck and David said, climb in the back, we need you!

They made quick work of rolling up that huge bundle of wire. We headed back and in about an hour, we had fence wire up. It covered the full length of the fence in one long piece. Luck!
That left the back end open. Chicken wire! Woo hoo! May not be perfect, but it's not as unsightly as it would have been if we trusted in my carpentry skills alone. Thank you David and all of our young lovelies who likely would have rather done just about anything else.
Momma's got her garden space and is quite the happy camper.
You can't even see the chicken wire at the back. I kind of like that.
Doesn't mess with the view much.
The honey locust tree is just inside the fence line.


Ever been so exhausted you couldn't quite move but your mind won't shut off? I'm so excited about this project I didn't sleep well for a week.
As if all of this help wasn't enough. Darlin' David also changed the sheets on the bed and brought me a snack. I slept blissfully last night and can't wait to start amending the soil. Lasagna Garden plan is out. There's still enough season to plant SOMETHING! I just can't bring myself to layer cardboard over everything now. I will likely regret this and grow a bumper crop of weeds. But hey, can you blame me for not wanting to wait?

Happy Gardening my friends.
Let me hear your suggestions and ideas please! After all, we have 658 square feet out here to fill!

TaTa for now. I'm off to get dirty!

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