Garden Updates

With all the rain we've been having, everything is very green. The perennials are sprouting up like crazy (as are the weeds, but we won't talk about those!).

Here is the deck landscaping that I put in last year. Everything came back and as you can see from the large plant (perennial bachelor's button) in front, some things are spreading maybe more than I intended. :)

 These are trilliums that my grandfather insisted I dig up from the family woods in Manitowoc last year. I thought it was unlikely they'd come back since we transplanted them in the middle of a drought and MG&E drove over them with heavy machinery in December before the ground was frozen. But they must be tougher than i gave them credit for. Trilliums start out with white flowers and then the flowers turn pink as they age (as this one is doing). Some wild leeks and trout lily are also in that clump.

 Last summer we noticed a couple morels growing near our woodland corner. This year i spotted just this one. We may or may not have unintentionally stepped on it. Whoops. I don't think we were going to eat it this year anyway, we'd rather it spread its spores.

 Here's our current vegetable garden. The closest bed has carrots, tomato plants, peas, and eggplants. Yum. In the middle bed you can see garlic on the right (planted last fall) and potatoes in the middle. The cucumbers will be on the left side. They're planted, but not sprouted. The farthest bed has a lot of the cole crops and leaf vegetables.

 Finally, here's Adam's new sci-fi garden. The small purple bush on the left side is a black lace elder. It will get much larger. The floppy leaves are giant alliums. I've also planted a 'Merlot' coneflower, some calamintha 'White Cloud' and some dahlias that have yet to poke their heads above ground.

Happy Spring!

Pear Blossom Special

Look a-yonder comin'

Comin' down that railroad track

Hey, look a-yonder comin'

Comin' down that railroad track

It's the Pear Blossom Special

Bringin' my baby back

Well, it's official, our fruit trees are in bloom. The Apricot blooms finished up earlier this week, so we'll see whether any of those will produce. We aren't expecting much this year from the apricot tree, since it's only been planted one year.

This week, we have:

Cherry Blossoms: These are the most spectacular, they grow in tight clusters along the branches. In the picture below you can see our neighbor's mature pie cherry behind our younger sweet cherry. They should happily pollinate each other, though they are at least partly self-fertile.

Pear Blossoms: These were about to pop when I went to work this morning. So they should be fully open by the time I get home. Both trees blossomed this year, which is an improvement over previous years when only our Jung Hardy Wisconsin blossomed. Pears require a pollinator, so we haven't gotten much fruit in the past. This year, we will hopefully get a nice crop. These trees are pretty well established now, since we planted them first thing when we moved into our house 5 summers ago. The picture at the top is a close-up of one of the Jung Hardy blossom clusters. These pears flower on terminal buds or fruiting spurs, so you can see the blossom clusters standing off the main branches a bit.

We also have a plum tree that is in bloom. Only a handful of blossoms on that tree this year. It is self-fertile, so we'll have to wait and see whether it bears anything.

On that note, I will leave you with a gratuitous Daffodil picture:

Good morning

We finally got the warm temperatures needed to make some of the plants and trees wake up. The bloodroot just peaked over the weekend. It flowers profusely for about 3 days and then the petals fall and the pretty foliage appears. Sadly, it looks like we lost about a quarter of our patch with last year's drought.

I planted lots of new bulbs last fall (thanks to Melissa for introducing me to Brent & Becky). The daffodils just started blooming in the last couple days. Here is a cute variety that has several smaller flowers on each stem.

Last spring we planted our first apricot tree. Looks like it's going to flower this year. Since it's so young if it does fruit, we'll pull off all but one or two apricots, but it's encouraging to know that it seems to be happy.