Farm and Garden Report - June 16

In just the ten days since I last wrote, flowers have gone by and others have come into their yearly spotlight. Every single day is a marvel, a once-in-a-seaon event. I go outside to view the beauty, or gaze out the windows as I go about my day. I like the surprising views I get from different vantage points. The maple hides most of the poppies from one window while from another that color dominates the whole scene. The bunches of iris everywhere look so amazing. When the rain topples some of the bleeding heart, I suddenly see a bit of pink among the daylily leaves, a promise of July color.

I have two William Baffin roses, bought because they were deemed good for my climate. They've lived up to the promise. They bloom and bloom and survive whatever the winter months offer them. I like the different colors.




I wondered if my iris was Japanese or Siberian, and so I looked it up and found:

Siberian iris have no beards and typical bloom in New England begins in late May or June. They have smooth, thin, grass-like leaves without the distinct rib that runs lengthwise down the middle of Japanese iris leaves.

Mine have no rib so are Siberian. We have them all over and they are such a beautiful color.


The Korean lilacs came and faded quickly with days of rain. They are not my favorite flower in looks or fragrance, but I grow them in honor of my South Korean born children.


Rosa rugosas by the barn - these are my favorites. They grow free here and live cozily beside honeysuckles and lilacs. I love this rather wild area.


The others on the hill near the kitchen door are slowly being overtaken by lupines which is what we wanted when Tom cut them all back. And the third area by the fence is slowly growing back. Tom had to cut them down after some snow and plow damage this winter. I think what we'll do is cut them back every fall, and let them grow up again in the spring.

The peonies are equally sublime and ephemeral. They change from day to day. I read a tip in the Old Farmer's Almanac Calendar:

A lit tea candle inside a peony blossom floating in a shallow bowl of water will release the flower's fragrance.

I can smell the sweet fragrance but only when I put my face quite close to the flowers. Later I saw the tips of the flowers had burned so I probably won't be trying this again. If you do, let me know if it worked.

There has this week been a wild turkey in the far north pasture where the animals rarely go to graze. The grass out there just isn't very good. And so this meadow grows - filled with wildflowers. And wild turkeys. First the strutting toms with their harems. And then the hens alone. And at last the hens and their babies. We began noticing this a few years ago. In fact those mothers were the first wild turkeys we had on our land. It was fascinating to watch the babies behaving much like human children. I remember a mother with three. Two hung close by her while the third was dashing off onto a rock. Tom's garden journal notes that last year at this time was the first spotting of babies. So far I've just seen two mothers, or the one alone, eating their way along for most of the day. Then they disappear, without me seeing them go, into the woods which are just the other side of the stone wall. In these woods for much of the spring, we would hear the gobble gobble (yes that really is the sound) of what we think is part of the mating ritual.

And speaking of babies, I wonder if there are any in the bluebird nest. I haven't heard any little peeps so I'm guessing they haven't hatched yet. That pair is so different from last year's. They are much calmer. I wonder if it is because they chose to nest in the box under the eaves rather than out on the telephone pole. Their home is much more protected, less exposed to weather and various activities. We still see them out a couple times a day, just sitting on the wire. We are quite sure now that there is just one nesting pair. No one is using the box on the pole. And we wonder where did the swallows go who used to come year after year and nest there.

As for the new 'farm' down the road, Margaret and Matthew have already picked radishes! The grass has begun growing. When I walk down, I hear robin song so my guess is there is a nest or two near their house. They are heading to Bar Harbor, Maine for a week and we get to take care of the adorable duckies!

As for the vegetable garden - check out this blur of color from the panolas (a hybrid mix of pansy and viola)!


Tom's mother gave me a few plants last spring and I soon took them out of the pots, and planted them in one of the raised beds in the vegetable garden. They spread last summer, lived through the winter, and are thriving! Great plant which I highly recommend.

We've had quite a bit of rain so every single thing is up, from potatoes to peas to beans. It is so exciting. The garlic scapes are just about ready for picking.

Poppies are impossible to photograph, at least for me. The photos make them look otherworldly, as if they are suspended in the air with no connection to their stems or the earth underneath.

And this one even shows a yellow color which is not there in real, as opposed to photographic, life.

Less than a month ago, the crabapple we bought last year was in full blossom,

and now there are little crabapples.

This most amazing time of year is about to draw to a close. We welcome summer, but really it can't compete with the diversity, lushness, green, and constant change of the springtime. Since March 20, we have gone from snow to mud to today's temperatures in the low-eighties. So much happens in the spring. We have to keep our eyes and hearts open so as not to miss a minute.

Farm and Garden Report - June 6

For the very first time, we have planted a rhododendron. In recent years they have become almost as prevalent as lilacs in dooryards around here. This one is a PJM Elite which is supposed to be hardy in Zone 4, to -30º F. It is in the yard right outside the kitchen door, in between a mass of daylilies. It will bloom while the daylilies are small, and they will blossom after the the bush flowers have gone by. I'm hoping it will grow on this windy cold hill. It should be somewhat sheltered where it was planted.


This year's planting of the vegetable garden was late because of so much rain. And so, we've been working out there in black fly season, which is enough to drive one mad. Tom's mother has two sayings about black flies - one that when the serviceberry blossoms the black flies will come, and the other is that black fly season is Mother's Day to Father's Day. If you'd like to learn a bit more about the shad or serviceberry Tom wrote about it here three years ago. Those black flies haven't been too bad the past few years but this year, probably because of all the rain, they have been terrible. After coming in on Saturday from planting in the garden, I had about ten bites all around my ears, which seems to be a favored dining area for them. A dear man, now long gone, used to say that he thought the cure for crime was not jails, but to put a criminal, naked, in a cage outdoors during black fly season!

May 28 was a big day for the baby chicks. Tom and Matt carried the box out to the barn. They will live in a safe, enclosed area until they are bigger.


The animals and other chickens will be able to see them and get used to their presence so that when they go out into the rest of the barn and outdoors in a few months, the transition will be smooth and peaceful.


By the end of Memorial Day weekend the lilacs had begun to fade. I'm always saddened when they go by. They bring such beauty and color and fragrance and though other flowers are still to come, it is the lilacs I really love. But then my sadness is assuaged when the locust trees come into bloom, and I think, ah yes, this is my favorite fragrance; until the sweet peas come, that is.


We planted our six tomato plants we had started from seed. I'm hoping it won't be too crowded in the one raised bed. The varieties are Camp Joy Cherry and Big Beef Beefsteak, both from Renee's Garden, and Cosmonaut Volkov Slicing Tomato from High Mowing Seeds.

I planted Dark Red Morland potatoes from Johnny's Seeds on the last day of May. A little late, but they should be fine. They took up one whole bed and part of another.

This past weekend we got the rest of the garden in.

There's a bed of the Zephyr summer squash from Johnny's. There's a whole bed for peas, what Johnny's calls Premium, an early pea. I sure hope so since we planted it so late. We haven't grown them for a few years, and I have missed them. They are one vegetable that I think simply must be eaten out of the garden. Frozen peas just can't compare. Even if I have only four or five meals in the summer, it is worth it to me to plant them.

Last year we grew pole beans for the first time and they were such a success that I think we'll stay with this variety from Renee's Garden, Filet Beans French Gold. Last year they grew in tall tomato cages, but this year Tom took some tree branches and made a teepee, tying the tops together with baling twine.


In the same bed, I tried something new for our sweet peas. Instead of using cages or fencing, I brought out a clothes rack which Tom secured into the ground. I put one variety on each end and one in the middle. I have high hopes that this will be a great support for them, albeit a little unusual. I grew two varieties from last year, Cupani's Original and Painted Lady, and a new one called Royal Wedding in honor of THE wedding this past April. All are from Renee's Garden.

Yesterday, after our godson's college graduation party, we headed to Lowe's for wood to build one more raised bed. This one is on the other side of the fence from the patio. It will probably hold the onion sets, which we are also late in getting in this year, and a cage of cucumbers. We have panolas, mallow, and sweet peas in the vegetable garden, and now we'll have vegetables in the flower garden.

In the flower gardens, the bleeding heart plant has turned into an almost five-foot tall bush.

The lupines are in their glory.

In 2008 I wrote about this being the indigo time of year.

Aquilegia or columbine

Bearded iris

Baptisia australis, which has lots of names - Blue wild indigo, Blue false indigo, Rattleweed or Rattlebush, and Horse fly weed

Mountain bluet also known as Perennial cornflower and Perennial Bachelor's button - there's a little entry on this flower which I wrote four years ago.

Spiderwort, with the 'or' sound as word, not wart, according to Henry Mitchell.

There is very little work to do amongst the flowers. All of them are perennials which come up every year, and they are planted close enough together that by this time of year, no weeding is necessary. The only job now will be cutting them back at the end of their growing season.

The bluebirds are happily settled in. Usually they sit together on the wire morning and evening. I don't think there are two pairs, but am still not positive. Just this morning when I opened the laundry room windows, the female flew out of the birdhouse under the eaves,

and up onto the old tv antenna [query: why do we still have this?]


So, that's it for this report. I should be back in not too long with the Korean lilacs and Siberian iris and poppies.

Farm and Garden Report - May 27

My motto for May must surely be 'I can't keep up.' From gardening to housework to reading to making supper to writing my letters, I am constantly behind. A couple years ago, I offered a Christopher Morley quote:

April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks GO!

That's exactly it, with just a change in month. May is when everything really happens around here. Almost minute to minute you can see the grass grow or a plant come into flower.

The first miracles in the garden are rhubarb and chives.

These workhorses come up year after year, providing food and beauty with no help from me at all. We've got four big plants of each, and we've had to divide them over the years because they outgrow their spaces. I use the chives at almost every supper, and the rhubarb often. I have frozen 9 cups of the latter, and honestly could probably freeze 99 cups! But there are just so many rhubarb desserts that we can eat in a year. I'm trying something different this year. The author of the recipe in Country Living which I posted said that she freezes her rhubarb with a little sugar. I've always just chopped it up and frozen it, so we'll see if the sugar addition makes any difference.

The early days of May were all about color at the bird feeders. After months of the winter visitors, clothed like their surroundings in browns, blacks, whites, and grays, suddenly three kinds of birds brought the bright colors of red, yellow, and blue in the form of purple finches [query: why are they called purple when they are so clearly red?], gold finches, and blue jays. And the mourning doves' orange feet! Have they always been that color and I've just never noticed?? We took down the feeders mid-month. Feeding had slowed considerably, and on the 16th Margaret looked out her window and saw a black bear ambling into her yard. We thought we'd better take away any incentive for showing up at our house. You may remember that I told you in the May 4 report that Tom saw a bear. Wonder if it is the same one? Just yesterday one crossed in front of us down on the main road. Ah, spring.

The first lawn mowing happened on Mother's Day evening. The light was so very beautiful and impossible to capture, just as is the lovely smell of fresh mown grass. Look for a lawn mowing related posting soon.

We've made a decision that we aren't going to build a patio off the kitchen, not this year and maybe not at all. We can't afford it in either time or money. We've just bought six new replacement windows for the study and the living room. We lose a lot of heat through those rattly old windows.

L - old, R - new

L - old, R - new

And we had to replace the porch roof. Remember that beautiful paint work Tom did in the study? Well, the ice built up on that old roof and we had terrible leaks in the porch ceiling and the water dripped right down into one window, and one wall, buckling the sheetrock.

We got a cool slate blue metal roof!

The cost wasn't bad because the man put it on right over the old roof. Maybe someday the whole house will be roofed in blue, but that is quite a ways off. The other thing we want to put time and money into this summer is painting our kitchen. That room has been looking sad for a lot of years now. Tom is almost finished with the butt'ry space but still must fix the window and door before they can be painted.

Heard the wood thrush on May 12, surely the sweetest bird song.

On May 16, 'our' rabbit appeared! We never see more than the one, but he or she usually shows up several times in the summer. We never have trouble with it in the veg garden. I think it greatly prefers the fresh green grass.

The bluebird couple are definitely back, about which we have mixed emotions. The male is that beautiful blue color, and they are spoken of as the 'bluebirds of happiness' after all, but you may recall the anguish and hassle they brought last spring. It's like a romantic comedy in the north pasture. This morning the bluebirds were on the wire, with nesting material in the female's mouth, and they were all shook up because just below them on the ground the male turkey was doing his love dance to two (!!) females. I opened the window to coax the turkeys to move along so the bluebirds could get back to their homebuilding.

Not great shots, because they were through the window with the zoom on the little camera, but you get the idea. But look at this one! I think those are two males. Geez, does that mean we have two nesting pairs??

The robins are already nesting. I only see them occasionally when they come out to get food. No visible nests. I think a flicker is nesting in the old crabapple out back. I've heard a new bird I can't identify yet. A sparrow perhaps.

There are lilacs everywhere.

The early crabapples have come and gone and the later one is in bud.

The honeysuckles - red, cream, and pink are full of bumblebees. This is the height of the year for fragrance.

The lily-of-the-valley is still blooming beautifully, while the violets have started to fade.

After a year of not using cocoa mulch because our store didn't stock it, we're putting it on the flower gardens again.


I really love this stuff. Of course the smell is quite appealing, but also it enriches the soil, and makes it easy to pull the weeds.

As this fleeting month of May comes to a close, I wish my US readers a happy Memorial Day weekend which we view as the true beginning of summer.

I'll close this report with a John Deere ad I just love.

Farm and Garden Report - May 4

Heard peepers - April 24, Easter night
Redwing blackbirds at the feeders - April 25
Heard white throated sparrow - 'old sam peabody, peabody, peabody - and the song sparrow.
Tom and Matt went to a lecture on vernal pools. In Matt and Margaret's pool there are wood frogs galore and many eggs.
First flowers on April 25 - bloodworts


The daffodils have brought sunshine to Windy Poplars on the gray days. I took this photo yesterday out the east kitchen window. The world is greening up so beautifully.



My daffs are a mixture of bright yellow, and the lovely, soft white with yellow at the center.


On April 27, Katie, our sheep shearer came. It was the first really warm day, and the sheep were so happy to get rid of their woolly coats. I wrote about last year's shearing here, if you'd like to learn more about it. I've offered the fleece to a local yarn shop for any spinners who might want it.


Here is a view of all the animals in their spring, summer, and fall pasture. They stay there during the day and go back to the other pasture, where the barn is, each evening.


On May 3, I planted 40 leek plants we started from seed. I put them in the chive bed. There were four big chive plants in there and we moved two of them to other areas. If you click on the picture of the view out the kitchen window, that bed is the closest to the bench. The garlic is coming along great in the bed next to the chive bed.

This morning I found the first tick of the season crawling on my arm. I had picked up the hamper to bring the laundry downstairs and I bet there was a tick on a piece of clothing from the day before. Yuck!

Also this morning, the sixteen new baby chicks arrived. It is a little miracle that they hatched two days before and were packed into their little box and mailed to us. They are down cellar in a big box with shavings, a feeder, a waterer, and a heat lamp, and I can hear them peeping all over the house. I wrote a long piece four years ago, the last time we got chicks. If you are interested in the whole process, you may read it here.


I looked out the window and saw a rose-breasted grosbeak at the feeders. First one this year. They are a rare, and most welcome visitor. This is not my picture!


I took down the suet feeders, but have continued longer than usual with sunflower seeds and cracked corn because of the cold April, but ... it is just about time to remove them because last evening Tom was walking down the hill and 20 feet away from him a big black bear crossed the road. He stayed very still till it walked away.

We are high on a hill and never have to worry about high water, but a couple towns over there was flooding. That's the Connecticut River on the left, and a field on the right.