Snow Day

Yes, you read that title right. First snow of the season overnight into the morning, after raining all day yesterday. A friend's birthday is tomorrow and his wife says that 9 out of 10 times the first snow comes on his birthday so this is normal for us. The only concern was the lilacs and honeysuckles were bent down by the heavy snow. Tom and I went out for 1 1/2 hours getting the snow off. Most of them came back just fine, but there is one broken branch, and a couple others seem weak, but we'll see when the spring comes. The problem was that there were still leaves and they were weighed down. Very unusual to have foliage and snow at the same time. But everything else is strange this year so I shouldn't be surprised! 

I took these pictures in the morning.

I put bird seed on the road so the ground feeders could eat. We had bluejays and juncos and some kind of sparrows all day, and then in the evening this crew showed up.

There were a dozen in all. One of them jumped to the top of the clothesline, twice. Just for fun, I guess.

Addendum: Tom said the turkeys were here early the next morning, and he saw deer tracks so we are officially in the restaurant biz for the next few months!

Feeding the birds, again

 Almost exactly a year ago, I posted that we were not going to feed the birds that fall and winter. But as the weather cooled down this month, I felt myself longing for birds. It was very quiet last winter. There has been no sighting of the r-word, so we are going to begin again! It is a bit expensive as I noted last year, but those birdies give so much pleasure. We've changed the spot to the clothesline. The feeders used to be strung out the kitchen door (across the road) in the lilac and honeysuckle trees, but this will be an easier place to reach when the snow is deep. In just a few days, we've had chickadees, bluejays, a woodpecker, and juncos. It is lovely to hear them through the open bedroom window in the morning. 

Blueberries - 2020 Report

 I just went looking through the blog, and apparently I didn't post about the blueberries last year. I'm so surprised because I had been doing so for a few years.

Anyhow, today was the last of the blueberries we bought from our neighbor. 

This year the price was $5.75 per quart, down from $6 two years ago. Who knows why? What I do know is that there weren't very many - 17 quarts in all.

July 30 - 4 quarts

August 2 - 3 quarts

August 4 - 3 quarts

August 6 - 3 quarts

August 10 - 2 quarts

August 12 - 2 quarts

In 2018, we got 26 quarts, and we thought that was a small amount!  In 2017, 43 quarts. In 2016, 61 quarts!

We are friendly enough with this man and his wife, and in fact sell them a dozen eggs a week, but we don't know them well enough to comfortably ask them why they think there has been such a steady decrease each year. One year, I did give the man a list of the differences in amounts for a couple years, but he gave no response. I sure wish I knew how many we got last year! 

We've eaten quite a few fresh, and the rest are frozen for breakfast smoothies.

July, with a touch of the first day of August

I can't believe I wrote so little in July. I meant to post about many things that are in my head!  

I have written a few times about one of my favorite songs, "You Go To My Head". It has that magic line "like a summer with a thousand Julys". The weather, the flowers, the ease of life - there is no other month in my year which offers so much pleasure, so much pure joy. 

Even in these times, July gave so much to brighten spirits. I could talk and talk but I'll just post some pictures of this past glorious month.

First up are the CSA flowers. I didn't sign up last year but this past Christmas Margaret gave me a present of the first six weeks of this season! What a joy they have been.

June 24

July 1

July 8

July 15 

July 22

July 29 

Such beauty! They take my breath away. 

We watch Gardeners World on Britbox faithfully each week, and we have learned so much over the past couple years. The most important thing is about pollinators. We've had flowers for all the years we've lived here, but mostly they have been daylilies. There have been a few others - iris, sedum, aquilegia, hollyhocks, but for the main summer season we have been awash in daylilies. They are wonderful and are themselves good for the bees, but we wanted to be a little bit more helpful to the butterflies and bees. Several plants were talked about on the show, and I ordered a few of them. We dug up a whole bed of just daylilies, and moved them to another area of the garden, and planted several new-to-us plants. They have been a grand success. Everything has grown and they have brought in scores of pollinators.

Achillea millefolium or yarrow. The yellow is Coronation Gold and the red, Paprika. 

Perennial hollyhocks. I hope they do indeed come back. They have thrived with just a bit of rust on the leaves. 

We planted Walker's Low catmint a few years ago in honor of Campbell Walker, our grandson, but we got another plant and put them both together because it is a real favorite of the bees. It was loaded with pollinators the whole month. The pink flower next to it is my beloved mallow that I've written about over the years. It has been gone a couple years but popped up this spring in force! Mallow is another favorite of pollinators.

We have two Monarda plants which are just beginning to blossom. It is also known are bee balm. This is a zone 3 variety so I'm hopeful it will come back again next year.

And then there is the Echinacea! It has been a butterfly airport! The other day there were eight at a time.

I just took this little movie of the action.

The daylilies have been in their glory with color after color just exploding throughout the month of July. They'll be around for a few weeks yet, I hope.

One of my favorite views because it shows the coming, the here, and the spent daylily. My daughter just told her daughter it is like life itself.

This one is Indy Charmer in honor of Indy Thomas, our grandson!

Little Fred, bought in honor of a man we both loved.

I'll stop. You get the idea. There are daylilies all over the place, in every direction you look. And when Margaret and Matthew moved into their house down the road ten (!!) years ago, we dug up bunches of them and planted them down there so they, too, are surrounded by these beautiful flowers.

And then there is the veg garden. More glorious than last year, its first year. I've written about the calendula coming back. 

I just went out and took some pictures so you could see it as it is right now!

The amazing, amazing tomatoes, bought locally and two were gifts. There is one nearer the house, too, and we've had four tomatoes from it. There is nothing in the world that tastes better to me!

Potatoes. They've been eaten a bit by the dreaded potato beetle, but I think the potatoes themselves will be great, and coming soon!

I bought some special red corn this year.

Cukes and peas are coming fast and furious!

A zucchini plant bought at the Farmers' Market.

Sorry everything looks so washed out in the photos. 1:36 pm with bright sun. You may notice the dryness. We've had to water more this summer, though we've been lucky to have some good rains in between.

The Farmers' Market has been the highlight of my weeks. I've bought vegetables and homemade ice cream and homemade pastries and Thai spring rolls. A veritable feast. This virus time has been a locally supportive time. Everybody is cheering everyone else on, and supporting all the farmers and cooks and artists. My instagram account is a happy place to visit every day, and the Market on Sunday mornings.

Ran into some old friends one day.

Pulling her mask down to pose for me!

We celebrated birthdays - Margaret's 38th and Indy's 5th in July. 

We've seen Margaret's family the whole time. We are kind of like one family in two houses. And now it's so good to be seeing the boys again! They kept themselves quarantined for a few months, and then we all began to get together again. We are quite safe here, and we are all careful. I still am nervous about tourist season, but local businesses are really good about masks and distancing, and we don't travel very many miles. None of us know what the fall will bring but I'm thankful that we can all be together again.

Farm and Garden Report - July 2, and a quote du jour from Keats

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.

This is a snippet from John Keats' poem called I Stood Tip-Toe Upon A Little Hill.

I've read that he was the first to call Lathyrus odoratus by the name sweet peas. 

In the morning, still in my nightgown, putting on my rubber boots and going out to the garden to pick sweet peas makes me feel like a queen. We've had spotty luck with growing them so this year I bought plants from White Flower Farm. They are doing wonderfully. I've picked bouquet after bouquet. 

And here they are in the garden - in the support, though I think we went overboard. They aren't going to grow that tall!

Some things really do stay the same

No matter if there is snow or cold or heat in the spring, here at Windy Poplars Farm the lilacs are always in bloom on the real Memorial Day, May 30. For my whole life this is when the lilacs have been out in this area. These pictures are a bit blurry because the wind is pretty constant today. After days of temps in the high 80s, last night we got 3/10 inches of rain, and it is much cooler, in the 60s. We could have a frost tonight and tomorrow, but that's okay for us. We don't have anything planted that we have to worry about. I learned a hard lesson a few years ago, and wrote about it here.

The bee is just bedded down, taking in the nectar.

My mother's lilacs that we brought here in 1981 from my childhood home.

The two bushes (trees?) - my mother's on the left - that border the old stone sidewalk up to the terrace and porch

This one is a touch faded from the heat. I think of it as the little lilac that could. We cut it down a couple times, but it always came back. It wanted to live in that flower garden so there it will stay!

And here are the rest of the lilacs in the yard. I can see them all from the patio. We planted them over the years. The only one that was here when we bought the farm was cut down because it was in the pasture and we couldn't stop the animals - read, goats - from eating them.

The ones on the left we brought down from up the hill where there used to be a farm, which was turned into one of the early ski lodges in the area.

Tom's mother gave us the white lilac years ago. It is the tallest in the yard.

And back to the lilac from which came the first picture

One of the most special times of the year for us in this area. Everywhere you look there are lilacs, which is why it is our state flower.