Late night sleepy post

Well I promised a post-a-day in April- so even though I'm sleepy, here comes a quickie. It was cloudy and cool again today and we got another 1/2 an inch of rain last night! The potatoes are sprouting and all of my spring seedlings need to be weeded, thinned and mulched. The tomatoes desperately need to be stepped up to larger pots as they are bumping into the grow lights and getting scraggly- they need more space, light and nutrients. If I have any energy left after my shift at Camellia Forest tomorrow I must tend to them.

The asparagus are beginning to come on nicely and we're picking a good handful daily now, if it warms up they'll be flying out of the ground. Dinner tonight was a frittata of fresh asparagus, green onions, spinach and chard all from the garden, made with those good CH creamery eggs we love so well. Feta cheese and some mushrooms too- from the store not locally made/grown, ah well, can't have every single thing local every time.

OK- I've done it, a post for the day. I leave you with the frilly loropetalum, up close and shocking- to brighten up another cloudy day. I'm off to dreamland.

More Rain

So we've now had almost 3 inches of rain in a single week. This is a switch, I'm glad its raining but I wish we had a better cistern and rain barrel set-up figured out. And the weeds are growing like crazy and I can't get outside to work. Despite the rain- the view out the kitchen window this morning was marvelous.
A trio of pink trees. On the left a weeping redbud, in the center the "Prairie Fire" crab apple we planted last year and in the distance, the Tulip Magnolia already touted repeatedly in this blog. You can also see a magnificent Japanese maple on the right- bright lime green and if you look closely you can see the terracotta nest pot that's been taken over by chickadees. Also you can see the tulips and daffodils scattered about.


Here is a close up of that Japanese maple in bloom last week

Here's what happens to a ripe cabbage that gets 3 inches of water in a single week. Think I'll be cooking a favorite dish for dinner; shredded cabbage with sliced apples and chicken sausage, a bit of onion and caraway, red wine vinegar and pinch of sugar, altogether in the skillet- delicious, beautiful and easy.

Camellia Forest

I've mentioned that I have 3 new part-time jobs. One of them is working at a local nursery that specializes in camellias and also has lots of very interesting trees, shrubs and landscape plants. I took this job because:

1. I love plants and want to learn more
2. I can walk to work-incredible considering where I live
3. The folks that run the place are nice and laidback
4. I'm getting paid two thirds in cash and one third in plants :-)
5. I only have to work there one day a week (usually)

So far I have worked 5 days over 4 weeks, every one of those days has been freezing cold and the last one was also raining. I have been completely exhausted at the end of these days and frozen, had to come home and take hot baths and naps to recover. Keep wondering if I am too old for this kind of physical labor though I'm only packing plants for shipping, no real heavy lifting. But I'm not going to whimp out, I will stick it out. It's April and it must get warmer right? I'll get stronger right?

So to encourage myself I went over there today with Mr. D and picked out my free plants for my first months work- and then some- now I am an indentured servant, but that will keep me showing up for work. The hard part is choosing. We picked:

• Chamaecyparis Obtusa "Wells Special" fantastic evergreen with architectural qualities and bluish foliage
• Acer Palmatum "Orangeola" weeping cut leaf Japanese Maple that is red in spring, greenish in summer and bright orange in fall- oh boy
• Corylopsis Sinensis- Chinese Winterhazel- pendulous yellow fragrant blooms in March-have always wanted one of these- spreading 10x10 feet
• Prunus Hally Jolivette-small cherry tree (12 feet) that blooms spring and fall - white flowers with dark pink centers- will plant below my study window
• 2 spring blooming camellias, white "Sudie Blanchard" and red "Royal Velvet"

So to my three part-time jobs add digging holes for these new plants and keeping them watered through the summer so they don't die!

Robins and Leeks

More wet and cold today doesn't feel very spring like, but I'm happy for the rain. Yesterdays sunshine got Mr. D out pushing the mower through the thick, lush grass, first time this season. This morning a flock of 35 hungry robins landed there to see what they could find in the new mown lawn. The most common of the thrushes, I take them for granted but they're a handsome bird with their red breasts, dark heads and white spectacles. Three flickers poked around under the apple trees and bluebirds, chipping sparrows and juncos were checking it all out too. We watched a pine warbler gathering feathers off the ground under the bird feeder to carry back to its nest, and I saw a chickadee swoop into the nest pot with something white and fluffy that looked like a ball of cotton.

I'm excited about these leeks. We started them last July, from seed I had collected some years back. Set the green toothpick-size shoots in the bed in September and slowly hilled the soil and mulch up around them as they grew. I'm hoping for long thick white bases on these babies. I remember the last time we grew leeks, the deer ate them down to the ground during the winter so they never got any real size on them. So here's one more thing we can grow without molestation, thanks to the deer fence. Some are big enough to harvest soon and then through the spring and early summer. I'm imagining what I can do with asparagus and leeks; quiche, omelets, grilled and tossed in vinaigrette, or leeks and potatoes, leeks and sugar snap peas, leeks and spinach....

Bearded Iris

I've set a goal for myself to blog every day in April with something new from the garden or woods each time- we'll see if I can live up to the challenge. There is absolutely so much happening- I can't stop gazing out the windows and strolling around the yard to see what's new.

This morning the first of these bearded iris opened, they were a gift from the garden of my friend and massage therapist, Pat. They've spread and now make a nice clump on one edge of one bed, I hope one day they will be many and cast their fragrance across the yard, something I've experienced in places with big iris beds. The scent is like their color, I can't explain, not quite grape jelly, but sweet like that. You can see that crazy fringed flowered loropetalum in the background, it'll burn your retinas on a sunny day.

April Fool Part II

OK- I know I just did a post but I was sitting there eating my lunch, (egg salad made from the freshest most delicious eggs compliments of my dairy farming neighbors), and I couldn't help but take a photo of this vase of tulips and daffodils. This little white daffodil with the split corona of pale yellow and white may be my favorite of the close to 20 varieties that we have planted around our place, its gently nodding flower head is so graceful.

I'm not sure if its spring fever or just procrastination. My writing group meets tonight and I haven't got a thing other than these blog posts to show, I've got to get cracking on something more substantial, perhaps a piece on spring fever? Being the April fool?

Meanwhile, yellow swallowtail butterflies are flitting about the yard, the sun is toying with the idea of actually shining for the first time in several days, but I've got to glue myself to this seat, drink the after-lunch cappuccino I've treated myself to and get serious!

April Fool

I took the opportunity for a quick walk during a break in the rain today, the short loop down our creek, past the pond to Morgan and back up the pond creek to the house again. The understory is really greening up, buckeyes are opening their leaves and the ground is very green now with trout lilies which have passed the baton to the spring beauties for most prolific flower at the moment.

The creek is up again from the rain and I’m hopeful that the big carp that live in University Lake will reappear to spawn here in the headwaters of Morgan. We’ve not seen them in a couple of years as its been too dry or maybe too much debris in the creek downstream from storms kept them from being able to swim up.

The Canada geese are back at the pond, they’ll give it a go one more year, despite the turtles eating their babies every time. They lay completely flat, their long necks out in front, they even manage to flatten their big bodies out, he in the water, she on the nest, to try and hide from me as I walk past.

Mama goose, flat on the nest

The green umbrellas of the May apples are up and I search in vein for morels, I know they are out there but never seem able to find any. Some trees are beginning to leaf out, the redbuds are open, casting a pink haze across the woods and the dogwoods are just beginning- still green and not completely open yet.

The first asparagus appeared this week, just a couple per day, soon we’ll be inundated- yumm. Lettuce are almost big enough to pick, a few radishes are looking right as well, spring veggie season begins…

Tulips started blooming this week to join the daffodils. Lilac, iris, and poppies are showing buds. The loropetalum in its hot pink fringed finery outshines every other thing in the garden right now, but the tulip tree is still putting on a show and the crabapple is about to do the same.

Tulip magnolia with ginger scented blooms

I’ve been ridiculously busy, after not working for 10 months I accepted three part-time jobs simultaneously and am now working about 30 hours per week. This is not helping me get all my house and garden chores done, nor leaving me time to write or blog or anything else. What was I thinking- and just as spring is coming on. I’m doing my best to juggle it all, but forgive me if you don’t see as many dispatches as usual from me here.

Check this out- I’ve got a monthly column now in the Chapel Hill News called “In Season”, the first one ran in March and the next will be out in a couple of weeks, click above if you care to read it.