Ever since I planted borage a few years ago I’ve typically never needed to reseed it in the vegetable garden, it has always come up itself in late winter. Usually it comes up in a vegetable bed but sometimes it comes up in the middle of the pathway. This year we’ve left several plants in the vegetable garden and they’ve attracted our honeybees and other native bees and pollinators, which has been a very good thing after we’d pulled the flowering greens. The flowering greens had been the main attractant to the vegetable garden up until February. I think parts of the plant are considered to be edible but we…

While the wildflowers this year might not have been as stellar as we’d hoped, the Louisiana irises in the ditch are now putting on quite a show! We have a few varieties, including the typical native Iris virginica down near the pond but I’ve not had a chance/remembered to get photos down there so far this month. There will be more gardening photos this week! Look for them on the latter end with camping photos at the beginning of the week. Hope you are having a good Saturday!

I walk around the yard these days and I get glimpses of life pre-Forest. I will never be that same person, have those same moments, but I get glimpses. It’s peaceful, and yet still incredibly fast-paced and definitely not still. Just being able to notice the sun (Earth) changing positions as it heads towards spring, seeing the different ephemeral weeds popping up in the yard, or the budding of the trees; those were things I barely caught a glimpse of last year. As much as I get those pre-Forest glimpses I really, really love the here and now with Forest as he wanders the yard. He loves it so much…

Justicia spicigera, Mexican honeysuckle Gladiolus dalenii A creeping violet thing that we’ve long lost the tag for. Prunus mexicana, Mexican plum blooms. Tomatoes in the vegetable garden. Bolting Chinese cabbage. Peach blossoms Sophora tomentosa, necklacepod The last of the cauliflower Sugar snap peas Carrots Our strawberries are finally looking like they will do well this year! ‘Bali’ tomato seedlings Variegated hydrangea Mexican flame vine Foxglove Budding brugmansia Budding azalea Crawfish burrow Bolting mustard greens Collard greens Red Russian kale Parsley Bolting cilantro Dill Nun orchid flower spike Woodland painted petals flower spike Scilla sp., Leopard lily spike

It’s been a very long time since I’ve dedicated a lot of time to writing about gardening here. For some reason I’ve felt like because the garden has been so messy and umkempt over the last year or so, that showing it to you in its messy state wasn’t the best idea. In retrospect I should have shared all of that messiness anyway. One part of blogging for me is the ability to go back and see how things were growing or what animals (birds) might have been coming through at any particular time period. The last year has been a lot lighter on that information. I recently tried to…

We’ve never had good success with potatoes but that’s not going to stop us from trying yet again. We’ve gone with Red LaSoda potatoes in the past. This year we opted to go with Yukon Gold as an alternative. They were cut and cured in our kitchen for a few weeks and we finally got a chance to get them in the ground this afternoon. Forest, as you see, is getting more and more interested in being outside and exploring. He’s not quite able to be left to just play by himself in close proximity to us as he’s very fond of pulling plants he shouldn’t, and is also quite…

The beavers have been trying to demolish a few of our trees down by the pond. Chris put up some mesh to prevent that but left one tree that was already doing poorly so that the beavers could chow down on it. Then, he ordered a new wildlife cam and this is the result! I sped the videos up 4x but you can still hear some of the sounds of the beaver munching away on the tree. Enjoy!

With mild weather the last few weeks we’ve been trying to get caught up in the vegetable garden with weeding and planting. Winter offers a good opportunity to grow a variety of vegetables, particularly herbs and leafy greens. Chris transplanted several dill plants that had self seeded throughout the vegetable beds in an effort to make room for planting onions and other crops. Chickweed had thrived in both the vegetable and flower gardens already this winter. I’ve been pulling tons of it, and yes, I know it is edible. I just haven’t gotten around to trying it, yet. We’re a little late in getting our onions in this year, at…