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Gladiolus dalenii | Parrot Beaked Gladiolus
I first came across this species of gladioli at our local nursery only I wasn’t sure what type or variety they were. Initially I thought they were a hybrid but later on I found out otherwise. In fact it is a species plant instead of a hybrid, originally from tropical Africa. It was at the Mercer Arboretum March Mart Plant Sale where I bought the plant that ended up in our flower bed. It was modestly priced, right up my alley. Hopefully the plant will send out extra corms that I can spread around in the bed for next spring. Gladioli are one of my favorite bulbs so having a…
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Collard Green Pesto
The collards were starting to bolt and I decided that I wasn’t in mood for boiling up lots of collards for dinner one night and instead wanted to do something different. In passing on a blog somewhere I’d remembered reading about collard green pesto. Sure enough there were a lot of recipes and I decided on this one to experiment with. I modified it using walnuts instead of pecans and eliminating the olives, but for the most part I followed the directions. Pesto is forgiving and very pliable, I think you could use any kind of green for a different result. All of the collard leaves were not picked, but…
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Peaches
Our 5-in-1 peach/nectarine tree flowered earlier this spring and now has a few fruits on it. I think there is one nectarine but the peach limb has produced the most fruit so far. Technically I think you are supposed to pick the fruit off the first year in the ground in an effort to get the tree to have better growth but with only three or four fruits we decided to leave them on. I guess in another month or so I’ll get to taste the peaches and savor our teeny harvest.
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Dill | Wordless Wednesday
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More Scenes At The Potting Bench
I shared the View From The Potting Bench last week, but here’s what is actually going on *on* the potting bench. This potting bench was actually here when we arrived. It really needs to be rebuilt and fixed. The legs of the table are bent in a few areas and it isn’t quite stable. I miss the potting bench we had in Florida. I found it via Freecycle and picked it up from someone else when we lived in Pembroke Pines. They had two at the time, a small and large one, but I was only able to take the larger one as it would only fit on our little…
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A Favorite Native
Gaillardia pulchella, aka: Indian Blanket or Firewheel, is one of my favorite natives. It blooms for much of the year in warmer parts of Texas and other areas of the south. They’ve been blooming very well for the last few weeks and another patch of them we put in our main garden is about to start blooming as well. We just bought a hybrid variety that is mostly yellow at a nursery. I could probably get into Indian Blanket hybrid varieties and become a collector of these flowers like we have with Salvia. I’m over at Sprout Dispatch today showing off what is growing in the vegetable garden. Come over…
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View From The Potting Bench
Last night I spent an hour or so working around the potting bench, cleaning up seed trays and 4″ pots that hadn’t sprouted or that had already been transplanted. I started a round of more seeds from our stash, trying to germinate some old seeds in an effort to get some new plants for the garden but also an effort to get a fresh batch seeds from that too. Some of that effort is probably futile as some of the seeds are many years old and are likely not going to germinate at all. Oh well. I find myself outside until 8pm these days, working until almost dark and then…
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Upland Island Wilderness Explorations
Last weekend Chris and I met up in Lufkin, Texas to attend at Zoo Brew fundraiser at the Ellen Trout Zoo. Chris has been working in Beaumont again and one of our field coworkers lives in Lufkin and his wife was part of the Zoo Brew committee. It sounded like a great event and diversion for our weekend so Chris and I went and enjoyed ourselves. We didn’t get to see a lot of the zoo animals as most were put away to avoid being stressed too much. However, we saw and heard the zoo’s many peacocks. I’m pretty sure they need to invest in some peacock birth control; peacocks…
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More Goats! | Enchantment Lakes NF
(yep, still working on these posts from August….) When Chris and I left Leprechaun Lake we decided to go to the north end of Perfection Lake at the trail junction to Prusick Pass. I wanted to go up there and see what was that way but after lunch Chris wasn’t feeling it, however we did wander down that trail just a bit and found, what do you know…more goats! So adorable!! Our lunch view! We sat just a bit further up, literally at the sign junction. This wouldn’t be our last encounter with goats, we had some hang out with us at our final campsite on Aasgard Pass. To Be…
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Getting Broody
What? You thought I was getting broody? No, not yet, but the queen of our hive sure is! See there in the middle, the white capped cells? That’s brood, eggs that were laid by the queen waiting to develop into full grown bees! Last weekend Chris and I took out each comb in an attempt to try to find the queen. We didn’t end up finding her, silly girl was hiding in the mass of workers and drones. Our colony has been busy building up their comb and adding more in the last week. Now when I open the window I can actually see the combs—usually. With this freakish cold…