Category: garden
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In a Vase on Monday | 7th August 2023
Rudbeckia hirta ‘Prairie Sun’ with mixed Achillea millefolium ‘Summer Pastels’. They were growing next to each other in the cutting garden, so I figured they might as well go into the vase together too! This is the first time I’ve grown anything in the Rudbeckia family and I’m so happy with how they’ve turned out…
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Six on Saturday | 5th August 2023
We just returned from a two-week trip and are dealing with some intense jet lag, so I won’t try very hard to make words work today. Here are some pictures instead! 1. Pinkcurrant (Ribes rubrum ‘Aili’) got picked yesterday. They probably should’ve been picked earlier, since it looks like the birds got about half the…
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Malus domestica ‘White Transparent’
Having just talked about our plum trees, it seemed the right time to segue into the rest of our fruit tree collection. Unlike the plums, which went unnoticed for the first few years, the apple trees were impossible to miss. They are all large, mature trees growing in clear areas with little to obstruct one’s…
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Prunus domestica ‘Victoria’
That’s right, two Victorias in a row. Different genus, but still in the fruit category. This does make me wonder just how many plants were named after that particular queen at the height of her popularity. Surely enough to make an interesting garden collection, given how long she reigned. Names aside, the other reason I…
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Six on Saturday | 15th July 2023
We have now reached the stage of summer where there’s enough sun and rain for everything around us to turn an aggressive shade of green. You can almost see the plants growing while standing in front of them. Despite having experienced this jungle-like state of affairs every year for more than a decade, I’m never…
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Rheum rhabarbarum ‘Victoria’
Today, I’m going back to cataloging our oldest plants, if only so that I can have all their information in one place rather than bothering my poor friend (who lived here before us) whenever I forget. Possibly some of the oldest plants we have, this rhubarb patch dates back to the 1950s when the farm…
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Paeonia lactiflora ‘Garden Lace’
One more peony before we go back to the older stuff! This young lactiflora was planted in autumn 2022 and shot up really fast in the spring. It produced two huge buds in its first spring, which makes me hopeful for what it will do in the future. Paeonia lactiflora ‘Garden Lace’ (lactiflora = kiinanpioni)…
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Paeonia herbaceous hybrid ‘Lemon Chiffon’
I’m taking a break from cataloguing the older plants today because I wanted to share one of my favorite debuts this season. This peony was planted out late summer/early autumn of last year and you can see what it looked like in the slideshow below. All I ever saw of it were two tiny leaf…
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Six on Saturday | 8th July 2023
A week of mellow rain and sun has made a world of difference in the garden — flowers are popping up everywhere and the vegetable garden is looking lush but not yet overgrown. It’s a nice, if short, interlude. I took a walk through our adjoining forest this morning, hoping that the chanterelles might have…
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Paeonia lactiflora ‘Sarah Bernhardt’
You know what they say about making the most mistakes with your first child? It applies well to plants, too. I grew up in southern California, zone 10. We were at the edge of possibility for heat-tolerant roses and peonies were not even a remote possibility. So when we moved into our house (zone 5/6…