Week 1
Well, here we go!
And straightaway this was a tricky week where the only time I was able to go to the garden was on Friday morning, and then only to have a look and take some pictures for this space, hahaha. The rest of the week went up in a haze of work and birthday prep and actual birthday. So mostly a wonderful haze, just not a gardening one.
Still, this was the week that the anemones started blooming so I was very grateful to see that. I adore anemones. They are so elegant and their flower petals so delicate but their hearts are so sturdy and full. And the bees adore them, too, always a very big plus for me when it comes to plants.
I have a white and a pink anemone. I don't know their official names, but having a look around the interwebs it would appear they would both be grouped in the Japanese (or Chinese) anemones area, since they have yellow hearts (stamens)(learning as I type here). Also, her name is derived from the Greek 'anemoi' which means 'winds'. Thank you wikipedia!
Last year the pink anemone got no chance to grow because she was surrounded too closely by very high flowering plants - which is how I learned that they need lots of sunlight. So this year I was more careful with her neighbors and she bounced back beautifully.
The pink anemone was inherited from my dad (I think) and is in the middle flower garden. The white anemone I bought last year, and is in the front flower garden.
Next to the white anemone I've also recently planted a wine-red cosmos. It blew over a bit in the stormy weather we had last week, but I plonked a stone into the soil next to her to keep her upright while she gets her roots down and she seems to enjoy it. And the bees enjoy her flowers immensely, too! I hope she'll last the winter and come up again next year, then I can keep track of when she starts flowering (and post it here).
The mint is also beginning to flower. She'll probably feature next week!
In fruit and veg news: the strawberries are ripe for the plucking!
They were very delicious... I can only eat them off the plant. The moment I take them home I forget they are there. So I'm eating any I can find and if, in a few years, when these plants are a bit more mature (this is their first year), we get kilos and kilos of fruit then I'll make jam.
Also, ALL our tomatoes are superstars and producing the most gorgeous fruits (vegetables? I still don't know what to classify them as and have no time to look them up now because I have to get ready for work). We unexpectedly have about 5 varieties. I don't know their names because they are all grown from seeds from previous years, except the 'stoplight' tomatoes but I already threw away that packet last winter. Sigh. And then our allotment neighbour Sient gave us a few plants which are producing purple tomatoes! So we have a wonderful mix of colors and sizes this year:
They made for a very delicious Birthday Pasta Margherita! I also took the opportunity to harvest some seeds from them, and put them to dry in my very high-tech seed-collecting box:
If you can't MacGyver, you shouldn't be a gardener. :-)
And that was Week 1. Loads of things I never even got to, which is both encouraging and worrisome, since all I did this week was take pictures...
And straightaway this was a tricky week where the only time I was able to go to the garden was on Friday morning, and then only to have a look and take some pictures for this space, hahaha. The rest of the week went up in a haze of work and birthday prep and actual birthday. So mostly a wonderful haze, just not a gardening one.
Still, this was the week that the anemones started blooming so I was very grateful to see that. I adore anemones. They are so elegant and their flower petals so delicate but their hearts are so sturdy and full. And the bees adore them, too, always a very big plus for me when it comes to plants.
Last year the pink anemone got no chance to grow because she was surrounded too closely by very high flowering plants - which is how I learned that they need lots of sunlight. So this year I was more careful with her neighbors and she bounced back beautifully.
The pink anemone was inherited from my dad (I think) and is in the middle flower garden. The white anemone I bought last year, and is in the front flower garden.
Next to the white anemone I've also recently planted a wine-red cosmos. It blew over a bit in the stormy weather we had last week, but I plonked a stone into the soil next to her to keep her upright while she gets her roots down and she seems to enjoy it. And the bees enjoy her flowers immensely, too! I hope she'll last the winter and come up again next year, then I can keep track of when she starts flowering (and post it here).
The mint is also beginning to flower. She'll probably feature next week!
In fruit and veg news: the strawberries are ripe for the plucking!
They were very delicious... I can only eat them off the plant. The moment I take them home I forget they are there. So I'm eating any I can find and if, in a few years, when these plants are a bit more mature (this is their first year), we get kilos and kilos of fruit then I'll make jam.
Also, ALL our tomatoes are superstars and producing the most gorgeous fruits (vegetables? I still don't know what to classify them as and have no time to look them up now because I have to get ready for work). We unexpectedly have about 5 varieties. I don't know their names because they are all grown from seeds from previous years, except the 'stoplight' tomatoes but I already threw away that packet last winter. Sigh. And then our allotment neighbour Sient gave us a few plants which are producing purple tomatoes! So we have a wonderful mix of colors and sizes this year:
They made for a very delicious Birthday Pasta Margherita! I also took the opportunity to harvest some seeds from them, and put them to dry in my very high-tech seed-collecting box:
If you can't MacGyver, you shouldn't be a gardener. :-)
And that was Week 1. Loads of things I never even got to, which is both encouraging and worrisome, since all I did this week was take pictures...
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