Turning new soil in The Shire

As usual it's been way too long since I've last updated but as usual life is busy, busy, busy! I have registered our garden in OneMillionGardens.ning.com as The Shire. I have Rivendell dreams on a Shire budget. Here is a path that we take from the back of the house down to the garden. Not everyone has a canopy of pine needles and leafy hardwood saplings to wander through before reaching their garden and I'm very grateful for it. It smells wonderful when the temperature rises and the sap in the pines gets very aromatic.

Even though I started my tomatoes and peppers in egg cartons like last year something like this was what I really wanted and it turns out needed. I picked up this little domed starter and wished I had gotten it from the beginning. It came from a cool little shop in the dairy district of Charlottesville, VA. The place is called Fifth Season and it's a wonderful little oasis of all things hydroponic, organic, and even home brewing! The staff was very friendly and the place had all kinds of wonderful things to make the gardener drool. (Check out their website: http://www.fifthseasongardening.com/) I had already put some of my peppers into larger peat pots when I picked this little starter dome up but I instantly saw improvement once the plants were placed inside. My peppers had taken FOREVER to start and most of them didn't start at all. This was most likely due to cool conditions. I know that a grow (heated) mat would solve my problems but I'm trying to steer clear of gardening methods that make me dependent on the grid. I found with other paid for starter boxes that once the plants began to grow there was no room for the sprouts to go up without hitting the top of the plastic and starting to rot. Most kits have a clear plastic top that is about 2 to 3 inches high. The nice thing about this kit is that the top is more like 6 or so inches high and you can also control the humidity with two little sliding vents. This allows you to grow out the sprouts high enough for hardening off and even starting that process by messing with the vents.

Here my little pepper sprouts are happy under the jungle like conditions of the dome. I'm glad I purchased this. I think the peppers are too!

Here's a shot of "The Shire Garden" from the bottom of the path behind the house. I should have shot some before pictures but if ifs and buts were cherries and nuts then everyday would be Christmas. Those large mounds are going to be used for the three sisters method. Those represent one plot and my intentions were for three plots but since this entire garden was dug with the shovel my husband and I wore out before the intents were met. I still think we'll have a lovely garden and this was double the ground covered from last year.

Now hind site is 20/20 and I learned last year that the puny cages that I bought for the tomatoes just weren't cutting it. My sprouts turned into monsters that fell over at every turn. This year we sunk fence posts into the ground and ran a series of wires around the whole to act as a support. I looked longingly at some of the pretty tomato staking methods that were sturdy and decorative but at $50.00 a pop that just wasn't going to make it in the Shire budget. I found some rusty discount fence posts at the Home Depot for $3.98 and they should do just fine. Who's going to see the rust once they are laden with big fat tomatoes? I also laid down some cypress mulch. Last year we spent forever trying to make sure the tomatoes had enough water. I'm going to try mulch to see if it retains more water. AquaCones also made it into the budget though I've never used them before. I have to attach 2 liter soda bottles to the ends and that's going to look REAL attractive but at least the soda bottle gets repurposed.
Here's a shot of the first crop I put down. The shallots were planted in April and have a very cool healthy green glow dusting them. I just finished potting the volunteer mini pumpkins that were invading the bed yesterday. I was taking these pictures and took a closer look. I thought to myself "are those what I think they are?" I pinched up a small sprout that was congregating near a clump of shallots and smelled it. Yep, tomatoes. A ton of volunteer tomatoes has sprouted up around my shallots. I know what that means. I'm sure the compost that I put down with the shallots contained some unwanted tomato seeds. I guess I'll let those go for a little while longer and then pull them out too. I have plenty of friends that would like free tomato plants.

Last year my sister gave me some wonderful strawberry plants that had a myriad of babies. I carefully pinned and potted up all the babies and meant to establish a permanent bed for them but alas like all intentions these days they got away from me. They were happy to spill out of their pots and nestled down in the driveway. Since they seem so happy and are going to fruit I'll just let them be until those plants have babies. They are near the compost tumbler so are probably enjoying some of the tea that runs out from it occasionally. I suppose we'll see how many strawberries I get after the birds and chipmunks take their share...

Unhatched Eggs

I got a wild hair last week and decided that I couldn't deal with our junky porches any longer. It was really starting to look like a dump! There are still some items to resolve but for the most part things that continued to hang out on our porch that were not used for at least a year or two headed for the dump or the give away. There is still an old ferret cage (*sniff* I have a hard time letting that memory go) on the porch that I think I'll be able to use as a strawberry house to keep the squirrels and birds off my strawberries.
There is a Radio Flyer wagon that I had piled gardening things in (old pots, a bag of gravel, trowels, and gloves) that had sat stationary for the past two years. It was a wonderful gift from an old boss of mine who unknowingly enabled my hoarding habit. I cleared out and stored the pots and we used the gravel to fill in the continuing ruts that pop up in the driveway. In cleaning out, I found a treasure I had forgotten about. In every crevice of daylight a Jenny Wren had stuffed leaves, animal hair, MY hair, wrappers, paper, and other flotsam. I remember this poor little wren as we saw her busying herself with her partner trying to find somewhere on or near our porch to build a nest. They initially tried several times to build a nest in the joists of our porch roof but decided this was not right for some reason or another. I worked the Schyuler Farmer's Market once last year and decided to check the fluids of my truck upon returning simply because it's an old truck and needs monitoring. To my dismay, I found a nest with 5 eggs stuck in the radiator. There's no way the eggs didn't get cooked and I felt bad because I couldn't figure out why the bird was squawking at me from the nearby dogwood that morning. She gave me an ear full upon return too. A few days later we saw her hopping in and out of my Radio Flyer but the bad thing was so did the cat. I unearthed two nests last weekend with 5 eggs in each and I just know they were hers. Poor little unhatched eggs. They were so speckled and perfect I didn't have the heart to throw them out. I kept them. After all, they had been through 3 snows and are probably pretty well petrified.

This spring I will make things right. I have already hung one small bird house and it has a 1" wide hole but I don't think she'll fit in there. I'll get another bird house for her. Poor thing laid 15 eggs with no results. Maybe we'll have some baby Jenny Wrens this year.

Very often I will document something in my journal or with my camera and come back to it later. VERY often. Life is just busy that way. After all, this is the Journey to Middle Earth. Haven't gotten there yet but I plod along just like this turtle here. I shot pictures of her/him last fall. I had gone out to jog and there is was trucking up the driveway towards the house. Its shell was a brilliant paintbox of yellow, gold, brown, and black. I was take though by its beautiful deep and bright ruby eyes. It considered me for a while wondering what I was up to but was content to be photographed, picked up, and turned over.

I spy with my little ruby eye!

Breakfast Guest

So, you say you're thinking about getting chickens, eh? I had just gone upstairs with my tea this morning when my husband whispers loudly downstairs "psst! Where's the camera?" This fellow was sitting just at the bottom of the porch stairs happily munching away on something. It just so happens that I had cooked a turkey on Sunday and rendered the carcass down for stock. Pat threw it out in the woods yesterday and this is probably the result. He was happily snacking and looks clean and healthy so we didn't think he was near the house on account of rabies. He was probably picking his teeth with turkey ribs when Pat saw him. We had to tip toe around the kitchen so as not to scare him off. He's got nice black socks and ears and his coat is nice and orange. I don't see any ribs either so I know he's been pigging out on not just turkey carcasses. I wonder if this is the same guy that came by a few years ago in the summer. He snooped around the front porch and then around the tree line in the driveway. We don't mind him and he hasn't caused any trouble yet.


"...and thank you for the turkey carcass...amen."

Here I caught him with a mouthful of turkey. It looks like he's snarling but I snapped the photo right when he was chomping down on turkey skin.

He's got the prettiest tail!

Fresh OJ!

So, my mom bought us a box of oranges over the Christmas holiday from the 4H in my community. Why she bought us an entire case of oranges I have no idea. Seems like I'm the only one that willingly eats fruits and vegetables in the house anyway but there were more than enough in that box to last us a good long time. Problem is that 1. Even though oranges do last a while from their natural citrus acid, the don't last INDEFINITELY and 2. as they DO age the fruit flies just LOVE it. Bleh! So, I finally got around to juicing these guys and even got to use the antique milk glass juicer that I purchased a few years ago. I love antiques that you can still use after many many years. I saw some old metal juicers at an antique store a few days back but seems like you can get more juice out of these and it stows better in the cabinet than another bulky contraption. Your hands will definitely be tired, however, but the juice is yummy!

A Snow Dusting

Our house looked like a gingerbread house this Christmas! Complete with icicles and everything! It has been at least 10 years or more since we've gotten more than a few inches of snow so no one complain that we never get a white Christmas anymore. Can you guess which window is mine? I had run some rubber based ink prints off the vandercook and they were STILL wet after a week. Garrett Queen wisely suggested that I set them in the sun to set up with UV light. I was leering of doing it at first because I thought it might fade out my colored paper but the color was fine and it worked great. Of course, I didn't want to miss this wonderful opportunity to take the camera for a spin in this weather. Plenty of beautiful shots for reference for more art!

This one is the most picturesque I think as I shot it in a way that the trees make an arch of snow that I am so fond of. I love trees arched over a pathway. Then again, I seem to be in love with the arch shape these days regardless.

I didn't know until I had to write an essay for an art class that bamboo is one of the three friends of winter in China. Actually, having written the essay there are really four friends. Bamboo and Pine are guaranteed their place in the category of the Three Friends of Winter but Narcissus and Plum have to duke it out for the spot and you never know which one will pop up there. I LOVE the color of spring green and to see a pleasant frond of bamboo swaying in the snow is magical.
And speaking of magical....

This image comes close to echoing my favorite part about a heavy snow. That first day after the heaviest of the snow had fallen the air was quiet and calm. Normally, (and disappointingly) I can hear a leaf blower somewhere, a semi barreling down the mountain, or traffic humming up and down the roads. That day there was nothing but the light ticking of ice crystals falling to the ground from the breeze. For once in a long time, you could stare down this road and actually have some hope of seeing an elf traveller and his steed bedecked in bells and gold trudging through the snow or perhaps watch the snow fall heavily to the ground from the pine trees as an ice dragon churns the air for a landing with his wings.
But I left out one sound that merrily makes its way through the quiet at the end of this road...

Our creek was gurgling and flowing over its icy path and it's banks were fat with frosty fluff. Perhaps I will see that elf traveller one day. We'll offer him some hot tea and listen to the story of his travels while is pony takes a rest.

Exhale

Has it really been since April last I wrote? Pity. But now comes a new chapter in my history that I hope opens up my horizons more and more. The time since April has been a bounty that until now has not been recorded and I hope to amend this! My time has been riddled with WAY too many things and that as we all know can have dire consequences but a true gardener knows that taking the time to thin and weed cannot only help the garden but also one's life as well.
Above is a photo of the mortgage lifter tomato flowers that my garden produced this spring. I didn't get them in the ground until mid June and they positively burst out of the ground and surged into the cages I had for them. I have to say that my garden in some respects surpassed all I had hoped for and I believe the land is fertile even though rocky. I had also employed the help of my worm compost and compost tumbler and am now a firm believer.

Here is a photo of some of my cherry bell radishes. Though I was excited about radishes and got quite a few, I don't think I'll be planting them again next year. I planted them too close together but still got some nice sized ones. They were really hot and I couldn't eat them all at once. The rest fell pray to slugs or didn't produce at all. My white icicle radishes either didn't get big or got ginormous and fibrous. The french breakfast radishes were nice but most of them grew into freakishly twisted knots.

My real pride and joy were my tomato plants. Here is an unripe shot of my mortgage lifter tomatoes. I was blown away at how massively big they got. They were rivaling the county fair sized fruits that my grandparents produced that I had not seen since I was a child! I was very proud of my tomatoes! Having not expected this success, I learned a few valuable lessons this year. I had purchased small cages that would've sufficed to hold up the small plants I had expected but not the weight of the monsters we produced. Thankfully, we have a stand of established bamboo and I kept having to reinforce the plants as they were toppled by their sheer weight and the winds that liked to play around the garden. At first I was swearing and cursing the deer because I thought they came in the middle of the night and trampled my tomato plants. I had gone down to water and most of them lay of the ground! I had just propped up two or three of them back into the ground when the wind blew and they slumped down again. I also noticed that there was not damage of trampled branches or nibbling so it wasn't the deer. (Though the bastards did get my lettuce!)

My amish paste tomatoes out produced my mortgage lifter tomatoes I'd wager. Even though the fruit was massive and plentiful, the paste tomatoes just kept coming, and coming, and coming, and coming!!! My sister and I were worn out this fall with canning but my husband was a bottomless pit when it came to homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese. Even now he asks if we can crack open the canned tomatoes for soup but I keep telling him that we'll need them in January or February when we need some cheerful tastiness from the garden!

These are the storm victims that I found on the ground when the storm initially knocked my plants to the ground. :-( But I put them on the blanket chest in front of the window to ripen and they came out just fine. I probably would have gotten a few more gallons of tomatoes this fall if the soggy weather hadn't come early. After a few days of sogginess the tomatoes that were still ripening began to rot. I went out to retrieve a particularly pretty mortgage lifter fruit that I had been waiting on only to find that it had split open with rot on the bottom and the ants had already moved in. I left it in the garden to feed the ants.

The other bounty in my garden was basil. I had grown two kinds and the variety in the picture is large leaf. As my tomatoes began to rot I decided that there was not much left to the basil but seed so I pulled up what represents 4 large plants and hung them upside down to dry in the wind. The other variety I had planted was genovese. At first, it was clear in their early maturing stage that the large leaf and genovese were different because the large leaf had broad leaves. Then, they both grew into a bush form and the large leafs leaves began to narrow as it bolted to seed. Pinch as I might, the large leaf was intent on bolting. The genovese took its time though and its leaves were as broad as the large leaf's. Granted, the large leaf was in more sun and the genovese was shaded by the bamboo. One plant on the end was really slow to bolt and it was from this plant that I tried to harvest the most seed so that I might achieve a slow bolting basil. Since the two have such similar properties, I'm going to sell or trade the large leaf seed and grow genovese exclusively for the moment.
I am excited to plan my garden for next year. Even though the garden was not as big as I had wanted it this year, it was very rewarding and still a lot of hard work! But next year I will have a few lessons under my belt and who knows what the future may blow in!

Toad Motel

I got home late from a hell day at my day job this past friday. It had been raining all day and when I went to go over the bridge in the driveway I realized at the last minute that the rock in the puddle near the bridge was not a rock. I hit the brakes and opened the door hoping not to see smeared toad. Stupid toad looked up and me and proceeded to try to hop under the car. Mind you it was night out and still raining. I reached down and grabbed him and we went to my house. I was lucky to nab him on the first try but then I realized that it was still rather cold outside and he was moving slow.
I found another use for a worm composter. It serves as a toad buffet in a snap! I made a little nest for toad in our small foot bath plastic tub and lots of dirt, leaves, and worms. It fit perfectly snug in an old paper grocery bag and there we left him for the night. I put the paper bag over the tub so the cats wouldn't get him and so he wouldn't do any midnight wandering. It must have been toad baby making season because about 4:00am the kitchen began to sound like a bizarro jiffy pop. I woke up to the sound of "Peep!Peep!"*POP*"Peep!Peep!*POP*POP* I went into the kitchen to see what the hell. He would sing a few peeps and then pop up to hit the top of the bag! He wanted out so I let him go.... but not before I had a photo shoot. Mwuhahahahaha!