Little signs of life

Detroit Red Beets, planted a little too close, so I will have an excuse to take thinnings for salads and roasted baby beets.

Picasso Shallots. Next year I will be smarter and divide the bulbs before planting them. I just put them in the ground as is, as though i was planting tulips. Learning, learning, learning...

A Mammoth Grey sunflower seedling and an Alderman shell pea. As the sunflowers grow to about 12' (TWELVE FEET!)tall, they will support the pea vines. They are planted all along our front deck to provide shade from the afternoon sun. Really I just wanted to plant giant flowers to amaze Miss Critterpants. The peas and the shade are happy coincidences.

Finally!

My Guy is adding a second level to the "Fortress"

Albino toad that blended very well into all the bluets in the yard

as of yet unnamed moth. If any of you know, I would love to hear. I've been calling them "Mint chocolate chip Moths" which is probably not it. (Update: it's a Comstock's Sallow moth. Thank you What's That Bug!)

bluets and an orchard bee

angry moth.

We finally have internet again after a long and horrible period that is culminating in finding a new provider.

Here are a few pictures taken in the last few weeks, plus two new backdated posts about spring and travel.

Black Flies

Black Flies are evil. That is all. Thank you.

In the dirt

I am currently unable to download pictures, so we must make do with words.

Spring has sprung and we have been outside as much as possible.

This past Friday was the Fedco Tree sale and I had ordered three things:

Chesnut Apple: apples the size of golfballs but sweet and delicious

Ashmead's Kernel: a multi-purpose apple for eating, keeping, and especially nice single varital hard cider. the apple are tart and complex in flavor but mellow in storage to be extra delicous in December. Disease resistant

Bluebell Grape: easy to grow and great for jelly and juice (i love love love grape juice)

We got to the sale and the Ashmead apple and the grape were both out of stock, so I had to go with my second choices for both. Esopus Spitzenburg apple, which is a delicious apple that Thomas Jefferson loved! it is also a good keeper and useful for hard cider, but is less hardy.

Valiant grape replaced the Bluebell. it is a purple grape good for juice and jelly, but can be suceptable to powdery mildew and black rot. However, the leaves can be used for dolmas, which is a big bonus in my mind.

Along with the fruit trees, I bought three pounds of Picasso shallots. They're pink tinged and mild. Fresh in salads or cooked into anything, or in our house, almost everything.

Fedco has a really interesting selection of books and it's always tempting to buy all of them, but I managed to show restraint and get only "The Backyard Orchardist" by Stella Otto.

Now off to the out-of-doors to plant the grape and feed the black flies!

Technical Difficulties

Our satellite internet is currently being irritated by the weather. Better posts soon!

Tastes like Spring

Fiddlehead ferns are delicious. This year I am eating as many as I can, freezing a couple pounds and trying my hand at pickling a few. The pickles are experimental and potentially terrible. I am treating them like their spring cousin, asparagus. Aren't they the most beautiful green things? Late night pickling can get a little surreal.

(Three weeks later, the pickles are delicious and very sour as opposed to salty. I have made a second batch for my friend's wedding)

The County (back to our regularly scheduled program)

Western Maine has a lot of agriculture, but Aroostook, Maine's Northernmost county, is full of farms and grows the best potatoes ever. I like traveling up there. The fields open up the horizon and you can see for miles. The snow capped mountain in the distance is Mt. Katahdin, the tallest mountain in Maine. It is also where the Appalachian Trail begins. Or where it ends, if you are coming up from Georgia.

travel, again

Just got back from a wonderful time at My Guy's Parent's house in The County. Tired.

around the house

busy day

Today i cleared brush along our property line. it's amazing how much scruffy stuff crops up in one year. i took out the evergreens and left a few well-placed paper birch and sugar maples. There was even a beech hiding in there! Ideally, there will be a row of deciduous trees to shade the house in summer and let in the sun during the winter.

Miss Critterpants painted her very own garden box.

My Guy went to Town today to pick up the last load of top soil and soil amendments. I hope that putting effort and a little bit of money into the dirt gives the garden a good start. happy fertile soil means happier plants with fewer problems, right? Here's to hoping!

so far we have put down 2.5 cubic yards of top soil plus green sand, bone meal, peat moss, lots and lots of manure and this crazy Maine compost made of lobster shells and aspen bark.

it looks like we will need about another yard of top soil and i would like to add some more peat to the mix.