an idea takes root

There are still a few vases around my house, surrounded by limp pink petals.  But I've got to face the facts:  the 2-week reign of my favorite flower, the peony, is over for another year.

But what a two weeks!  I don't know how anyone can be unimpressed by the sheer exuberance of the peony.

The petals are made of satin...it's a little-known fact.

The fragrance is strong in the varieties that I grow.  I like nothing better than to place my nose directly in the soft centers and inhale.

You've got to watch out for little creatures, though, like ants (who love peonies as much as I do!) and crab spiders.

Don't be afraid of them, though.  Just pluck its peony from the vase and shake it out over a bush outside.  Crab spiders are great for the garden and eat many pesky insects!

As cut flowers, peonies brighten any table.

Growing outside, they're hard to beat for beauty.  They unfurl slowly...

...and oh!

As the peonies die back, and the columbine go to seed...

...other things are just beginning to come to life.

My dahlias are blooming nicely.

My yarrow, too, is starting to open up in various patches around the yard.  I have white, yellow, and red varieties.

I have a row of absolutely gorgeous larkspur blooming...and three more of them that will be up in a few weeks! 

It looks a bit bare right now, but I have late-blooming yellow lilies that will be up soon, and sprawling red and orange nasturtiums all around the base of the bird bath, and spiky violet mallow that will pick up the purple color after the larkspur die down.  Around the lilies I have several snapdragon plants that will bloom within a month.  My purple clematis is blooming nicely (but not very visibly!) against the fence.

Further down the row, I have more yellow and purple, one of my favorite color combinations. 

I have a big silvery Russian Sage plant and then a big row of red yarrow.  White sweet peas will soon be vining up behind the yarrow, and my purple salvia will bloom all summer.  A yellow four-o'clock blooms in the corner, and I've got old-fashioned zinnias planted all around it.  The four-o'clock will die back soon, and the zinnias will pick up the slack.

I've got two types of mint growing, two varieties of thyme, dill, basil, two types of sage, parsley, radishes, lettuce, and oh, the tomatoes!

I had 100% germination from a .20 pack of cherry tomatoes.  This was 2 weeks ago, and they've all grown so much that they're ready to go in the ground!

I started some chives from a package of three year old seed.  Germination!

And at last...after a two-year wait...they're back.

I will never, ever prune you again, my dear! 

 And best of all, the clearanced hydrangea start that I bought and planted eight years ago is going to bloom this year.  I love the unique marbled leaves...and the blossoms are white!  Score!!

For the first time, something that I germinated from seed in our basement grow lab has bloomed.  A moss rose. 

I had a Tom Hanks moment, standing in front of it, just bursting with pride (click link below).

I did it!

Yes, it was exactly like that!  I just said moss rose instead of fire.  :)

I brought home another carload of plants from our local Master Gardener's sale.  At $2 and $3 each, I got a lot for the $47 that I spent.

 And I discovered another trick this week that put me into an absolute frenzy. 

Take a plant...any plant!  A tree, a shrub, an annual, a perennial, whatever.  Cut a green piece of  stem, removing all but the top 2 leaves.

Dip the bottom inch (up past the bottom leaf nodes) into water and then into the rooting hormone. Then place it into a soil-less mixture (I used half perlite and half spaghum moss, dampened)...

Cut some sticks or bamboo stakes and put one in each corner of your container.

Then, wrap each one in a plastic bag and set in bright shade.

After a few days, you'll see this:

Leave it alone for 4 - 6 weeks, just rewetting the soil when it gets a little dry.  Then remove the plastic and give your plants a tug.  If you feel some resistance, you've got roots.  Pull up the plant and re-pot.  You've got a whole new plant for free! 

I used some plastic cups to make lots of mini greenhouses.  They're in a nice shady spot, because sun would burn the cuttings. 

I'm rooting 5 each of lilacs, white hydrangeas, pink hydrangeas, lavender, phlox, creeping jenny, two types of sedum, and a mystery vining plant that I'm quite fond of.  Sixty to seventy-five new plants, just growing nicely 'under glass', no trouble at all.  And I'm not done yet!  These can grow in their little pots all summer and overwinter in a cold frame that Todd will build in the yard.  A cold frame is simply a wooden box with a protected bottom (gravel, etc.) and a glass or plastic-framed top that closes down over the box.  Easy and cheap to build!  Then they'll be ready to go in the ground in the spring, or live on as container plants on the patio.  The sky's the limit with this sort of propagation.  All it takes is a little patience...and if you're short on that, at least this will teach you a lesson or two!  I'll report back in a little over a month with my results.

I just can't apologize for the breathless tone of this blog post.  I'm absolutely filled with joy when I have these little garden experiments.  Gardening can be quite a ride!  Just hold on tight!  ;) 

I hope you try some new things in your garden this week, too.  Enjoy!

Farm Charm

Last week, on a beautiful sunny day, we drove out into the country.

 

Fields of wild goldenrod flashed by as we neared our destination:  Stream Cliff Farm.

Stream Cliff Farm is Indiana's oldest herb farm, a beautiful old homestead surrounded by gardens.  You can purchase flowers, herbs, and vegetables, browse the garden notions shop, or have a nibble at the small tea room.  Classes are taught at Stream Cliff Farm, everything from cooking with herbs to watercolor painting to making a proper container garden.

They have a lot of practice.  Charming containers were everywhere, full of all sorts of nodding flowers.

Ahhh...I love dahlias.

Window boxes of all sorts of greenery...

...and flowers.

There were winding paths through the gardens.

I got a lot of ideas for my future garden.  I love the restful, overgrown green growth, punctuated by bright flowers.

Who needs a lawn?

Hostas are great for shade areas.  They come in every shade of green and even spike up flowers at certain times of the year.

In a small pond bordering one of the paths, little frogs sang.  Lots of flowers grew in the boggy soil.  These yellow flag irises are great for ponds.  They grow right in the water!

Birds flitted above us, unseen.  These little birdhouses were so charming and clearly provided a nice home!

Next to the old homestead was an open square full of flowers for sale.  While Todd took a little break...

...I enjoyed the view!  I liked looking at the flowers, too.  :) 

Tall alliums, which bloom in both the spring and the fall...

Tables of herbs, with a few dahlias tucked in...

Clematis vines climbed on trellises everywhere! 

Green hydrangeas...one of my favorites.

Lots of pretty cottage garden flowers like foxgloves, too.

Baskets sat on low stone walls.  It was all so beautiful.

We saw animals, too.  Goats, and chickens, and roosters!

We wandered through the various greenhouses.

I didn't mean to buy anything, but I just couldn't resist!

I bought lemon verbena, lady's mantle, nicotiana, and lupine. 

After shopping, we ate at the tiny tea room next to the greenhouses.  Many of the dishes were made with fruits and vegetables grown on the farm.  I had a lemon square with lavender buds in the pastry dough.  Todd had a thick slab of hummingbird cake with an edible flower embellishment.

It was just perfect.

Speaking of perfect, I stumbled across a recipe recently that is pretty close to it!  I love pancakes, but don't usually take the time to make them.  I wouldn't want to buy a store mix, so I usually just go without pancakes.  But I found a great recipe that allows you to pre-mix and freeze the bulk of your pancake ingredients, and just add a little milk and yogurt when you're ready to eat them.  Suffice it to say, I've had pancakes three nights this week!

Healthy Pancakes
Modified from Eggs on Sunday
Makes 80 small-ish pancakes

Ingredients
4 cups of whole wheat flour
1 cup of white flour
3 1/2 cups of old-fashioned oatmeal
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 cup vegetable oil

Directions
Combine your dry ingredients in a stand mixer and gradually pour in the honey and oil while the mixer is running.  When it's fully incorporated, you can seal it up and put it in your freezer.

To make 8 medium-sized pancakes:
1 cup of pancake mix
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 egg

Mix everything up and cook on your griddle!  I frequently halve this recipe to make 4 small pancakes by mixing up 1/2 cup of pancake mix, 1/4 cup of milk, 1/4 cup of yogurt, and no egg.  The pancakes are so flavorful and full of healthy grains.  No preservatives here!

With this recipe, you're just 5 minutes away from healthy pancakes.  I really hope you try this recipe soon!

Have a great week!

a fish out of water

I've been feverishly working in the yard this spring.  It's such a comforting and familiar place, but not without surprises.  The grackles that nest in our big pine tree are now used to me and come quite close.

I stumbled upon this mourning dove last week, nesting in pine needle mulch.  She was so still that I thought she might be injured, but she flew off when I reached out to touch her.

The usual squirrels are hanging around.  They've decimated my sunflower bed, one sunflower at a time, so we are currently not on speaking terms.

There's a young french bulldog who lives across the street.  Many times, when I go through our gate to turn on the hose, I can see his little black and white face pop up in the screen door.  He watches me carefully for as long as he's able to stand, and then his face disappears.  It's utterly charming.

Of course, Bosewichte insists on being let out every single day now, so he can sleep under a lilac bush instead of on our couch.  What a life!  :) 

Pardon the pun, but it hasn't been all roses in the garden.  I spent a day weeding, plowing, and prepping two long beds by our walkway, and then carefully sowing seeds in them.  That night, we received a torrential downpour.  My careful beds looked like this:

When you have puddles like this, your seeds are mixed up in them and will either be washed away or settled into clumps where the water drains.  I had to go back the next day and re-seed both beds.  Thankfully, the seedlings are coming up nicely now.

The beautiful ranuculus that I bought last week...

...are dying off one by one, too.  I don't know if it's been too hot, or they were doomed when I bought them, or I've been overwatering them, but I'm going to shear off their tops and hope they bounce back.

For the most part, though, I'm really pleased with how things are going in the garden!

This past week I was at a garden center, and of course I made a beeline to the clearance section.  There you will find many plants that seem beyond hope:  yellow leaves, completely limp and wilted flowers, desert-dry soil.  Have no fear!  Most of the time, these plants can be brought back to life with very little work.

I bought a few containers of pansies for .50 each.  Yellow leaves...

...wilted flowers.

I left them in their containers overnight, but gave them a good drenching.  I deadheaded a few of the spent flowers, too.  By the next morning, they'd already started to perk up.

I checked the plug bottoms and saw that they were hopelessly rootbound. 

When a plant looks like this, you have to break open the bottoms...

...so the roots will grow down, like they're supposed to.  I broke open their bottoms and lined the outside ring of a hanging basket with purple flowers.

The inside, with white.  I deadheaded even more and gave it a good watering.  In a week or so, this will be absolutely covered in blooms.  Cost?  $1!

I also bought a clematis vine.  I've tried them many times but always killed them, mainly because I was in such a hurry for nice flowers that I didn't read the instructions on what they needed.  I did this time, though.

Of course, dig a hole.

The crown of the clematis needs to be 2 inches beneath the soil line, so put your still-potted plant in the hole to see if you've reached that level.

Put some potting soil in the bottom of the hole and fill it in, sans pot.  Twine your clematis vines around a support to give it a good start.

They like full sun but "cool feet", so it's best to put shallow-rooted plants over its base, like hostas or groundcover.  Or, just mulch heavily.

Hope it blooms soon!

A friend of mine recently had a baby, and Martha Stewart conveniently had a spread of great kids' cakes that were supposed to be easy for home cooks to make.  Here's the cake I chose:

It sounds simple.  You bake two sheet cakes and spread your fish part-templates out over the top, and use a knife to saw off fins, eyes, etc.  The templates are available for free on Martha Stewart's website.  I was skeptical, but decided to give it a go.

I baked my cakes and laid out the templates...

It was surprisingly easy to saw out the parts and I was feeling like a decorating superstar when I had all the pieces cut out and the fish assembled, pre-icing.

The icing part is where I, well, felt like a fish out of water.  You'll notice that the edges of the fish body, eyes, and fins are cut cake...exposed crumb.  What happens when you try to ice exposed cake?  The icing sticks to your knife and tears away chunks of crumbs.  I thought about freezing the cake first, but it was so big.  There's no way it would fit in the freezer.

I finally managed to get the whole thing iced.

The edges looked chewed and the color was suspiciously bright, but there was nothing I could do.  By this point, I was committed to this fish.  I knew I had to "fin"ish it (okay, no more fish puns!).

By some miracle I had the correct icing tip to make the scales, but the color was off and the scales themselves were droopy and uneven.  I'll make the excuse that I'd never even seen this tip before that day.  Here's my fish:

Here's Martha's fish again:

Sob!  How does she do it?  How can we mere mortals compete?

Anyway, the cake was delicious (it was my no-fail white cake) and the recipient was happy.  All in a day's work!

I hope you try something new in the kitchen soon.   Have a great week!