It Takes a Bee to See a Flower
Sometimes you can't see what's right in front of you until someone else sees it first. I'm not sure I would have noticed these amazing spiky purple globes if they hadn't been swarming with bees. I noticed the heavy bee activity and then saw these incredible perennial flowers whose name I don't yet know. This is my friend Lisa E's garden and she's going to search for the tag and tell me who this enchantress is.
I am going to have to plant enough of them to be able to pick some for arrangements yet still leave plenty for the fauna of the garden to sip at. How I want my garden to shape up is beginning to be clear. It takes time in a new garden to learn how it should unfold. You can't force ideas onto a space, you have to try out ideas based on what you have. Garden spaces, the light they get, the soil they already have, their orientation to the house, and what you need from them will ultimately reveal what your options are.
This is another flower that has grabbed my attention in Lisa's garden. She told me what it is and I will need to look it up. It cast a spell over me and now I can't imagine having a garden without it. I must find some to add to mine.
This is Lisa's vegetable garden. She has the magic touch. Everything she plants here becomes lush and fruitful. She doesn't know if she agrees with me because she has in her mind the things she's tried to grow that haven't done as well as hoped. All gardeners have those things in their heads but what I see is a dense planting of beets and carrots that, while they could have used a thinning, are bulbing up very well and I can attest that they taste superb.
She made a dinner whose produce came almost entirely from her own garden. That is such a wonderful achievement. She made a salad of greens with beets (and pine nuts and feta), polenta with sauteed beet greens, and a spicy zucchini soup. My favorite was the beet salad but the polenta was amazing too because beet greens are so tender and melt in your mouth.
These are her girls. I spent yesterday planning my garden spaces. I want to figure out what I'm going to do with some of them now. I want to get my winter garden planted. I missed a lot of summer planting because of our move and then my trip to Scotland.
I saw that one of my local nurseries had a couple of the fruit trees I want to get and I would love to get them settled in now instead of waiting until next winter. So I might do that. Before planting trees you really need to have a solid idea of how all your garden spaces will work together and where the light is coming from. I think I've got that down now.
Today I have to work on my canning talk but this week is largely free for garden work. I hope I can muster up the physical energy it will take to do it and I also hope it isn't hot as hades. I don't have a lot of money to work with but as I mentioned yesterday I already have a lot of dirt, some wood, and lots of seeds. That's quite a bit to work with!
What is everyone else doing in their gardens right now? Is anyone else planning a winter garden?
I saw that one of my local nurseries had a couple of the fruit trees I want to get and I would love to get them settled in now instead of waiting until next winter. So I might do that. Before planting trees you really need to have a solid idea of how all your garden spaces will work together and where the light is coming from. I think I've got that down now.
Today I have to work on my canning talk but this week is largely free for garden work. I hope I can muster up the physical energy it will take to do it and I also hope it isn't hot as hades. I don't have a lot of money to work with but as I mentioned yesterday I already have a lot of dirt, some wood, and lots of seeds. That's quite a bit to work with!
What is everyone else doing in their gardens right now? Is anyone else planning a winter garden?
