It's time for peas!

Today I put in the first seeds of the year ... peas! I planted some last fall and they were so incredibly delicious that I've been champing at the bit to get them started this spring. I'll plant again on the weekends for the next few weeks in the hopes of getting a long harvest. I took some pictures but I've managed to lose the download cable for the camera, so they're trapped on the camera until my dear husband buys a card reader. Once he does I'll post pictures of before and after, as well as pictures of my little tire garden before and after. I gave it a spring cleaning and turned the soil so it's all ready for seeds or seedlings, in a month or so.

Also, we're going to try Square Foot Gardening this year, so I'll be posting about how that goes as well. I'm excited about my butterfly garden as well, since I should have three different colors of monarda this year as well as the new pink variegated butterfly bush that I put in at the end of the season last year.

Happy spring, everyone!

New Pictures taken 7/23/08

It's taken me weeks to get this post up, sorry about that! Sometimes real life doesn't allow for much online time, and dialup isn't really conducive to the uploading of photos. We're supposed to be getting cable modem soon, but I'm not sure when that will actually happen. Since Blogger isn't doing a stellar job of handling pictures, I've decided to upload the pictures to Flickr, since it does a much better job of organizing them and doesn't limit the display size. I'll still put a few pictures here, but to see all of them, just go to the Flickr link on the right.

On Saturday we planted the pea patch. I have a picture on the camera waiting to be downloaded, but of course I grabbed the wrong cable this morning. Here's the layout of the patch:



I got a little carried away when ordering seeds, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

In an effort to deter deer I strung up some pie plates around my little garden area (after they ravaged my sweet potatoes twice). If the tires they're planted in didn't look hick enough, the pie plates are the icing on the cake! *giggle*


Between the pie plates, some hair clippings from my little one, and an unmentionable deterrent method I read about online, the deer seem to have lost interest.

Hummingbird Moth

The day that I took pictures of the butterfly bushes I saw the strangest thing... it was about the size of a hummingbird but it was striped almost like a bee and had antenna. I think it was a Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth. I could hear it's little wings humming just like a hummingbird! Sadly I didn't get the camera up in time to snap a picture, but it was one of those moments that stopped me in my tracks and I just stood there, staring.

On another note, the deer discovered my sweet potatoes last Friday night and mowed most of the greens off one of the tires and found the other one the following night. I don't think they're dead, just pretty defoliated, and after research online the quickest solution I could come up with was stringing baling twine and hanging pie plates over them. It looks... ummm... well... very rural... but so far it's working. *giggle* Next year my husband says he's going to help me to put in a more formal garden space including some kind of fencing, although I'm not interested in traditional row gardening. I'm sure that'll be a great research project for the cold winter months.

The Pea Seeds Arrived Today!

At the beginning of the week I placed an order with the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and it arrived today! When I told my son he got all excited. It's contagious, because when I pulled that package out of the mailbox I was giddy, and I refuse to feel silly about it. I wonder if the deer will allow any of the plants to get to the point of producing, since the little buggers came in and ate the greens off the tops of some of my sweet potatoes, but I've taken evasive action.

Anyway, after reading through the descriptions on the Southern Exposure website I made the following selections:

• English Peas - Little Marvel and Wando
• Snow Peas - Mammoth Melting Sugar
• Southern Peas - Calico Crowder (Pole Cat), Big Red Ripper (Mandy), Pinkeye Purple Hull, and Peking Black

My son is really excited about the Pinkeye Purple Hulls because the picture on the website showed purple seed pods, which he can't want to see! My order was $20.77, so we're going to have to get a lot of peas to make up the cost, but that's not really why I'm doing it so I'm not worried about it. I'm thinking that I might offer a few of each kind to the ladies at the farmer's market, since I love to feed my family the fresh, delicious foods that they grow and over the four years I've been going to that little farmer's market I've gotten to know a couple of the ladies by name.

The Butterfly Bushes (of which there are five)

Here are the pictures of the individual butterfly bushes, starting on the north end.





On February 2, 2007 I had to euthanize my Saddlebred gelding Fantasy, whom I'd had for 23 years. I didn't do anything over him for months because I couldn't bear to go out there, but then I found this butterfly bush at the farmer's market and decided it was perfect for him. It was only about knee high when I bought it. It's so beautiful now! I feel that it honors him perfectly.





This is the biggest butterfly bush, it takes off like crazy every year. It's planted over Denny, the little black miniature horse we lost three years ago.





This one is overshadowed by the white one... I may move it at some point, since it hasn't grown much in the three years it's been there.



This was the first one I planted, it's over Li'l Bit of Sass, a sweet and beautiful miniature horse who was the first we lost. Like the white one, it's huge and towers over me. It's flowers are lavender and usually copious, although for some reason this year all but the white one seem to be blossoming sporadically instead of bursting into a riot of color like in past years.





I planted this one three years ago and it hasn't grown much. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the kind that it is? I think it's called a Dark Knight Butterfly Bush, but I'm not positive.

Every year I try to improve the butterfly garden somehow. This year it was the monarda, hopefully next year I'll add a new variety of butterfly bush. I can't quite describe how happy it makes me to pull in the driveway and look over at the beautiful flowering plants and bushes.