Crabapple Blossoms and Chicks
Behind me the roosters are crowing good morning and:
‘I hear the birds singing out to the sunrise.
I see the stars fading away in the morning light.
Golden sun shines on down through the treetops,
Where there is a summer breeze that whispers so soft.’
Slow start to the week but then everything really started to pick up.
I’m writing this Friday because Monday through Thursday just didn’t happen. Life some weeks.
But even with the heat and humidity we got so much done.
We have all of the tomatoes hardened off and outside full time.
To start with I made Josh a little mini greenhouse with some wood frames and plastic we had on hand.
The tomatoes were quite happy in there for about a week and then Tuesday we started planting them out and putting up the cattle panel trellises.
Once they were out the peppers went in, along with the Mexican Sour Gherkins and eggplants.
The only things left in the house are basil and the Brazilian Starfish peppers.
I planted Old Spice Mix sweet peas along the trellis on the East entrance and made a little branch and grapevine trellis for the North Side. My sister gave me some April in Paris sweet peas that I planted there. I’m really looking forward to nosegays of sweet smelling, sweet peas all summer long.
The crabapple has blossomed in all of her dark pink glory and is smelling absolutely fantastic.
I finally got the Touchstone Gold and Detroit Dark Red beets in the ground.
My sister also gave me some Early Wonder Tall Tops beets to try that are mainly for eating the greens. I planted them in a row in front of the Dragon Tongue Bush beans. They were planted as well as the Orca and Tongue of Fire bush beans, as per the apples blossoming.
Next planting directly into the Potager will be when the apple blossoms fall.
Elsewhere in the yard I’ve started preparing a cut flower garden. My sister made one last year and had all sorts of beautiful flowers in her house and to share all summer long.
I was watching an episode of Gardener’s World and Monty Don was talking about how sometimes to cut a flower out of your border would be to ruin the perfectly planted balance you were trying so hard to achieve. I find that with the tulips in the spring. I end up bringing so many inside that there aren’t any really left in the garden.
Whereas, if you have a designated cut flower garden, your borders get to stay beautiful and full of flowers and you get to have a house full of flowers too. Plus flowers to share.
The planting is along the East fence. I had intended some sort of garden there and last year I put down a path of mulch and made up some little frame beds for structure. Then the chickens got in there early this spring when I was feeling bad for them not having enough space and grass to eat. You know chickens and mulch. No?
Catastrophe!
A chicken likes to scratch. End of story.
You cannon train them like a cat not to scratch ‘here’.
You cannot entice them with an entire 150 square feet of beautiful dirt where the potatoes were going to be planted later. Even when you turn over dirt to show them there are just as many lovely worms under the dirt here as under that mulch I don’t want you to dig up.
Suffice it to say there was mulch where I didn’t want it and not where I did and the grass and dandelions started to grow through the scant patches and it looked quite scraggy.
So the fencing was changed up and the chickens excluded while I conducted extensive repairs for some kind of simulacrum to what I had before.
I already had raspberries from my Mummy along part of the fence and they were coming back nicely. Most of the strawberries that I had planted in one of the frames were scratched out so I placed the rest along the fenceline. There’s also a volunteer wild grapevine that I’m leaving for the birds and wildgrape jelly.
From the shed part-way North Sweet Annie and Verbascum Sixteen Candles are leap-frogged along with Rose Campion and Blue Sage in front of them. This will be a perrenialish part of the cutting garden.
Then in front of the raspberries I planted shorter options like Marigolds for transplant into the Potager later, Crego Aster Mix from the seed swap and Dwarf Tricolor Morning Glories that I thought were full size when I bought them… they were not, but they’ll work there perfectly.
In the back corner I planted my Hopi Blackdye Sunflowers and Hopi Red Dye Amaranth from the seed swap. I’m really looking forward to them coming up. I’m not sure if I’ll have much to dye with, but I should have seeds at least to plant enough for next year.
I planted 3 chokecherry trees along the North fence in the Hedgerow planting. The heat may have stunted them. I only transplanted them because I thought it was going to rain and then they kept saying tomorrow, tomorrow. I’ve doused them well with water so hopefully they survive.
I also finished edging the front garden which was quite grassy.
It doesn’t look like my native grass seeds have taken in the Tallgrass Prairie. I thought they’d give the lawn grass a run for their money but apparently they take a bit to get established and can get easily choked by their neighbours when small.
I do have some plugs of the little bluestem coming along slowly. I think I’ll get more seed this summer and start them inside and let them get bigger before I try sowing any more natives in the Prairie section. That way they should have a better chance of surviving.
I have plenty of Butterflyweed and Lance-leaved Coreopsis that germinated so I can spread them about.
Last but not least we have 4 week old chicks running around with the Bronze Lion and then the Copper Lion had at least 2 hatched out yesterday and Cocoa had 2 that hatched as well. The first lion had 2 Orpington eggs under her and the chicks are yellow, but they’re adult feathers are coming in with the most lovely pale edging on one and almost coppery edging on the other. I’m excited to see them when they’ve fully feathered. The other 2 look like a Maran and another Cocoa (she looks like a Black Copper Maran but with dark chocolate instead of all black feathers on her back and wings), but we’ll see how they feather out.
The Copper Lion had a Maran and a green egg hatched out and Cocoa had a Maran and an Orpington.
Cocoa, with an Oprington egg shell in front of her, and the Copper Lion with 2 chicks peeking out, looking very much like little round penguins.
Because Little Red, our Rooster, is an Olive egger (Ameraucana hen and Black Copper Maran roo) all the chicks should lay shades of green eggs.
I’m hoping for more eggs like Tosca lays, she has the most beautiful slatey green/blue egg. Our other green layer lays a mossy green egg with brown speckles.
I’m wondering how the Orpington bloom of white speckles will translate with a green egg.
So much to look forward to!
