Fireflower

My mom started this gas plant (Dictamnus albus 'Rubra') from seed. It took years to bloom. But when it did, it was stunning. Handsome, really. Dark leaves, robust flower stalks that do not topple. And... it does a party trick!

The stems of gas plant are sticky with the oil it emits. After you light it and you're just sitting in your chair sipping your drink, a smell creeps up in ribbons: citrus and ozone. Dark magic. I do not know if this plant is edible to deer, but I suspect it is not. On close inspection, the plant in Mom's garden is almost pristine - no insect-nibbled leaves, which is pretty miraculous for any plant at all. I love it.

Three Flowers

These three flowers are all I can muster tonight, and really I didn't have much to do with them. The allium in the front is a wild thing that grew in Nellie's garden, before we ever came here. The zinnia in the middle is maybe 'Queen Red Lime', and the echinacea in the back is one of those that's been The Next Best Thing for five years, but only ever lives up to my expectations for two weeks in June.

The Garden at Hillside Farms

Once a week, Matt delivers bread to the store at Hillside Farms. I have written before about the farm's exceptional heavy cream. Today I shall write about their exceptional garden.

There is something about this garden that lifts my heart when I walk into it. For me, it is a fresh perspective - I would not choose the colors or combinations here, but I am delighted when I see them. They make me bounce.

Part of it is the annuals, which I covet. Interesting and unusual annual starts are not available to buy in this area, so I start my own for my tiny garden... But most of my time is spent in the gardens of my clients, where cool annuals are sadly impractical. I'm stuck using the same old hardy, deer-resistant perennials and shrubs over and over. Booor-ring.

Ann, the Hillside Farms gardener

Pictures are easy here. Doesn't hurt that the gardener is perfectly lovely, and there are abundant cute animals hiding behind oversized leaves and paddling around in puddles. And scampering out of newly renovated antique greenhouses.

A bonus: at least some of the cute animals want you to pick them up! I hate it when cute animals don't want you to pick them up.

Ann's garden is loose and billowy and artistic. She combines ordinary flowers in unexpected ways, and here and there is something fabulous I have never seen before. When I find a new flower, I quickly locate Ann's straw hat in the landscape, so I can ask for an identification.

My intention is to do some progress posts of this garden through the season... So, stay tuned.

How to Cool Off on a Hot Day

(A Guest Post by Laika the Dog)

Bacon, Brought Home

Matt arrived home from Farmer Pete's with bacons! Every girl likes to see her honey come through the door with bacons, right? Well probably not, but I sure do, and it never happened to me before, so I danced around the kitchen with my wooden spoon twirling in the air.

It just so happened that I had mixed up a pizza crust, and all that my fixins were missing was a little smoky pork.

Clockwise from top right: a small portion of
Matt's Five Pound Cheese Block (an incredibly flavorful
monolith of pastured raw milk mozzarella that arrives
with the bakery order on the back of a truck),
sage from the herb garden, bacon!!!,
and last year's final shallots (still firm).

Gluten-free pizza with all delicious things on top!

The story of the bacons starts here, in case you missed it. Since then, as I gather, Pete smoked and froze the bacons.

Strawberries

We are just now finishing the last bag of our own frozen strawberries from 2010, as this season's berries turn ripe and ready for harvest. This is nice to know: our roughly 120 square feet of strawberries now officially keeps us in pink smoothies year round (32 pounds in the chest freezer so far!).

I'd say strawberries are a highly recommendable crop for urban gardeners, because with a small amount of labor and space, you can get a pretty hefty yield. I thin out old plants in the early spring, throw some shovelfuls of compost on them, mulch them with straw if there is any, weed them once or twice, and spend the rest of my summer drinking bourbon on a picnic blanket beside the strawberry patch. (It's that easy.)

In this picture from early spring, the espaliered fruit trees
on the right side are underplanted with strawberries.
There's also a patch of berries in the foreground.

If you are very lucky, you will attract a small basket-worth of baby bunnies who shoot like furry ping pong balls out of the patch when you pass. If you are not so lucky, said bunnies will nip the tender young stems of your berry clusters, leaving the berries to moulder away in the mulch. Blasted bunnies.

It Takes Every Last Ounce of My Willpower...

...not to snatch one of these rotund baby chickadees out of the mountain laurel, and keep it for my very own.