I thought the wildflowers were going to be a here-today/ gone-tomorrow kind of thing...obviously I was wrong about that. Every week there seem to be more of them and new ones...makes me think we should have just spread seed all over the entire place. Man, wouldn't that be something....
So, we just kind of wandered around with the camera, checking out springtime happenings; in case you aren't totally sick of looking at close-ups of wildflowers here's another one for you:
Now, I can get all excited about multiple pictures of wildflowers - at least at the moment - because we spread the seed and here they are and it's a beautiful thing. But it reminds me of my mother, in a way. She was a
daylilly nut. Well, that's not fair. Let me clarify: she raised and bred
daylilies and was a big member of the
Hemerocallis Society. (I keep trying to spell 'daylilly' and the spell-check just wants me to change it to Doolally and I'm not going to do that...so I will check on this later.) But I digress. She would take a billion pictures of all of her different lilies and dad would just roll his eyes because he could NOT sit through a slide-show of this, and they all looked exactly alike to him. And when there was a society meeting, all the lily fanatics would come over and they would auction off little bundles of roots and of course these actually DID look all alike, but he never got it.
Now we continue our walk:
last weekend it was beautiful and warm and work-outside weather. I went around with gloves and hoe and shovel and pruning shears, uncovering surprises...things that were coming up from below: mint and tarragon and lemon balm...
the mint beds Will built for me one Mother's Day several years ago are holding up: but the bermuda grass, the evil, evil Bermuda Grass...it creep up and crawls between the boards and SO wants to take over these beds. But I get in there with a shovel and hoe and pry it up and rip it out with my bare hands...and then there are the ant beds in the corners. But so far, so good.
The Mexican Tarragon can be counted on to spring up from the bottom of the plants every spring; I know there are other varieties of tarragon, but this does best here, and is every bit as pungent and culinary-worthy as any other type. Pretty soon, these little leaves will rise up and form long stalks and hold their own until next fall and the first frost:
And then there is the lowly lemon-balm; I only say this because it has limited uses, as far as I know. As with other lemony herbs, you'd love to do all manner of things with it, but let's face it. It smells exactly like Lemon Pledge. So, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't want tea from it, not really. There are so many other lemon-smelling herbs that will do nicely for that purpose. On the other hand, I have been making all of our cleaning agents for months now, and perhaps it will serve well for the furniture polish. This year, I plan to see about that.
The Rosemary is blooming. It is beautiful, but I am thinking about it...i have had a couple of rosemary beds. I set out little tiny plants all in a row - they explode into the scenario you see here: it lasts a couple of years more - then the whole thing begins to die; I suppose that is a life-span issue. I haven't really thought about it before, but from the looks of things, the big bloom may be the beginning of the end for this bed. It takes a couple of years for the plants to actually offer this display. We shall see.
And finally: we have our Offerings: something old, something new - kind of a wedding thing. The carrots have been in the ground since October. They are holding out, but it has been as very wet winter; we should go ahead and dig them all out now. The strawberries, also put in in the fall, are just now offering their bounty. It's all good.
Everybody's redbud trees are glorious this time around...even ours. Just the one, actually. There were two. Because Will plants two of things, always (or so it seems). And they have to be one on this side and one on that side, exactly the same distance apart. I'm not a big fan of the 'equal trees' thing. Or bushes, or anything else. But that's ok. Because the redbuds have decided they're just not going to cooperate with that train of thought. The one on the left of the porch is beautiful, even though it has to lean way out from the oak tree, looking for more sun. But the one on the right keeps dying. Well, that's rediculous; actually, there was one, and it died, and then Will planted another and it hasn't chosen to put out any flowers or growth yet this spring - so, maybe it is dying too. Maybe he'll be forced to plant something else there in that spot...if he can stand it. We'll see if he insists on setting out redbud tree #3. I'll let you know.
