rocket science

 We all took advantage of the mild spring weather today to work outside getting some raised beds put together for the garden.  I guess more accurately, Loren & I were building raised beds.

 Sadie & Eli were building a rocket ship.  They spent a couple hours happily entertained inside the frames, with some pots, dirt, and the ever popular "bucket-o-birch-logs."

The joy and imagination of childhood.  It isn't rocket science, and yet, it kind of is.

Did you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind?

This week as I was picking up some seed starting mix at the local garden center a bag of bulbs caught my eye:

Lily of the Valley (that's Convallaria majalis, for my fellow botany geeks).  Sigh.  How lovely.  And I'm always on the lookout for some shade loving plants to beef up my cottage-style (read: chaotic and rambling) perennial garden.  How perfect would these be... and hardy to zone 2 none the less!  I asked the garden lady if they were poisonous, and she looked at me like I was crazy.  "You're not planning to eat them are you?" she says. "No," I say, "but my 18-month old might give them a try."  "Now why would he do that?" she asks.  I bite my cheek to keep from asking, "are you serious? Because he's 18 months old."  But thankfully Edward Scissor Hands aka The Christmas Tree Guy steps in and says, "I ate every plant I could get my hands on for the first 5 years of my life.  At least that what my mom tells me. I turned out okay for the most part. Just keep Poison Control on your speed dial."  I pull out my phone--and show them both that poison control is indeed on my speed dial already, and then I google convallaria and as it turns out it is poisonous.  Very poisonous. And as an added bonus, when it's done flowering, it grows delightful looking red berries.  So I guess it's out for the time being.  It does bring up an interesting point though, when you are a mom of littles who love to ramble outside all the livelong summer days where there are plenty of poisonous native plants even if you don't intentionally grow them in your garden:  How do you keep your kids safe from accidental poisoning?

With Sadie, who has a very well established sense of caution, it was enough to give her a blanket warning on eating any mushrooms, and then begin situational berry identification guidelines with her.  She can now accurately identify dogwood berries and baneberries, which are two of the main poisonous around our place.  We are working on wildflowers now.  Currently her favorite book is a plants of Alaska flip guide, which is coming in handy as a teaching tool.  She's also big enough to know to ask about a plant if she has questions.  Not sure how it will go with Eli. He is more of a caution to the wind fellow.  I'm banking on close supervision and lots of yummy and edible landscaping that he can safely browse close to home--and a whole lot of grace.

But back to the edible landscaping idea, I really am trying to establish some permaculture on our land that is edible and kid-friendly.  As evidenced by the fact that my kids will happily eat raisins and week old potato chips out from under furniture, it is clear that young children have a very innate desire to forage in their environment.  I'm sure there is more scientific evidence that points to that fact out there somewhere (a study in Scandinavian countries comes to mind) , but I have met my google question search quota for the week already. 

There's a lot of thought that goes into establishing your permaculture, and it's intimidating, and I just don't have the time or $1600 to take the local class this spring.  That's why the book Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist is now at the top of my homesteading reads wishlist.

 

early Mothering Day present...hint, hint?

Lastly, in the garden of my mind I'm trying hard to make a spot for some honeybees.  I've been told  that beekeeping isn't rocket science, but there is something about it that sure intimidates the heck out of me....but oh to have some fresh, home-grown honey... and your trees and cane fruit adequately pollinated to boot.  Almost too good to pass up.  I'm currently plowing my way through the Beekeepers Bible.  Holy tome of amazing information!  Still, thinking the safest bet in the end will be to hit up some local knowledge.

And finally, to round things off, we decided to host a little seed/start swap potluck here at the end of the month to celebrate the kickoff of growing season and be a grounds for exchanging knowledge & ideas.  If you're local and want to attend leave me a note and I will get you the info.

Happy daylight savings, and may the garden of your mind be a source of pure delight in these last winter months.

August in the Garden: Flowers and Squash

 

August is a good month to stop and smell the flowers.

Zinnia Green Envy, Love Lies Bleeding, Rannuncula, Baby's breath & Nasturtium

If I could give awards for the strangest & coolest looking thing I grew this summer it would have to go to the Bells of Ireland,

Accumulator of most biomass in one growing season goes to Borage, as pictured with Sadie for scale.

The sunroom porch is now officially a flower jungle.

Out front in the fern garden is Astilbe, more pink Rannunculas, Zinnia, Calendula, Nasturtium, and the most riotous hot pink geranium I have ever laid eyes on. 

Begonias, Astilbe & more Begonias...plus enough strawberries to make this an edible landscape for little grazers.

  

 

A wiggle of rannunculas and Papaver somniferum.

 The lovely blue of delphiniums by the front porch.  Pretty even when they are tipping over because you forgot to cage them up...oops.

and out back it's a pumpkin party (top) plus a good bed full of brassicas and some winter squash growing with nasturtiums, rutabega, sweet allysum, and bee balm.

This summer has been ridiculously hot, sunny & gorgeous for Alaska.  I had no expectations of what this gardening adventure would bring, so honestly I feel pleased as punch with what we've come out with so far.  We have enough lettuces and greens to feed an army of rabbits, we have been enjoying broccoli, kale & chard, and will hope to have a few tomatoes and zucchini soon. Sadie constantly grazing on carrots, so even if we don't end up with any big ones, it makes me happy that she is experiencing the marvel of pulling those perfectly delicious little orange baby ones out and munching them as the day goes by.  She is such a wee forager, if she isn't eating carrots you're sure to find her in the raspberry patch. Next year, we are going to get a little more serious about the business of putting food up for the winter.

 It would be amazing if we actually get some squash, or one of our tiny pumpkins grew into something substantial...but hard to say if they will.   There is just a whisper of fall in the air these days.  The fireweed has almost bloomed to the top.  Here and there a golden cottonwood leaf is falling.  How can it be August already?

but August is always my favorite too... So much energy to savor the last and sweetest drops of summer and busily plan for the cool months ahead.

Hard to believe that just this same time last year we were eagerly anticipating the mystery baby:

And now he's nearly one... full of wonder and sweetness, toddling all over the place, saying half-words and starting to look more like a little boy than a baby. 

My oh my, how the seasons do fly.

garden journal: Medicine Plants

 This week I am on round three of harvesting chamomile.  This is the german chamomile I planted here and there in my raised beds.  

 

 This is the wild chamomile that grows pretty much everywhere else in the yard.  Is it funny to cultivate something that grows wild all over your property?  Yes and no.  The funny thing about wild chamomile is that it loves to grow in all places where heavy foot traffic beats it down.  For us, that means that there are probably also four-legged furry friends that pee on it... and possibly, on occasion, a toddler or two.  So I'm harvesting this tall chamomile that is growing in my raised beds because the flowers are way above pee level.  You can laugh at me all you want. 

 This is another funny instance of growing something from seed that grows wild.  We call this part of our salad rainbow "fairy lettuce"  it is very delicious, and when I was describing it to my mom to try to figure out what it is (still need to go sift through my European Salad Green sampler to find out what they called it) she suggested chickweed.  I didn't think so at first, because it is much bigger than chickweed, but after looking at the patch of chickweed growing under the hose spigot....

yep, pretty sure this fancy-schmancy fairy lettuce is indeed a variety of chickweed---chickweed on steroids.  Still, it's beautiful, delicious, organic, and unpeed on by dogs, so it can have some space in my garden too.

Up next on the harvesting list is Calendula.  This is one of my all-time favorite flowers and I planted it all over this year.  It makes for wonderful balms and salves.  It is my go-to remedy for all skin irritations.  I use it so much on the kids that Sadie even recognized what it was when she smelled the flower.  Smart cookie that one. 

And if anyone wants to stop by and fill up a bag with salad... please do.  We have a plethora of greens, and while none of them are medicinal plants per se, they do say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  So eat your greens; we certainly are!

Garden Journal: June 30

Today's garden journal is brought to you by companion planting.  

This winter, I read Carrots Love Tomatoes and did some rough note taking on what grows with what, and what doesn't.  

aaaand...now all my beds, both vegetable and flower, look like crazy quilts.

and I love it!

All the plants pictured here (with exception of the largest broccoli & caulis) were grown by me, from seed, in our awesome sun room!

Borage, New Zealand Spinach and Sadie's "Rainbow Treasure" strawberries--the blooms are so pretty!

 Cosmos, Zinnias, Forget-me-Nots

 Calendula, green zinnias, and the nasturtiums I didn't think were going to grow (climbing, and vesuvius)

 Tomatoes, the re-do.  Interplanted with Basil that hasn't sprouted yet, and more carrots.

 pumpkins & nasturtiums

 broccoli, veronica, chamomile, cauliflower, Kale, Fennel, dill, lettuce, cabbage, marigolds, calendula, amaranth!

 Lettuce & spinach rainbow!  Salad days are here! Behind it are peas, sunflowers, rutabagas

 and the opposite end is planted with radishes, beets, three types of carrots (45, 65 & 75 day varieties) green onions, marigolds, bee balm and more chamomile--which is just about ready to harvest!

and this chaos... remember the bed I planted with Ranunculas in May?  Well, it looked like they weren't going to grow, so I planted some other stuff... and apparently Sadie did too (nasturtiums!)  And now everything is growing.  There are echinacea, giant zinnias, rannunculas, sweet alysum, strawberries, something from a wildflower mix that are looking like bachelor's buttons,  cosmos, bells of Ireland, forget-me-not, wild bergamont, pink columbine, nasturtiums, and this thing that was so puny and weak when I transplanted it that I though for sure it would kick it:

This picture doesn't do justice to the giganticness of it!  It is Love-Lies-Bleeding (aka amaranth).

 Also, this pineapple ground cherry was almost withered away when I put it in, and it is happily taking up it's own corner and making flowers that may just turn into fruit. 

I guess this is my fable flower bed. It was my home for last-chancers and things I didn't think would grow--and now I'm so pleasantly surprised!  There is even a big old frog living in there eating up bugs.  Must have thought all those nasturtiums were lily-pads!

And that is where things stand in my garden as we enter this lovely month of July.

What a sunny beautiful month June has been--one of the nicest I can remember here in the old AK!

visitors in the lilacs

Tonight Loren and I though we'd spotted a hummingbird in our lilacs from out the kitchen window.  It was moving like a hummingbird, and had the same rapid wingbeat while it zipped all around...so I grabbed my camera to snap some pictures of our first hummingbird sighting of the summer.  To my surprise, when we looked up close at the pictures it turned out to be a moth.  A quick google search informs us that this is a sphinx month, and strangely, it seems to most resemble the White-Lined Sphinx Moth Hyles lineata.  If true, than it is a rare sighting indeed--they aren't supposed to be this far north. 

coming up green

It's summer...for real now.

small starts

 

Garden Journal: Tomatoes

I've planted quite a few things....lots of flower and herb starts growing and Sadie's strawberry from seed--and not to forget her sunflower, but so far most of the windowsill space has been given up to the tomatoes.  I started four kinds this year.  A beefsteak tomato & a yellow pear tomato from Eden Brothers (both organic heirloom) and a Japanese black tomato and Hillbilly tomato from Territorial (also both organic heirloom)

Unfortunately, the Japanese black and the beefsteaks kind of crapped out on me.  The beefsteak tomatoes were poor germinaters--only got one plant out of 4 seeds planted, and that one plant is struggling along.  It's tall, but it doesn't have many leaves, but I'm keeping it just to see what it does.  The JB tomatoes had a fantastic start, but either they caught some kind of blight, or they were very unhappy about the hot/cold conditions in our sun room, also the constant dampness on their leaves from an overzealous 2 year old and a spray bottle. (Yes, my tomatoes are all warming up by the wood stove in the pictures above because it is snowing...again.) Anyway, the stems started looking pinched at the bottoms and then the leaves started dropping off and eventually the whole plant died--the one pictured below is the only one that had any green left, but it is getting the same stem constriction that all the other ones had just before they kicked the bucket.  So I just pulled em all up (Loren thinks I'm ruthless) but I just can't dedicate any more precious space to the sickly tomatoes.  Maybe I'll try to germinate a second batch for a late crop, but it is getting pretty late for that. 

 at this point I'm just cutting my losses and moving on... because it is time to start squash and other fast growers that are going to need that extra space. The Hillbilly and Yellow Pear tomatoes are doing great though.  They are mostly 14+ inches tall and growing buds.  So here's hoping to a happy crop.

A lovely little flat here with some happy looking petunias, bells of Ireland, Sweet Williams, Echinacea and Chamomile.  Almost ready to head to their final destination...that is if it ever stops snowing and becomes spring!

staying up too late dreaming about spring.

Another 4 inches of snow today.  Very light, very fluffy...very beautiful in its own respect, but this is what I'm thinking about: 

 

{please go to pinterest board for photo credits}

peonies, ridonkulous ranunculas, and moluccella oh my.

{sigh}

the summer that came and went

The summer kind of got away from my camera this year.  I guess that happens when you are umpteen months pregnant and chasing a two-year-old, not to mention trying to buy a house in a different town over 500 miles away from the one you live in.  But it really was, all in all, a wonderful, delightful summer--especially the month of August, which we spent mostly together as a family and Sadie got unlimited dad time, much to her delight.  I think we visited every other playground and walking trail in the Anchorage area.  Sadie even told me that the baby needed to come out of my belly so I could start going down the twisty slide with her.

Among our adventures, we happened upon the gem that is the Anchorage Botanical Gardens.  While I'm sure the prime time to go is early summer, it was stately in it's late August colors, and I just happened to have my camera with me. Some of the photos were quite lovely--I thought I'd share them here, so I can sneak back in the white months that are fast approaching for a warm dose of colors.  If you let your mind wander you can almost smell the peppery nasturtiums and hear the hum of the bees.

 And for this girl...I photo-documented the mushrooms.  She was quite enamored with her fungi on this trip.  She can even tell you why you shouldn't eat them.

But they sure are pretty.