Let Them Eat Fine Produce

I promised myself I would reclaim the roadside vegetable garden from its feral status this year. I went ahead and redid the front bed too.

I nuked it twice with that evil weed killer. I dug a lot of ironweed. It does not transplant well at all.

Turning the soil would only invite the feral to return.

I'm repainting Uncle Ernie. It's time.

There will be mulch. No turning. No plowing.

Then I will plant things. Some fine produce will happen.

It's a big refresh of my whole roadside. It was time.

Let Them Eat Cake

I am personally very fond of cake.

I think everybody should have some cake.

So when these old stone walls were finally unburied at The Inn at Tranquility Farm. a wedding event venue,
Of course I saw a cake.

The Wedding Cake garden is 90% complete.

To get to the cake you have to cross the Almighty Falls.

A good cake is worth some effort.

The new plantings on the house side slope of the Almighty falls is in its second spring. A huge Black Walnut tree was rolled over it the first spring. So help me God.

From the rhododendron

To the far side of a wedding cake

With the Almighty Falls between
Is an entirely new landscape that also includes the grounds around the Inn and the dancehall that were planted by me. Not a bad garden to inhabit towards the end of a long time peasant gardener's career.

After Mowing

The birds nesting in the rafters of the front porch roof think this metal flower by the front steps is a perfect lookout and landing station. It's somebody new this year. I had wrens in the rafters the two years before this.

The garden is bursting with life these days and the time for the first garden defining meadow mowing had arrived.

I don't have a lawn mower.

I have a weed whacker.

I don't whack the weeds though. I whack a path through them.

The shrinking Great Lawn is the biggest open space.

It was time. The Rider on the Lawn was about to disappear.

The first mowing completely changes the character of the garden.

The plants have changed too.

The first mowing is the official end of spring.

The 80 degree temps we have been having this week hinted that as well.

I wander freshly mowed paths.

Seeing that color blue I imagined a decade ago.

Oh yes, I remember the Goldenrod reduction plan. Time to edit.

I wander ever so slowly at the end of the day. Pulling. My entire walking apparatus is exhausted after climbing mountains all day.

I wander in, pulled by a garden in a brand new character. I edit. I sit. I ponder an aging walking apparatus.

Things Grow

I lived in a small house at the bottom of the drive for the last sixteen years that I lived in Maui. I have lived here in Hale Mana now for eight. It took four years both times to settle down to the bottom of the drive. Miss Collar is eleven years old. Button is seven. Miss Collar is pretty much a twenty four hour house cat that was born in the wild. Button still kills varmints.

Things grow. Small saplings and tiny seedlings grow into trees.

Vines cover a trellis.

And you wonder, has this honeysuckle ever bloomed this profusely?

The rhododendron bloomed two weeks early and The Lush seems mighty tall for this time of the year.

Profuse bloom is not a given. There are on and off years. I am convinced a great many iris specie are not as bloom hardy as they are plant hardy. Off years always seem to coincide with a hurtful spring freeze after they have begun to stir.

Which isn't really a problem because something is always having a big time On year.

The Lush will not be stopped in any case.

The Solomon's Plume is more reliable. I think it is an elevation adaptation thing.

That is just one factor that makes knowing what plants will truly thrive up here unknowable.

There have been some odd poor performers. Baptisia refuses to thrive here no matter where I put it. I think it is a competition thing.

No matter, things grow and the time for the first mowing of the Great Lawn was here.

Roundabout Bloom Day

All he ever does on that blog is show the same old scenes from his garden over and over, year after year. It is true. There is a significant photographic collection of the native, naturalized and cultivated flora living on this small piece of the 'aina at 4000 feet on a mountain in the wilds of Western North Carolina in the early years of the 21st century. There is a record. And a few varmints were thrown in.

The least I can do for Bloom Day is start the tour in the ridge top garden next door. Or you can click on the link and return to Bloom Day Headquarters.

Oh! Rhododendron.

Tiarella Foam

Phacelia purshii putting on a show.

Lunaria

Plenty Rhodos

The Lady is in The House

Woodland Phlox past peak.

The truth of the matter.

It's a wild cultivated garden.
Lorelei the Reliable.

Viburnum peaks through.

With iris that rarely bloom.

The wild is coming back to the ridge top garden. The Silver Lamium was pushed out.

How about that foliage in my own, even wilder garden next door?

Big things are coming up.

Really big things.

The deer chomped, damn varmints, evergreen Oconee Bell has a whole new set of leaves.

My blood red voodoo trilliums has been having some kind of viral or fugal issues ever since they followed me home. I hope it isn't contagious.

The truth of the matter is

The waters are still running strong beneath the ground.

I built another snake in the grass along the side of the ditch of a distant road.
I have not heard nary a hiss.

The time to mow the Great Lawn approaches fast.