Happy 2nd day of Spring!

Technically, yesterday was the first day of spring.  After any winter (even one as mild as this past one has been), I look forward to the "official" start of the new season.  (Not so much fall and winter.)

Spring to me means FLOWERS! First came the snowdrops . . .

Then came the crocuses ...

My daffodils are about to bloom . . .

and finally ... the tulips ....

What is it you like best about Spring?

The Last Rose of Summer

Friday, during the early hours of the morning, we had our first killing frost.  We live by a farm and we went to see how the unpicked crops had faired.

Not well.

It's so sad to see so much unpicked produce -- that maybe a food pantry could have used -- ruined.  From past experience, we know that the all those peppers will rot.  (Millions of them.)  The farmer told us that their kids work full-time jobs and they only have the two of them to pick acres and acres of produce.  We'd seen them out there for hours on end, but they couldn't make a dent in picking all that they planted.

As we were coming back into our yard, we noticed one last bloom on our climbing rose.  Sadly, the stem shattered.  But, we'd seen a rose tip in water at a lovely tearoom once, and so that's how we enjoyed it.

Just beautiful, isn't it?

Waste not, want not . . .

Every year my next-door neighbors plant tomatoes next to their house. At least five plants.  Every year they pick one or two of them and let the rest of them rot.  Every year I vow I'm going to go over and steal them.

(So far I haven't.)

What a waste.

New for the garden

For years I have begged Mr. Ivy for a burning bush.  I know, I know--why didn't I just buy one myself?  After all, in the spring I wanted hollyhocks and I bought two fine specimens (which REFUSED to grow, no matter how much I watered them or how much Miracle Gro I gave them), and I bought myself a very robust honeysuckle plant, too.  But I didn't think to buy myself a burning bush.

Well, my begging (nagging?) did not go unnoticed and on Tuesday Mr. Ivy presented me with a burning bush. Only it's green.  And it has rained for two days straight and who wants to plant a bush in the rain?

Still, I'm hoping that by next fall my bush will look like this.

What's new in your garden?

Spring Flowers

Yesterday I bopped outside with camera in hand and visited my front yard, looking for stuff to take pictures of.  First up was the rhododendron right outside the front door.  It's in need of some shaping, but I'm afraid to hack at it for fear of killing it.  (As it is, the icicles took out a big chunk of the back of the plant this winter.)

But the big treat was that a huge bee was out there, dipping into the pollen.  This new camera has a telephoto lens and -- whoa!  There he was, big as life.  (And see the pollen on his butt!  Is that cute, or what?)

Next to the rhodo we have a little stand of daffodils.  They're the spring plant that keeps on giving.  They've been out for over a week, and we've had a couple of really hot (Wonderful!) days, but they're still pert and perky.  (I have to learn which setting gives me a sharper background.  Hey, it's only been a couple of weeks--give me time, give me time!

We didn't plant the tulips out front -- and usually we have only one straggly bloom, but this year we had more--go figure!  (And I'm certainly not complaining.)  Sadly, tulips seem to last a day or two (especially if it's hot).  As you can see, they're already getting a little brown around the edges, and they'd only been open a day.
Of course, while spring is great for flowers, it's also great for weeds.  Why do they look so pretty when they flower--and so ugly when they turn into puff balls of seeds a day or two later?

The former owners told us they had a row of ornamental cherry trees along the side of the driveway, but the ice storm of 1991 took out all but one.  It's the oddest looking tree because it's tall with very short (they all broke in the storm) limbs.  Most of the year it looks like it needs to be put out of its misery.  But for a couple of golden (or should I say platinum) days in the spring, it flowers and almost looks pretty.  (Well, it does look pretty close up.)

I stopped using my SLR camera about ten years ago and almost exclusively used a point-and-shoot.  And when we got our first digital cameras, they, too, were point-and-shoot.  I love my "big-girl" camera and realize how much I missed taking really good pictures. 

From trash to compost . . .

Last year mother gave me some money for Christmas. Not a fortune, but it was $$$ to treat myself to things I'd really like.  So I bought some DVDs and had a bit more leftover. At first I couldn't decide what to do with it and then it came to me.  I'll use it to buy a composter!

The problem is, most composters are big deal things.  We're just two people and four cats, and the cats don't eat a lot (any) veggies, so we don't create much to make compost with.  Still, I want to go greener (and according to a recent article in USA Today most people my age are getting the urge to do the same).  So last week I decided the time was right and I whipped off an order to Amazon, which was selling the thing for cheaper than anyone else.  And best of all, I had to spend only 5 cents more and I'd get free shipping!  (And let me tell you, this sucker is HEAVY.  Of course, I bought a $7 book, but I wanted to buy it anyway.)

New York State has decided that Amazon is making too much money off its citizens because Amazon now collects sales tax from New York residents.  (They've told every major business the same thing.)  Mind you, Amazon has no physical presence in New York, which has been the precedent for tax collection.  So I have a feeling my Amazon orders will fall off as of now.  I can order a book from Barnes & Noble and pick it up at my local store, and though I have to pay state tax (and the gas to get there), I can get at least 10% off the cost of the book (because I have a B&N saver card).  I'll miss ordering on impulse from Amazon and I resent that New York is yet again sucking me for more tax income.

There's a reason there's a mass exodus of people and businesses from this state.  We pay too much and receive too little in return.  Too bad I can't dump my compost on my local elected representative.

But I digress.

Getting back on topic ... do you compost?

Does A Picture Say 1000 Words?

Once upon a time, I used to take a LOT of pictures.  I had my little beauty of a Minolta (both a 101 and 201) and my lenses and I would shoot "Americana" (and mostly in black and white).  My job as a copy editor had a big plus:  a dark room.  The "guys"  (my pals Erv and Mr. Bill) would develop my film for me, and then after hours I'd go in and crop and print to my heart's delight.

Then everything went digital.

Mr. Ivy gave me a digital camera for my birthday one year, but I never liked it.  For some reason, I couldn't seem to take a decent shot with it.  Me, who messed with f-stops couldn't take a picture of people without chopping their heads off like an amateur.

Then on my (cough, cough) anniversary with a well-known photographic company, I received another digital camera.  This one was much friendler (and actually more sophisticated) and I was once again taking good pictures.  (Whew!)  But still I missed the bulk of a single lens reflex camera.  So two years ago, I bought a Rebel EOS camera. Suddenly I was back to taking professional type photographs.  The fact that I could manipulate the contrast and brightness via Photoshop meant I could turn marginal shots to pretty darn good ones.


Right now there's not a lot I want to take pictures of.  Snow, snow, and more snow is pretty boring.  I'm pining for spring when the flowers come back in bloom and I can show them off here on the blog and email them to friends to compare notes on their gardens.

Once the weather turns I plan on taking the camera with me on my jaunts.  I can't wait to see what develops.

How about you.  Are you into photography?

In time for the holidays

I inherited this Christmas cactus about three years ago. I've kept it in my dining room and it thrived but never bloomed.  Until this year.  This year I did something drastically different.

I left it alone.  Honest.  I put it outside on the deck (along with Mr. Rubber Plant) and didn't even water it.  It sat out there from late May until mid-October and I never even gave it a second thought.

I'm wondering if I should take this approach with all my gardening: total abandonment.  I know we mulched heavily this year and did nothing else, and guess what?  Everything thrived except the weeds.

We had this gardening "epiphany" a few years back with Mr. Rubber Plant.  A former boss at the Big Yellow Box gave everyone in the department a plant.  I don't even remember what my plant was, but a co-worker retired and didn't want her plants and I inherited them, including Mr. Rubber Plant.

Mr. Rubber Plant was not happy moving to Ivy Bend.  He sat in the dark dining room for a year or two and lost all but four leaves.  So we figured what the hell and one summer day tossed him out on the deck.  He THRIVED!  Right now Mr. Rubber Plant has about 100 leaves.  Once outside, he seems to think he's returned to his native land where it's hot, humid, and rains far too much.

About the 4th of July, Mr. Rubber Plant notices he's back outside and says "Zowie!" and grows another 5-20 leaves.   When we bring him in for the winter, he becomes depressed.  Several leaves turn orange and he drops them on the rug for me to pick up.  He doesn't understand that winter would kill him, and he pines at the window as he reaches for the deck outside his wintry prison.

Kinda makes you want to shed a tear, doesn't it?

Yes, I think I'll abandon all my house plants to the elements in the summer.  Why not if I can get gorgeous blooms like these, eh?

Trying to hang on to summer . . .

The following pictures were taken yesterday in my garden.  I could NOT believe that it was November 3rd and there were still lovely flowers blooming.  Can you say global warming?

This silly lilly is still blooming.  Okay, it's not as pretty as it should be, but it's still blooming.  I don't think I've ever seen any of our lilies bloom this late in the year.




Over the summer my friend Leann sent me a lovely hydrangea.  Isn't it pretty?  It's been blooming since mid-summer.




The marigolds are still going strong, too.




And one of my favorite flowers, cosmos--still in full bloom.



Are they still here this morning?  I'm afraid to look.  The temps dropped to the high 30s the night before.  But even if they're all gone today, they were there yesterday, and they were PRETTY!

Is anything still blooming in your garden?

One Fine Daisy

The yard sales have been few and far between this year, and since I started this blog to share my yard-sale treasures, there hasn't been much to blog about.

So I thought I might share some pictures of my garden.

(Oh, I am loving my new camera.)

Look what followed me home . . .

I know some people think that pink flamingoes are tacky -- and I suppose they are.  But they're also CHEERFUL!  My roses, which were going great guns, are taking a break, and with all that ivy out there, I thought a splash of color might be fun.

What do you think?

Mr. Bee likes my coneflowers

April Showers?

The snow peas are now planted.  According to the seed packet, they take between 8-12 days to germinate.  To give them a head start, I soaked them in water overnight.

Now I just need some of those April showers to happen.

According to the Doppler Radar, the rain was supposed to hit more than an hour ago.  It looked pretty evil.  But no, a few drops fell and the icky clouds moved on.

What gives?  I need that rain if my peas are going to sprout!

Maybe I should do a rain dance.

Heaven knows, I'm not the most successful gardener, but despite the tomato blight (and Mr. Groundhog eating 90% of my Brussels sprouts), I had a good year last year.  And this year I've decided to jump the gun on gardening season by planting snow peas.

Long ago, in a neighborhood far, far away, my parents were organic gardeners and they grew snow peas.  I must admit, in those days, I didn't pay much attention, but I did enjoy the bounty.  (All except asparagus, which they told us kids was "an adult vegetable that you won't like."  So I didn't.  Until my husband introduced me to it.  Now I realize there was a limited crop and my folks just wanted to keep it for themselves!)

I live along the shore of Lake Ontario and it isn't unknown for there to be frosts in late may, let alone early April, so the idea of planting now seems pretty foreign to me.  But the package (and Google) insists that these are a cold weather crop and into the ground they can go.

So, if the sun continues to shine, I will be out today with my little hoe and rake and plant my seeds.  

I can't wait to reap my harvest.

My lack of success as a gardener

I’ve always wanted a green thumb. Both my parents could produce flowers and vegetables by barely lifting a
finger (okay, hauling 50 lb sacks of manure might help them out a bit). They planted things and they flourished for years. I plant something and it shrivels and dies in days. (Or it’s eaten by bunnies, ground hogs or …
something mysterious we haven’t been able to identify. Probably an alien species sent to Earth to thwart my gardening abilities.)

Take for instance the once-lovely primrose I’ve had for a little over a month. The day it arrived home it was flourishing with big purple and yellow flowers. Now it looks like this. Did I water it enough? Too much?

Mind you, I have had a few successes, but I really can’t take credit for them. I inherited a rubber tree when a friend at work retired. It existed (you can’t call what my plants do “living”) in our dining room until all but four leaves had dropped off. With nothing left to lose, I tossed it out on the deck and forgot about it. It thrived on neglect and natural rain and humidity, thinking it had landed back in its homeland. I bring it in for the winter and it goes back to existing until late spring rolls around and the threat of frost is minimized.
Then it goes back to its happy lifestyle for another three to five months (depending on when fall arrives) until I have to bring it in once again.


My Christmas cactus never bloomed and looked ill when I tossed it, too, out on the deck last May. This year it’ll bloom twice. (Although this second blooming won’t be as magnificent as last fall’s.)  I find it amazing that I haven't killed it since it came in last  October.

On this first day of spring, I’m hoping the primrose survives. If it makes it, it’ll go outside (I’m having a novena said for it). I’ve also got another cactus that can go out on the deck. So far, it has a much better gardening success rate than me.

The fun of the planning

Wednesday was shopping day.  Here we are only days from spring and the "seasonal" section of the supermarket was all decked out for summer.  Excuse me, but we still have an entire season to go before we get to summer.

But the one thing I was eager to investigate was the seed rack.  For several years, I've been trying to find Kentucky blue (pole) beans.  I've only been able to find Kentucky wonder, which were good, but not as good as the Kentucky Blue.  Yup, the store had them, and I bought three packages.

I usually grow potatoes in a bin, but this year I think I'm going to put them back in the ground.  Instead, I'm going to try to grow leeks in the bin.  It's the same principal, you cover them up as they grow, so they'll grow taller.  This should be fun.

But the most exciting thing is snow pea seeds.  I've never grown them before, and they're a "cold" weather crop, so I can plant them in the next couple of weeks.  (And hope the rabbits don't get them.)

Meanwhile, Sunday I'll be talking about some other plants.  Stay tuned.

CONTEST UPDATE:  t was a very tough choice for who would get the giveaway pictures -- Hubby picked Gert's name out of the hat.  Congratulations!  Please contact me at ivybend2@gmail.com and give me your address so I can mail them out.  Thanks!

Garden Update

I've blogged before about my wonderful garden.  This is the first true veggie garden I've had in years.  (Uh, about 25 years.)  I planted my little plants and lovingly nurtured them. (This picture was taken in June, before everything took off!) 

Of course the first assault on the garden was the hail storm.  For about 15 minutes my little garden was pelted first with huge raindrops, and then huge hailstones.  I feared my little heirloom seedlings were doomed--likewise the beans.  (Those are bean leaves to the left.)  The broccoli and Brussels sprouts had huge holes in the leaves, but they, too, survived.

Then just as the Brussels sprouts were starting to form, we had a visit from Mr. Groundhog.  Mr. Groundhog roared through my little garden like an angry tornado, eating the broccoli and every leaf he could reach on the sprouts. (That poor first plant reminds me of a very skinny person with a big mop of hair.)

Since the beginning of the summer, I'd heard horror stories about the tomato blight, which is actually a mutation of the potato blight that devastated Ireland in 1844.  Word on the street was that the blight was attacking plants from big-box stores.  Whew!  I bought my plants from a small farm market, and grew my heirloom tomatoes from seeds.  I was safe.

NOT!

Last week I noticed the leaves on the tomato plants were turning brown.  Since then, some of the tomatoes have spots and some are just falling off the plants.  Boo hoo hoo!  All my hard work--and the blight still got my darlings.  Still, we are eating the tomatoes (and cutting off the bad bits) and they are soooooo much better that those hothouse ones at the grocery store.  And hopefully, I'll have at least a couple of heirloom tomatoes, too.

Gardening can be heartbreaking.  But I'm already making plans for next year's garden.

Mr. Groundhog Returns

Much as I'm a fan of the movie Groundhog Day -- I am NOT a fan of groundhogs.  Let us walk through the mists of time to remember what happened about a decade ago . . . (insert a little harp music here).

All those years ago, we had an unwanted visitor in our garden.  He would take a dip in the pool, walk up the steps, walk around the pool, and sun himself on our little garden bench.  We thought this was kind of cute . . . until he started eating all our flowers.

It turns out, Mr. Groundhog lived in a hole in the arborvitae that grows on the west end of our yard.  My husband Frank was furious--as at the time, the garden was his domain.  We live behind a farmette and Frank passed through the magic door (a space between the arborvitae) into the farm and found that Mr. Groundhog had been feasting on their crops.  One phone call and an hour later, a Havahart trap arrived behind our yard.  An hour after that, Mr. Groundhog had been captured.  He was taken away and we never knew (but did suspect) his fate.  And our flowers flourished for the rest of that season.

Bunnies have been the bane of my bean crops, eating them down to the dirt.  But this year, we sprinkled (and rather liberally) dried blood and consequently are having the best pole bean season ever.

All was well until last night.  I was sitting there reading in our enclosed porch when Chester jumped onto his little box all attentive.  Omigod!  There was a skinny groundhog walking on the concrete deck, heading toward MY CROPS.  I shot out of my chair, hands clapping, and new Mr. Groundhog fled into the arborvitae and I flew out the door to reassure myself that all was well in the garden.

IT WAS NOT.

The pride and joy of my Brussells sprouts had been severely chewed!  And, in fact, one of the leaves had been ripped from the plant.  As it happened, I'd been bragging to my Dad earlier in the afternoon that the first plant was growing by leaps and bounds--and that it was nearly four feet tall.  We had been out picking beans just a couple of hours before I discovered my poor sprout plant had been savagely CHEWED!!!!!

As we looked closer, we saw that one of the broccoli plants had not only been chewed, it had been stripped!  Yum-yum!  Mr. Groundhog had been having a lovely vegetarian dinner and apparently enjoying himself immensely--hence his return for a second meal of the day.

Look at the close up of my Brussels Sprout plant (my pride and joy) where he ripped off the leaf--and note the sprouts are just starting to form.  (Aren't they cute?)  Leaves are one thing, but he'd better not nibble my sprouts.

Of course you know, this first offense will not be taken lightly.  This means war!  First, the last of the dried blood has been spread.  Next up, taking a look at the farm behind us.  If their crops have been decimated, another call to the owner is in order.

Mr. Groundhog, you are no Punxsutawney Phil and this is not Gobbler's Knob.  If you know what's good for you, you will make like Elvis and leave the area.

For good.

And what critters are dining in your yard?

UPDATE:  Mr. Groundhog returned later this afternoon and completely destroyed four of the five Brussels sprouts plants.  We are buying a trap.