Mums The Word...

One of my long dormant gardening interests has always been a passion for mums. It started I suppose with the traditional garden mums that pop up at home centers every fall, but it definitely grew from there once I was introduced to all of the truly amazing cultivars and Japanese shaping techniques known collectively as Kiku. I first ran across them when researching a visit to the NY Botanical Gardens a few years ago. Here are just a few...

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Bringing in the Harvest

The first flush of the summer harvest has begun! This past weekend we celebrated our very first full scale harvest of something besides the salad greens which we've been enjoying for a couple of months now. (And would still be enjoying if not for the groundhog...) Here's a quick peek at our first haul: Broccoli and Cauliflower  It got SUPER hot here the past couple of weeks which caused the broccoli and cauliflower to start to head towards...

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Bee-Checkup - Week 3

It's been three weeks since the ladies arrived. (Dave asked me to explain why I call them ladies...) Most of the bees in a hive are female, with only the drones being male. Only about 200 - 1000 of the up to 60,000 bees in a typical hive are drones. Because drones don't really do anything for the production of the hive, they are kicked out in the fall by the worker bees, so in the winter the entire hive is exclusively female. Additionally, drones...

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Memorial Day 2012

I was on vacation last week so I took some time to tackle a few large projects that had been looming for some time. Not everything is camera ready just yet, but a here is one of my finished projects... BEFORE: 2011 AFTER:  2012 When we cut down the old chestnut tree that used to be in the center of the drive there was a big uneven spot that was difficult to grow anything in because the tree guys couldn't really grind out all of the stump...

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First Hive Inspection

Saturday marked 10 days from the arrival of the bees, so it was time to check in and see how they were settling into their new abode. (Special Thanks to Jason who agreed to serve as my photographer so that I didn't have to juggle bees and the camera to document this momentous occasion!) Feeling like the Michelin Man SUITING UP While it is perfectly safe to work around the hive without any protective gear, when it comes to actually...

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Reach for the Sky

Time for a quick veggie garden update. I managed to finally get the rest of the greens planted on Sunday... a week or two behind schedule but they should be fine. At the top of the picture you can see the early romaine lettuce is just about ready for harvesting. Jason will be happy! In the open spaces we'll soon have spinach, swiss chard, radicchio, and more lettuce. tucked into the straw at the top of the bed is the summer and winter...

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Settling In

Spent part of the weekend working on getting the finishing touches put together on the new home for the Bees. After getting them all situated last Wednesday, I decided that the area where they are going to reside needed a bit of sprucing up to make them feel right at home. To recap... this is the before: Not bad.... but not exactly what the girls were dreaming of.... So a little elbow grease, some plants, and a bit of mulch and we ended up...

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Happy Bee-Day

Today we're celebrating the arrival of our very first honey bee colony! Bees are something that I've been interested in for many many years. Up until the move we didn't ever really have room to safely keep a hive around. This year I decided to go ahead and make the investment and get started. It takes a LOT of stuff to get set up, but like any hobby/project once you have the basic equipment it is fairly straightforward. You have to order everything...

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Veggie Progress

I took advantage of the projected warmer weather this week to go ahead and plant out some of the veggie seedlings that have been waiting in the wings for the past couple of months... This week looked pretty safe... with May 5th the projected last frost date, and temperatures projected in the mid 70's to low 80's I figured I'd risk it this past Sunday and go ahead and get them in the ground. Of course no sooner had I finished with the peppers and...

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Weekend Projects

A couple of my recent projects inspired by a few things I ran across on Pinterest: Re-purposed Glass Birdbath. Recycled / re-purposed glass birdbath. The bottom is an old vase and the top is an old cut glass crystal ceiling light shade. You can't really see it in the photos, but the shade has an embossed floral pattern around the sides. Picked up the pieces at the Salvation army for about $5 and a tube of clear epoxy from...

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Dive Right In

One of my projects for the past several weeks has been the installation of the garden beds out front, which you can see in one of my earlier posts. In addition to those beds I also constructed to 9' x 14' triangle beds which will anchor the (eventual) back patio. Now that the one walnut tree has been removed, this area gets sun for most of the day, making it an ideal location for housing the herb garden. The site is adjacent to the kitchen door and...

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Ornery Critters

After banishing almost all of the groundhogs last year it seems we've moved on to a few other local critters: Opossum I actually caught this guy twice in my effort to catch the remaining groundhog. This is a photo from the first time when I actually let him go. (Or tried... he wouldn't leave the cage so I had to prop it open using the rock so I could go to work. I caught him again this past weekend and decided that meant he'd earned a permanent...

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Veggie Update!

Quick end of April update: Cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts all tucked in to their bed in the center of the new raised bed garden. They look pretty happy. (The stakes are to hold up the sheets in the event of a late-breaking frost.) Cole Crop Bed  In the new wooden grow house, which I'm loving by the way, the tomatoes are getting impatient and looking forward to their permanent home. In fact, this week's projected cold...

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Vacation Progress

Having spent most of my Spring vacation tucked away in a basement... (don't ask :-) I did manage to get in two glorious days of digging and planting. Mostly I worked on the foundation plantings since we started with a mess that took most of last year to tame. I needed to get in some shrubs that will eventually fill in and give some structure to the beds. As a reminder... this is what things looked like a year ago when we bought the house:  Then...

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