Spring is here

I was walking out to greet one of my clients so we could properly admire the irises and wood hyacinths and the poppies that are blooming.  While we were doing that, we noticed a lot of commotion in the junipers that make the backdrop for that garden.  Investigation revealed a young robin being escorted about during its fledgling flight.   He “toddled” up into my redbud tree and posed just long enough for me to run in and get my camera.   After the photo op was done, he listened to the exhortations of his mama and papa and left the area, gliding across the street and coming to a crash landing near a planter beside the house next door.   His parents flew right over there and began yelling at him to get his ass off the ground and up in the maple tree forthwith before some damn cat came along.   So he did.  Here he is, and probably the earliest I have ever seen a robin at this stage of development around here.

As if that wasn’t enough good news, after that massage was over I proceeded around the place and noticed the fruit set on the Shiro plum:

The little apples are not to be outdone.   Hedging their bets against a late frost, you can see that not only do they have fruit set in large quantities, they are still blooming as well.   We will definitely have to do some thinning, but I believe we are going to get some apples this year.  Guess those bees I saw earlier got the job done.   Hooray!

I have been working on planting creepers between the flagstones of the stroll garden path.   The spot where I have the Creeping Jenny is looking real fine.    I planted creeping thyme elsewhere, but it is too small to be as impressive as this section.

Now all I have to do is keep weeding the plantain and grass out of there, and I’ll have something that looks fantastic in about two years. 

Jim has been out working his butt off in the vegetable garden.    The sandstone pavers we bought last year at the auction are being laid now.   They even have their gravel packing in between them.   We learned that if you only level them on the sand without the filling between them, when you have a thunderstorm the sand washes away and your beautiful pavers are no longer level.   

Now is that beautiful or what?    For some strange reason, he is tired and wants me to go put together the salad.   Guess I’d better git.

Vegetable Garden April 2008

The day started out well.   I slept until I woke up, and when I managed to get my body to move out of bed there was fresh coffee awaiting me.

Getting my body moving was a little challenging, being that we have been whipping the yard into shape this week.   There is a certain amount of pressure on us because there is rain in the forecast.   Right now the grass all around the place is in seventh heaven, and if we don’t get it mowed while it is dry enough to do it, by the time the next batch of rain rolls through and dries off, we will have to hire a haying crew to do it for us.   Well, I suppose that is probably an exaggeration, but it will definitely be tall and thick.

Anyway, we have been doing team mowing, where Jim and I go out together with our matching push mowers and mow huge swaths of lawn in quite a respectable amount of time.   It goes more than twice as fast with two people, because someone can keep mowing while the other one is pushing a wheelbarrow full of clippings to the mulch pile.   However, this morning Jim did the mowing alone because I have a bunch of stuff on my “To Do” list that must be get done.   Today was a perfect day for setting the rock edging around the new flower bed by the sauna.   So that is what I did.

Those stones are set flush with the ground level and flat enough that you can put the wheel of your lawn mower on them and trim the grass off evenly.

This is the other end of the same garden, I haven’t gotten the stones set yet, but there are baby day lilies and the piece of driftwood I found on the Niangua River last fall.   Well, Jeri found it, but we both agreed that it had to come here due to its amazing dragon quality.

I also picked a bunch of asparagus and blanched it.   It is now on a tray in the freezer, and as soon as it has frozen I will pack it in a bag.   Don’t worry, there is plenty more out there for dinner tonight.

Out in front the wood hyacinths are blooming.   I love the way they are setting off my Front Door dragon.

Just to the west of him the poppies are getting ready to bloom.  You can just see the flash of orange that proclaims there will be a bloom open tomorrow.

Out in the vegetable garden, things are looking very good.   This first picture was taken from the garden gate.   Right in front of you is the pea patch, where the peas are starting to climb in earnest.   They had better get busy making peas because it will soon be way too warm for them.   Just to their left is my carrot bed.   The little carrots are just now starting to peek out of the soil.  In a couple of days, there will be a mist of green on that bed, but right now they are invisible.   Behind the peas is my broccoli, safe from the cabbage looper butterflies under the row cover.  Behind all that are the cold frames.

Now, this is why I put row covers over my broccoli.   In addition to the protection from insects, the plants seem to enjoy the modicum of shade the row cover provides.   I also use row covers over peas and beans when they first sprout, and over kale and arugula. 

The following illustrates why I use cold frames all winter.   I come into spring with ready made salads.   I find it interesting that the radicchio is winter hardy.  Note how happy it is in the second picture.   It was out in the open all winter, and resprouted from the roots.

Now, while I was taking these pictures, I noticed a beautiful red wasp on the leg of the cold frame.   She is gathering fibers to use to make a nest somewhere.   You can just see the freshly rasped wood in front of her.   This reminds me that I must start ringing my bell on the back porch every day.   The wasps do not like the vibrations, and ringing it daily keeps them from building a nest up in the top of it.

While I was zeroing in on that photo, there was a lot of racket going on behind me.   The Garden house wrens are building their nest in the nest box, and they were telling Ruby off.   She was over under the grape arbor chewing on a stick, and they thought it was an unconscionable trespass upon their property.

Even though there is only one bird in this picture, they were both very much in evidence.   I wandered over to take a picture of my “To Do” list, being thoroughly scolded the whole time.

Well, my massage client is here now, so I’d better get to work.   I only have two massages to do this afternoon, thank heavens.   I am already “worked”  pretty well.

Funchal, Madeira — A Day Trip

I have been contemplating a post on our day in Funchal for quite some time.   There has been a lot of stuff going on that has interfered with the actual production of the promised batch of photos.

Of course, there was a full week of massage to do, which entailed the requisite pile of laundry.   The weather has been spectacular all week, so we have been able to hang a lot of it out on the line.   However, there have been a sufficient number of thunderstorms that there was a lot of cooperation required in order to get the dry laundry down before it got wet again.   There were a couple of sunny, breezy mornings that were perfect drying days that deteriorated into rain storms in the afternoon.

Yesterday we went to a fish fry held by one of our good friends.  It was a perfect afternoon to sit around eating and drinking.  All of our friends came to the potluck with the idea “It is a fish fry.  There will be vats of hot oil,” and brought every conceivable thing that you could think of to fry, from fresh morels and frog legs to fritters and french-fry cut zuchini.   It was like being in the middle of a huge tapas bar with no waiter to slow you down.   Our friend also has a sauna, which he had fired up.  It wasn’t really hot enough, it just teased us.  

So Jim lit the stove in our sauna this afternoon and we had a nice relaxing sweat after I was done working in the garden.    Then we came in and spent some quality time together (wink wink nudge nudge).  Then I had a nice nap.

I needed a rest.  It has been sort of drizzling very lightly pretty much all day.   Since that made it splendid weather for transplanting, I did a certain amount of that.   I had a varied bunch of volunteer lettuces coming up in garden beds where I am going to be planting beans, squash, corn, tomatoes and peppers in the very near future.  Since all the little babies were the perfect age for being moved, I moved them over into the area of the garden where I have planned my salad patch.  Then I planted a couple of rows of mesclun seeds next to them.  

In addition to transplanting the lettuce, I also moved some more Creeping Jenny from the front garden bed into the cracks between the rock path in the stroll garden.   This is the second time I have done this, and after I have repeated the exercise about three more times that walk way will be properly supplied with plants.  Nice that the front yard is providing all the plants I need for this project — I won’t have to buy much for that section.

I also paid attention to the onion bed.   Earlier this week, Jim brought some sand for me to work into the soil to lighten the clay in that bed.   I also had three bags of half composted leaves from last fall to work in at the same time.   I have wanted to get to this all week, but it has been raining so steadily that the ground has been too saturated to work.   This morning it was finally dry enough to turn shovelfuls over without creating mud balls.   But it was still pretty wet, so I got a good upper body workout as I picked up the heavy dirt.   I suppose I could have taken smaller bites with my shovel, but then the job would have taken too long.   Now it is a luscious mix of dirt, old compost, green leaves trimmed from the chicory, sand, and half composted leaves.   I had enough leaves left over from the bags that I could use them as a partial mulch over the freshly turned soil.   The robins and wrens are out there having a feast of worms and bugs from the mulch.

I have also spent quite a while trying to identify a bird that is singing out in the yard.  I have yet to see it.   It has a call that descends plaintively, from D to C to A.   The rhythm says “Oh, look, there’s a girl there’s a pretty girl.”  Jim found an educational web site that had over 500 different bird songs recorded, and I spent about 45 minutes there this morning and never heard another call remotely like it.  However, while I was trying to spot the mystery bird I discovered we have a rufous sided towhee scratching around the yard.   Cool. 

Oh yeah.   Funchal.

After we had been at sea for about 10 days, we finally made landfall in Funchal.   Funchal is the main city on the island of Madeira, which belongs to Portugal.   Madeira was discovered in 1419 by the Portuguese, and Funchal was establised a couple of years later.  I don’t believe they have changed the roads since it first started growing up the mountain that it occupies the feet of. 

Madeira’s highest point is about 6000 feet above sea level.   The whole island is a pile of volcanic output, basalt columns forming steep cliffs and sundry lava flows.  It sits about the same latitude as San Diego, California, and the climate has a lot in common with that location.

We arrived from the sea as the sun was coming up.  We got a great view of Funchal climbing the flanks of the island, all outlined in lights.  While magical, that view did not translate to a good photograph.  This is what it looked like in the afternoon sun as we were leaving:

Jim looked at Madeira as we made landfall, and said he thought that there was probably no flat place on the whole island that was large enough for the International Airport, and they probably had to construct it on fill.   It was even worse than that.  Take a look at this picture and notice that all the arches and pillars off on the right side are supports for the runways, which extend quite a ways out over the bay.

We enjoyed watching the ship come into the pier.   The Staff Captain, Sigurd,  was getting trained in how to bring the “Pride” into dock.   We were watching the process from the deck above the bridge wing.  The guy with the radio and the spiky hair is Sigurd, the older gentleman is Captain Anderson, who was watching and listening to every order his trainee made.   A couple of times I saw him lift his walky talky and give an order before Sigurd got to it, but mostly Sigurd did it on his own.    

We signed up for a morning tour of the city of Funchal, including a visit to the Botanical gardens, a ride on the cable cars up to Monte, followed by a trip back down the mountain on the traditional wood and lattice toboggans that used to be used to bring produce down the mountain.   Now they carry tourists.   

Anyway, we had paid for this event and then found out that there was an opportunity to go to the market and go shopping with Chef Markus.   We were too cheap to abandon our already paid for tour, so we missed out on that.  This is Chef Markus, marshalling his charges.   I took it from our bus as we moved out on our own experience.

Off we went, and it was absolutely amazing to see our tour bus negotiate the twisting and winding streets of Funchal as we climbed up the mountainside to the Botanical garden.   Much of the wonderful stuff we saw there has already appeared in the post I made about Mediterranean flowers.  

All over Funchal there were cobbled pathways made out of little shreds of basalt columns.   They were all over the Garden, and these steps made out of those cobbles really beguiled me.

We were allowed about 45 minutes to walk through the gardens.   This was frustrating, because these extensive gardens would easily require a whole day to see adequately.   But we were on a tour, and being hustled by our stressed-out tour guide back onto the bus.   We rode the cable cars up to Monte:

We went across a deep wooded canyon that had a stream running along the bottom of it.   This is part of Madeira’s World Heritage forest, and has hiking trails through it.    Across the canyon above the tunnel that served the freeway that runs out to the airport, there was a garden carved out of the cliff face.

At the top of the cable cars, there was another garden carved out of the cliff face.  This person was growing a bunch of vegetables in terraces that gave me concerns.   You wouldn’t want to lose your balance pulling a stubborn weed in these beds:

As we walked away from that area towards the little community of Monte, we walked past the garden that had the 2000 year old olives transplanted to it.   Right across the street from that was a wonderful fuchsia bush, “Princess’s Earrings” was the variety.

Just around the corner from that was where we found the top of the toboggan slide.  

We loaded up, and started sliding down the hill.   Of course, the first thing that happened was my hat blew off and our sled managers had to bring our toboggans to a screeching halt and run up the hill to fetch it.  They often jumped on the back runners and rode along with us.   They’d lean to twist the sled around and give us a thrilling ride.  When we came around a corner and saw a car coming up the street towards us, they hopped off and used their bodies as brakes and steering.  

Yup, we met that car coming up as we went down.   About a quarter of the way into the slide, a guy stepped out from an intersection as we went by and snapped our picture.   By the time we got to the bottom of the slide, these photos were printed and stuck into a folder so you could buy them for 10 Euros.   We bit — I thought they captured the experience very nicely.

While we were waiting for the bus to take us back to the ship, the reproduction of Vasco Da Gama’s exploration ship set sail from her pier.   Every day she takes a gaggle of tourists out beyond the breakwater for a whale watching expedition.   I loved the juxtaposition of old and new as she sailed by the Seabourn “Pride” wehre she waited for us.

It made me really stop and think about the kind of courage it took to take a ship that size out into the open ocean to explore the world and look for a new way to get to India.    

We got back to the ship in plenty of time to walk into town and visit the rocky beach by the marina where the Beatle’s yacht (now a restaurant) was moored and pick up some rocks as souvenirs.   Then we trotted back to the ship and got dressed for our next “Experience”, high tea at Reid’s Hotel.   This involved another bus tour through Funchal, up to a high point where there was a view over the whole city.  

This was the vantage point that really brought home the unique city that Funchal is.   Mixed in amidst the apartments and hotels and office buildings, was old Funchal.   It has not changed substnatially, in a few hundred years.   They still grow bananas, grapes, produce, and cut flowers for the European trade.   Because of the terraces, they do not use equipment for their farming.  From up on this hill, you could see the way all of this activity was woven together in a beautiful tapestry.

I zoomed in to get some detail on this neighborhood.   On the right side is a family compound where they are growing produce, flowers, and banansa.   You can see that there are several small buildings where different members of the family have quarters with their families.

To the left of this was a group of houses that had gardens and banana orchards in addition to trellised grapes.   What was notable to me was the lack of a street.   These people bring their groceries home up the stairs from the bus stop.   I can’t imagine what it must be like to move.  I’d hate to be the furniture or appliace delivery person.

Looking off somewhat to the east of the city, you get a great view of the mountain side with the terraces that the original settlers built for their grapes and orchards and gardens.

On the way down from that view point to the hotel, we drove by some of the terrace work and got a good close up view of the amazing dry stacked rock work.

We also drove past one of the numerous front yard vineyards:

Down at Reid’s Hotel, a very swanky establishment indeed, we were regaled with a buffet high tea.   While we enjoyed the scones and cakes and tea, we did not get the “real” tea experience, which was out on an elegant balcony with a view.   For this, you need reservations.   You had better be dressed correctly too, or they won’t let you in to be seated even if you do have reservations and the 27 Euros per person they charge.   I did get a quick shot of the “real” high tea service.

I will leave you with one of my favorite images from our day in Funchal.   This was a group of flowers that had draped themselves artistically over a wall we happened to be strolling by.

Next stop, Seville!

Here today, Funchal tomorrow (maybe)

Well, I don’t know when I am going to have time to go through the vacation pictures and make them bloggable.   Now that I am over my cold, I am starting to go through the gardens sort of systematically.

The new rock garden part of the stroll garden has proved to be a wonderful nursery for about sixteen dozen kinds of weeds.   The gravel mulch is extremely popular.   We were out there weeding, and Jim proposed that since we have some extra money, perhaps I ought to run out to the nursery and buy the blue carpet juniper we were going to plant to flow over the “mountain range”.   I came in to investigate that idea and realized I don’t have time to do that since I have a massage client arriving in about half an hour.  

So I made up the massage table and sat down to see about a quick post.  I ought to be hanging my laundry up, but it looks like it is going to rain some more and that seems like an exercise in futility.  I will probably just run it through the dryer.

About the extra money:   When we got ready to pay for the balance of our cruise tickets, the cruise line had added a fuel surcharge.   We didn’t feel that that was unreasonable, and the charge was a very small percentage of the total.   Apparently the federal government did not agree with us and required the cruise line to refund that charge, so an unexpected check arrived in the mail yesterday.   The funny thing was, I woke up thinking that we were going to get money in the mail that day and dismissed that thought as ridiculous since all expected monies had already arrived this month.   Chalk one up for intuition.

Anyway, I woke this morning with a strange feeling that it was going to be a wet morning.   No real mystery in that since it was thundering and lightninging (why do we say the phrase in that order almost invariably even though the lightning always comes first?) and hail was thumping on the awnings.   It proceeded to pour for about a half an hour, dumping rather a lot of rain on us.   Fortunately the hail was small and there wasn’t much of it, so none of my flowers were shattered. 

Smokey spent all morning going in and out the door.   His attitude was “I have told you about this stuff before.   What is with this rain stuff anyway?”  Then once it stopped raining, he was adamant that we should get rid of all the damned puddles.   Silly cat.

Since it was going to be too wet to mow, Jim went out to buy a new lawn mower.   Don’t ask me about that logic, I don’t know.   We have a new push lawn mower now so we can do tandem mowing and stop using the big riding monster.

I was admiring the front yard yesterday.  My species tulips are up and blooming, and the redbuds are  in full swing right now.   I say it myself, but the front flower bed is absolutely gorgeous right now.

If you look center of the picture under the arch of the redbud branch, you will see a flash of red orange over there.    That is a group of little tulips I planted three years ago that has now finally expanded into quite an attraction.   This is how it looks from right up close and personal.

Now, if you follow the bed on back to its far southwest corner, you come to an area where years ago I planted oriental poppies.   They make a spectacular flash of red in between daffodils and irises, and I really like them.   The trouble is, they expand and grow by rhizomes, and are fairly invasive.    Also, the rhizomes compete with other plants and after the flowers die, the fuzzy ferny leaves die too, and you are left with a bed that is barren and rather unattractive.    A few years ago, some lambs ears volunteered in there, and by a stroke of luck, they seem to cohabit very happily with the oriental poppies.    The two of those thug plants protect the bulbs underneath from the depredations of the squirrels, and the daffodils I have planted in there repel all the ground burrowing creatures that might want to eat them.   So I planted species tulips in there too, and this is what they look like now.    The poppies are starting to send of flower stalks, and I am very pleased with what this bed has become.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mentioned that I got the apple trees pruned the other day.   They are loving the weather, and if we are lucky we might even get some fruit this year.

You will be happy to know that I still have bees.   They are busy too.

So, that is about it around here.   I got my broccoli plants set out yesterday.  Today if I have have time after I get the junipers and get them planted, I will move some lettuces into the lettuce bed from where they have volunteered so I can get that area ready for the beans, and start turning the back bed where I intend to put the onions.   If anyone has any ideas where I can plant a new bed of raspberries, I’m open to suggestions.   My original raspberry bed has been invaded by a virus and I need to buy new plants and put them somewhere else.   I have room at the ends of the grape rows in the vineyard where the tea roses have died.  Maybe I’ll put them there.   That’s actually a pretty good idea, since we already have drip irrigation established out there.   Hmm.

Well, Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work I go.   Good thing I’m over that cold!

 

News of the Day — 21 April 2008

The news comes in three formats today.   The first is mysterious:  “How did that cat get in there?”  The second is coverage from all sides.   The last is the formal presentation.

That’s whats going on around here.   I’m feeling good.   The garden is beautiful.   I have done one massage and have a few to go.    It is a cool breezy day at the heavens with high clouds scudding through.   These are the same clouds that were blowing across the full moon last night as I drove home.    My laundry is blowing dry on the line.

Have a great day.