The Havens may have been traveling to foreign climes lately, but do not think that there isn’t anything going on at the home front. Au contraire, as they say elswhere. I spent some quality time outside today, removing weeds from around the herb garden and in the process discovering that sometime in days gone by I planted Grecian windflowers around the base of that rock wall. Oh well. At least those plants won’t be wasting any time getting pollinated or making seeds. All their energy can go into making leaves so they’ll bloom next year. Especially if I transplant them to a better spot as soon as they are finished with their leaves in a few weeks. And also assuming that the squirrels do not find their tasty little corms and have them for a mid-morning snack in July. But I digress.
The lettuce is coming up in the vegetable garden. I need to get out there and weed very soon.
Right next door to that bed is where I have the cold frames located. You may recall visiting them several times this winter. Well now the arugula is and mustard are going to seed and in the shade of that riotous display I have kale, Romaine lettuce and beet greens (“Bull’s Blood” beets) at the perfect stage for salads.
A robin has decided that the top of our pruning ladder is the right place to raise a family. This pair had the nest built in about two days, and now she is laying eggs.
If you think that is an inconvenient place to have a nesting bird, you just don’t understand the situation. Right around the corner from this spot another pair of robins built a nest on one of the support posts of the compost condominium, within inches of my potting bench and tool storage area. You can’t tell me they don’t know this spot is being used, for heaven’s sake. Besides, it is far too convenient a location for snakes and cats and skunks and blue jays and squirrels, all of whom just love a dandy egg for breakfast in the morning.
These silly kids hadn’t gotten around to mudding the floor of the nest yet, although I’m certain they were off collecting mud while I was taking this picture. Call me mean, but I saved them the effort of chinking that nest by removing it. They’ll find somewhere else more suitable to build, I’m sure. I’m pretty sure there is space out on the grape arbor in the vegetable garden. And it won’t take them long to do it either. They got that nest built in less than a day.
Inside the fence in the more “civilized” part of the garden, the rock bench that Jesse and Jim made for me is making a wonderful focal point and destination in the Stroll Garden.
If you walk over to it and stand by it to gaze about a bit, you notice the still life on the fence. Right now it is decorated with daffodils, but later on in the year there will be tall wild day lilies, spiderwort, and wild passionflower vines climbing the beaver carved branch I collected while floating last year.
Now if you just sit down on the bench, you get a great view of the rain garden framing the sedum garden and the hosta dell. This was the area I featured last fall because of the amazing thing the wild aster was doing.
Now look at it. The aster is just making a nice green patch in the middle, not stealing the show.
If you walk down that path and turn left between the rose garden and the rain garden, when you look behind you you find the different ajugas making a chorus line in front of the junipers. I don’t want to sound to braggy or prideful, but when I was putting these paths in and planting them, I was hoping I would get something as beautiful as this for a view.
Just a few steps down the ajuga path to the left in that shot, you find this juxtaposition.
That effect of the chartreuse Creeping Jenny interwoven with the copper ajuga is just choice, I think. The beauty of the artful display makes the fact that the Creeping Jenny is a very invasive vining creeper that thinks it should own the whole Hosta Dell (on its way to controlling the Known Universe) and requires whacking back all summer in addition to which she thrives in even the hottest baking suns of August worth all the work involved in having her on the place. Really.
The back yard isn’t the only thing that is going on at The Havens. The front gardens are in the throes of daffodils and species tulips, but down by the mail box and under my bedroom window I have a couple of shrubs blossoming. They have provided me with this fragrant vase of flowers which is gracing my dining room table and scenting the room for us most deliciously.
Sorry, I don’t have a scratch and sniff blog. Maybe WordPress will get to that sometime.
Speaking of scents, Madame Skunk raised her chilluns up and has taken them out on an orientation cruise around the territory, so we have closed the door of the inn below the house. Hopefully when they return from their Walkabout, she won’t be able to find Another Way into the crawl space. We’d just as soon halt our operations as the local skunk maternity ward and homeless shelter, if you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, I have GOT to get out there and pull some weeds. The violets spewed their tiny blessings all over the place last fall, and apparently the robins don’t think we have quite enough cherry trees growing around here. “Tis the season to be weedin’, tra lalalala la la la la.” Etc.
See ya’ll later.
the havens 