A Daisy A Day

The daisies currently booming up a storm in my garden made me think of this.
Maine singer/songwriter released A Daisy A Day in 1973. Strunk, who was born in New York, adopted Maine & wrote many songs about his new home. 
Jud Strunk was 45 when he passed away in a plane crash. 

I often heard my grandmother humming this song, when I was a child. 

Daisy A Day

He remembers the first time he met ‘er
He remembers the first thing she said
He remembers the first time he held her
And the night that she came to his bed

He remembers her sweet way of singin'
Honey has somethin' gone wrong
He remembers the fun and the teasin'
And the reason he wrote ‘er this song

I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away

They would walk down the street in the evenin'
And for years I would see them go by
And their love that was more than the clothes that they wore
Could be seen in the gleam of their eye

As a kid they would take me for candy
And I loved to go taggin' along
We'd hold hands while we walked to the corner
And the old man would sing ‘er his song

I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away

Now he walks down the street in the evenin'
And he stops by the old candy store
And I somehow believe he's believin'
He's holdin' ‘er hand like before

For he feels all her love walkin' with him
And he smiles at the things she might say
Then the old man walks up to the hilltop
And gives her a daisy a day

I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away

The Seed Order

 It's always a bright moment in my Maine winter, the day I place the order for the seeds from Fedco that will become next year's garden. Usually I prefer to wait until mid-January, when winter is deepest and seems like it will never end, to give me that pinpoint of hope, but I'm told waiting might result in not getting the seeds I want this year, and I do want the varieties I've chosen for good reasons. 

I only have so much space, so every year I am torn between my favorites & trying something new. Here are this year's choices:

Sun Golds - These will always be on my list. They are just The Best: best flavor, most fruit, both earliest & latest tomatoes, and utterly reliable. They are a cherry variety; otherwise I'd be tempted to just fill the garden with them. 

Garden Peaches - Also an early tomato; in Maine the growing season is fairly short, so I've learned not to waste it on 90-day germinators, no matter how amazing they sound. These are yellow, 2-inch tomatoes, very flavorful & pretty in salsa. 

Oregon Spring - New to me this year, and said to be a hedge against a cool summer. 

Pruden's Purple - I think I had these in the garden several years ago, so not entirely new. They are a full size tomato - a whole pound per fruit - with a mere 72-day germination. We shall see whether that rings true. 

You Can Pickle Anything!

 

It wasn't a great year for gardening - too dry - but the trusty Sun Golds did come through in a big way. They are extra-sweet cherry tomatoes that produce continuously from early August right up until frost. 

I recently learned that you can pickle pretty much any vegetable. (Probably other stuff, too but ew.) I decided to give it a try. These are refrigerator pickles - I didn't get in the whole boil-the-jars-like-our-ancestors-did stuff. 

Pickled Sun Gold Tomatoes 

About 20 Sun Gold or other sweet variety cherry tomatoes

1 cup red wine vinegar

2 Tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon tarragon

2 cloves garlic, peeled

Fill Mason jar with cherry tomatoes. Fill jar with a 1/2 inch to an inch of space. Mix vinegar, sugar, tarragon and salt in a saucepan; bring to light boil. Boil for 1 minute. Let cool about 10 minutes; pour over tomatoes. Push garlic cloves under the surface of the vinegar. Screw on lid & let sit in refrigerator for a week before using. 

What's Blooming Now

Blooming

First Crocuses, 2019

Spring is late this year! I'm a little surprised, because we didn't have an especially hard winter, although notably absent were the random warm days in January or late February. It was consistently winter-cold, nothing approximating a brief thaw.

Maybe that's why my crocuses are slow out of the gate! The popped their little green heads up about 3 weeks ago, but have made little progress since.

Come on, guys! We're all rootin for ya.

The Shapes & Colors of June

The flowers of mid-June make the best bouquets! The enormous raspberry heads of peony, the delicate deep purple shapes of Siberian Iris, the fizzy lemonade froth of Lady's Mantle. All easy to grow, too,  at least here in Maine.

I made the little pitcher that serves here as a vase. As often happens, it was unappreciated when it came out of the kiln - many more immediately eye-catching pots came out of the same firing, and it was overshadowed. Over time it's quietly served its functions, and become a favorite. Like people, you get to know pots slowly.

Happy June, the second-best month in Maine - the best being September, but it's a tight call.

Blooming Brave

Man this has been a long damn winter. My bright, brave blossoms promise it won't last forever.

Finally...First Crocuses!

I keep an eye out for the first green tips of crocuses every year. They aren't typically, the first to show their heads - tulips might be, or even daylilies - but they are the first to bloom, so they are the ones I watch for. This year is quite late! Usually I find them around the 9th of March. But these lttle guys have been up for a while - our several March snowstorms just hid them from view.

Success!

In the spring I drilled holes in some wood blocks, hoping to attract Mason Bees - native pollinators far more effective than honey bees. I wasn't sure we'd be able to house masons, at least not this year, because I had read they nest early - when the trees bloom.

Turns out there are several kinds of mason bees, and one of them has found our bee condo! She carefully visited several of the holes before settling on this one, and is now in the process of removing the splinters and bits of wood inside the hole, in preparation for her eggs.

I'm excited all out of proportion about this.

Berry Season: Homegrown is Alright with Me

A land baron I am not (or baroness, I guess.) I live on a double city lot. Nevertheless, my husband and I manage to grow quite a lot of food on our small parcel. This busy lady favors easy things to grow - tomatoes, hot peppers, pole beans - but by far the easiest, and my favorite, are raspberries.

They grow like the proverbial weeds - and sometimes they are the quite-literal weeds, as it's easier to grow them than it is to root them out where you don't want them. The don't even need to be weeded or watered. You just need a sunny-ish patch (I put mine on a difficult-to-mow western slope.) and to wait a year after they are planted, for the canes don't produce fruit their first year. I chose a variety that does all its fruiting early in the season, because once the tomatoes & beans start coming I can barely keep up with processing them, so I feared all-season raspberries would be wasted.

The fruit, of course, is amazing, but the leaves also make a nice tea, which is a gentle treatment for menstrual cramps or diarrhea. Less reliably, raspberry is said in lore to strengthen the bonds of marriage and ensure fidelity, and the bushes to protect a homestead against lost spirits. I can attest to this latter property - I have yet to see a ghost here!

Raspberries are delicious all by themselves. They are also yummy additions to cereal or salad; or here is a simple dessert preparation:

2 cups fresh raspberries, rinsed and drained
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup sour cream

In a mixing bowl, bruise the fruit lightly with a potato masher. Sprinkle the sugar on top, mix briefly then let sit for an hour. Add the sour cream, stir thoroughly, and spoon into bowls.  A summer dessert soup!

Tomato Pics - The Perfect Father's Day Tribute

It's sort of a running joke in my family - my Dad and his tomato plants. There are reels and reels of home movie footage of beautiful green growing fruit. He was so proud of his garden.

So, not for nothin', I grew up to be a gardener, and I sort of specialize in tomatoes. And this year I have blossoms already on some of my plants! In the middle of June.

Dad would be proud.

Dear Holland Bulb Company

Twelve years ago, I received a gift certificate for your catalog as a housewarming/engagement gift. I used that gift certificate to purchase 50 daffodil bulbs.
These bulbs, when they arrived turned out to be the rarely seen foliage daffodil! For 12 springs I watched for the round-tipped, verdant blades to peek above the soil, developing the slightest blush of maroon at their edges; simple, understated, and lovely. They would spring up , cover the slope with their grey-green abundance...and then die back. It was a ritual. Anyone can appreciate a bloom. It takes a real connoisseur to appreciate a foliage daffodil.


Daffodils are long-lived plants, and they naturalize and spread. I expected to enjoy my foliage daffodils for many years to come! But I notice this year something has happened; they seem to have been infected with a fungus of some kind! It's bright yellow, and ruffly...do you think it's related to those growths you see on trees? You know, Chicken of the Woods?

I will say this: though perhaps a bit gaudy compared with the sleek, sophisticated bare foliage we've enjoyed for the last dozen years, these fungal eruptions - if that's what they are - are not without appeal. I was wondering: if these pose no threat to the health of the plant, is there is some way I might encourage more of them? Not to devalue our foliage daffodil experience, but I find the bright cheery splash of color quite charming!
Any idea what it might be?

Very truly yours,

Lori Keenan Watts

First Crocuses, 2017

For 11 years now I have been marking the end of winter - the emotional if not the literal end - by watching for the day my crocuses poke their tender heads above ground. Ladies & gentlemen, that day was yesterday! In an amazing coincidence, yesterday was also the coldest day of the winter so far. at around 5°F. This wouldn't have been my choice, if I were them, but I trust that they know what they are doing.

I made sure to replace the blanket of dead leaves I pushed aside to get a peek.

The earliest I've seen crocuses come up in those 11 years was 2012, on February 29th. The latest was March 23. This year is a little on the early side, probably because we got a deep blanket of snow before the real cold came, and because last week was unusually warm.

Spring is coming now! There's no stopping this train.

Last of the Tomatoes

Last summer I tended 26 tomato plants, of several varieties. They yielded enough for us to enjoy the fresh fruit every day in August and September, and also to freeze many bags of salsa and puree.

All good things must come to an end (luckily this is also true of bad things!) and today I opened my last bag of frozen tomatoes. They are processed with onion, garlic, basil, and oregano, and I will cook the batch down with some grated carrot to make pasta sauce. It's simmering now; smells marvelous.
I took the opening of the last bag as a cue to dig out the Fedco catalog that arrived in December. I kinda wish it would arrive in January instead; in December I am too busy, and not yet weary enough of winter, to appreciate its arrival. Nevertheless, I am glad it is here now, helping me dream of long summer days.

I'll be ordering Sungolds cherry tomatoes, for sure. They are always the first and last to produce; I was still picking Sungolds when the frost came. I imagine I will have a few volunteers as well, since they are so prolific I always miss a few. And, importantly, they are my mother's favorite! Since I refuse to grow squash for her (takes up a ton of garden space and also ewwww) I owe her these at least.

Garden peaches are another favorite. A small, yellow tomato, they have a relatively short growing season - 71 days - and very sweet fruit.

I'll also be reprising the Jubilees we got last year. They were a surprise, which Fedco substituted for the Cosmonaut Volkovs I had ordered. Their season is a bit on the long side for Maine - 80 days - so it's a risk. If we get cool June, or a rainy summer, they may not produce. But they were so beautiful, and so tasty, that I'm willing to take the chance.

I didn't love the Oregon Spring variety we got last year. The flavor was a little underwhelming.  It is a full size tomato with a very short growing season - 58 days - that will thrive even in cool summers. I was tempted to get it as a hedge against a bad season, but the flavor, while good, suffers in comparison to the other varieties...and flavor is, after all, the whole point.

So, what to get in its place? I could return to the Cosmonaut Volkovs that have performed well in the past, but I do like to try new things, so I am leaning toward the Berkeley Tie Dye, a full size short season tomato said to have an almost spicy flavor. Based on my quick Google image search it appears to be a very handsome fruit as well - maybe that shouldn't matter but I am an artist, after all.

Like many Mainers, I don't mind winter, but I spend much of it dreaming of spring.

What's Blooming Now, May 2016

Late Winter Ritual: The Fedco Order

Though we've had an amazingly warm and hopefully brief winter, I am a bit late with my Fedco tomato seed order this year; or perhaps I am late with it because of our unseasonsable season. It's usually a late January event, that reminds me in the deepest part of winter that warmth will come again, and things will grow.

My husband and I have tried many different hybrid and heirloom tomatoes over the years in our raised beds. Due to our relatively short growing season, some varieties - easpecially those which make very large tomatoes - just don't work out. Regular tomatoes - as opposed to cherry or grape - can have a germination-to-havest time of about 60 - 90 days. I aim for the low end of that range, but I do try to spread the harvest out, so I don't have pounds and pounds of tomatoes all in a two-week window. This year I am going with three tried-and-true varieties, and test-driving one that looked too appealing to resist. Making return appearances this year are:

• Sungolds! Bright yellow-orange cherry tomatoes, on the small side; impossibly sweet, early, prolific: even people who don't like tomatoes like Sungolds. They'll make fruit from the first week in August right up until the frost. Fruit 57 days from germination.
• Oregon Spring. Has one of the briefest growing periods of any full-sized tomato, at 57 days. Good-sized fruit, smooth, and sort of classically tomato-looking. These are nice and flavorful but nothing special; I mostly choose them because if we get a crap summer, as sometimes happens, they will fruit anyway. A pretty good workhorse tomato, they are good sliced or in salsa or sauce. They are my hedge bet. 
• Garden Peach - These are on the small side, pale yellow and slightly fuzzy. Sweet and very juicy. Great to eat sliced or in salsa. They struggle during cold or rainy summers, but produce prolifically if the weather cooperates. 

Sungolds

Oregon Spring

Garden Peach

Jubilee

And my gamble this year :

• Jubilee - an 80-day tomato, orange with 8 oz fruit. If you can't tell, I favor the yellow & orange varieties! I like to have some red, orange, and yellow in my salsa, so pretty with the dark green bits of jalepeno. 80 days...if I plant on Memorial Day, 80 days is...mid-August? Sounds doable, even if it runs late, because September is often our biggest tomato month. 

We alwasy use Fedco, because they are right up the road in Waterville, so they know what will do well in a Maine garden. Time to start saving egg cartons to plant in! And eggshells, which provide calcium for tomato-growing soil.

Ice Dam, Downtown Augusta

The Kennebec River has overspilled its banks into a downtown Augusta parking lot. The rapid temperature change, combined with teo days of precipitation has caused ice dams n the river, backing water up over the banks.

Over the weekend we had temperatures in the double digits below; then a few inches of snow on Monday, then heavy rain and weirdly warm temperatures yesterday. The river narrow right at downtown, so when the ice breaks up, it sometimes gets clogged up at the bottleneck. This isn't the first time that lot has flooded.

Here's downtown today from the opposite bank.

Back home, though, things look considerably springier! Since we've had such a warm season overall, I thought I'd check to see if we've got any crocus shoots up yet; and YES! we do! This is the earliest the crocuses have come up since I started paying attention back in 2005.

Woolie Bears Don't Lie

Woolie Bears are the Magic 8-ball of caterpillars. According to folk wisdom, one can predict the coming winter by observing the relative width of the brown band in the woolie bear's middle. When the caterpillars display wider brown bands, the coming season is predicted to be milder. Narrower brown middles conversly predict a harsh winter.

So, what does woolie have to say for himself? Is his middle wide or narrow? He (ze?) has four-ish brown body segments out of thirteen. (No, I can't see thirteen, but that's supposedly how many they have.) According to the (recreational and pretty much unscientific) research by Dr. C. H. Curran, the average is between 5.3 and 5.6 brown segments. So that can't be good.

Last year's woolie bears were pretty short-centered, also, and last year's winter? Was a bitch. In fact I've seen very few woolie bears this year, perhaps as a consequence. The same dynamic that blessed us with very few Japanese beetles to destroy our roses and raspberries has taken most of our woolie bears with the other hand.

As it happens, the caterpillars and the almanac are in agreement, as they were last year: Harsh winter. Our fuzzy little prognosticator says: Outlook not so good.

Dividing Day

My shopping list for today:

• Seep hose
• 50' extension cord
• Mulch

It's the last weekend in September - time to divide the perennials, dig up the neglected beds, and mulch for the winter.

When I started perennial gardening, tumpty-ump years ago in St. Paul Minnesota, I thought I was doing it because it was less work than planting annuals. I like stuff that stays planted! I used to stay. Right? Just plant it and then relax and watch it bloom for years to come.

ROFLMFAO, as we used to say.

In reality, perennial gardening demands composting, weeding, mulching, dividing, and moving plants that are didn't get the memo to bloom where you are planted.

Without attention, by fall, a perennial bed will look kind of like this:

Dry, crowded, weedy. This bed needs to be dug out, the keepers set aside, the weeds pulled, and the dirt mixed with compost and replaced. Either the bed will have to get larger or I will have to discard some plants, because they have all thrived so well they are crowding each other out. I just redid a smaller bed, which now looks like this:

Expanding the bed means even more work next year - and more mulch, which gets expensive. In past I have not had the heart to discard perfectly good plants, so I expand the beds, or start new ones.

Then I started reading The Right Size Flower Garden, by Maine author Kerry Ann Mendez. After some life changes left her with less time and energy to devote to her perennials, Mendez had a choice: let the garden fall into disarray, or limit the garden to the space she could take care of. The book details shrinking beds, planning garden care, and choosing plants that require little attention. I've already started, with two raised bed which were, after many years, too shady for their inhabitants. Pull 'em out, sod 'em over!

Each year, of course, the garden is all about next year's garden: when this finally blooms or that fills in.  This fall I am excited for next year, when I will (hopefully) have time to keep the remaining beds looking sharp all season.