Wednesday Wandering

 

Trumpet Vine

It started with a cutting from my sister-in-law many years ago. The hummingbirds love it but I don't. It is one of the very few things I wish I had never planted. It is on a trellis archway that has seen better days right in the middle of the cottage garden. I used to be able to walk through the archway but can't anymore because the weight of the Trumpet Vines intermingled with Dutchman's Pipe Vines and Clematis has sort of caved in the trellis archway. That's not the bad part. The Trumpet Vines come up everywhere in the garden and I spend several hours one day a week cutting or digging out Trumpet Vine before it strangles everything in sight like bindweed. 

Jackmanii Clematis

Speaking of vines and trellises...this one is was on a metal archway - a cheap one in pieces put together with screws. It has slowly been falling apart but I keep wiring and rigging it so it limps along. Well with the last windstorm the whole darned trellis fell over and and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put it back together again so I put in a couple of fence posts for now but will have to rethink this later. It's a tangled mess. I used to have a lot of different Clematis because I love them but most of them have disappeared over the years. 

Hydrangea

Another plant that is taking over the cottage garden is this hydrangea right in the back of the barn. I prune out a bunch of it every year but that seems to make it more prolific. Sometimes Poke Weed pokes up out of the middle of it and it is difficult to get to it to get it out of there because if the Hydrangea is in bloom it is normally buzzing with bees. 

The Purple Coneflower (Echinacea) is starting to bloom now. There are so many different kinds of Echinacea now that I think it would be fun to collect lots of them. Later in the year the Goldfinch sit on top and eat the seeds. 

The Daylilies are starting to bloom. I basically had nothing but Daylilies in my cottage garden after I first started it. That's because there are so many different varieties and they require very little care. I was working more than 40 hours a week at a stressful job as was my husband and the kids were little back then. 

Before you could purchase much on the internet I found a wholesale Daylily farm that sent out a  big catalog. Not every Daylily had a picture in the catalog but the descriptions were dreamy and I could envision them in my mind. 

I'd pick out five or six to order every year for about five years. Most of the ones I really really really wanted to have were to expensive for me to order but I was always satisfied with what I did order. 

I used to keep a marker with the name of the Daylily next to each of them but the markers have disappeared or faded now. 

I tried to keep track of their names because way back when I had a lot of big dreams I thought it would be fun to breed my own daylily or two. I even thought of what I would name them....Aunt Essie, Granny Lizzy and Nosey Agnes. 

Daylilies are edible but I've never had the urge to eat one or any part of one. Maybe if the inflation continues...

The Hostas are starting to bloom. That's no big deal because Hosta leaves steal the show. However a bee kept darting in and out of the flowers on this one so the bee must think the flowers sweet.  I bought Hostas with all different leaves many years ago on clearance at Walmart. Now they all have been divided more than once. I especially love the leaves on this one. It gives a little color to a shady area under an apple tree. 

Onions.

We do eat a lot of them. Did you know that one of the things recommended during the Spanish Flu epidemic was to "eat more onions"?  That's one of the better recommendations to keep the flu at bay...how about a drop of kerosene on a sugar cube??  Well, anyway, not sure if they will keep us from getting the flu but we do eat a lot of onions.  This year we tried growing them from onion plants instead of onion sets. We are wondering if we will get bigger bulbs and have been following the onion man's instructions so we shall see.  In the meantime we have been eating a lot of green onions. 

I'm no longer harvesting strawberries or snow peas but I am still harvesting Butterhead lettuce. It's so good I hardly need any salad dressing. 

This is another type of Butterhead Lettuce. I think it is called Speckles or Freckles. Don't remember right now but it is good too. This is the first year I've tried it.  Back in the day when I had a greenhouse we grew all sorts of different kinds of lettuces (and herbs - mostly lots and lots of Basil and Cilantro) for Farmer's Market and had several different small restaurants that bought from us. It was a lot of work and not worth the money so we quit growing for Farmer's Market after a few years.  I also grew dried flowers to sell at Farmer's Market. And I made about 50 loaves of Sourdough and Herb bread to sell at Farmer's Market. I could have sold more bread if I was able to make more but I did not have the time. I started making bread Friday night when I got home from work and continued through the night so it was very fresh for sale on Saturday. Like I said...not worth the extra money...

Since we have had nice weather the last couple of days I have been doing some heavy duty clearing of brush from the strip that is in the back of the cottage garden that separates the garden from the field we contract out to a farmer who grows beans or corn on the land.  That brush includes black raspberry brambles, honeysuckle, stinging nettle, mulberry trees, poke weed and evidently poison ivy I didn't see.   I can now see it clearly on several different parts of my body including my eyelid. 

And so it grows...