Monday Musings

Autumn is the time when I start collecting seeds to sow next year. It is also a time to put this year's gardens to bed and a time when dreams of spring gardens begin. 

And there are still time to stop and smell the roses now that the deer, rabbits and Japanese beetles have let them be. 

I think I'm supposed to pinch out my mums earlier in the year so they make a nice mound. I have two different plants of them and every year they are full of blooms but they flop over. 

Monkshood is in bloom. 

This year I staked them otherwise they, too, would flop over. The stems are about 5 feet tall. They do well in a very shady area. I've had these for many years. They used to have blue flowers and more flowers on each stem. They have changed as they have aged. 

Some Cosmos are still blooming. I save the seeds from year to year and some years I buy seeds of a new variety. If I remember correctly this variety is called Bright Lights. I had a couple of mutant plants that came from my saved seeds. The plants looked kind of like a cross between a Cosmos and a Marigold, they grew taller than the rest of the Cosmos of the same variety and they were multibranched with smaller flowers. 

I'm still enjoying the Zinnias...

...and I've been gathering Zinnia seeds...

...to sow next year. Like the Cosmos I sometimes buy a new variety to add to my saved seeds. 

I was surprised to see the Gaillardia blooming. It's a perennial I started from seed this year so it will be back again next year. 

This is my little patch of Foxglove seedlings. When my Foxglove set seed this year I sprinkled the seeds that are like dust in August in another part of the cottage garden. It is a biennial so I am hoping that next year I will have lots of Foxglove blooms. 

Earlier in the year I cleared out brambles and honeysuckle and lots of weeds from an area I want to make a cutting garden next year. Part of the area was shaded by Boxelder and Locust trees so hubby and I decided it would be a good idea to cut down four trees in that area. Clearing all the brush away ended up to be a lot of work but I needed the exercise and I think I will be glad we did it come spring. 

I used the big pieces of wood to outline paths and beds in the new cutting garden area. 

Hubby surprised me with a bunch (90) of tulip bulbs with names like Brownie, Grand Perfection, Orange Princess and Sugar Crystal. So next year this space in the cutting garden should be full of tulip blooms. I started preparing the bed and hope to get the bulbs planted soon. That is part of my Sweet Pea trellis in the background. 

I have several large brush piles and as time permits I usually end up cutting the limbs into smaller pieces to use on garden paths. And sometimes I don't go near the brush piles because I find furry critters nesting in there. Eeeeeeeek!

I also cleared more space in the Wildflower garden that I started this year. A few months ago this area was filled with wild black raspberry brambles, locust tree seedlings that sprouted anew, and poke weed. I have been hoeing it every few weeks since then to keep it weed free. But every weed seed that sprouts now will be one less weed seed that sprouts next year. Right now it is full of bindweed seedlings. Yucky stuff! After a hard freeze I will fill this area with some wildflower seeds that need cold stratification. So watch this space next year for some more wildflowers! 

I hope to have some string quilt tops to show you soon! For now I'm enjoying the nice weather outside. I still have to help hubby clean up the veggie garden and turn the compost piles. 

 

Wednesday Wandering- Zooming in on Zinnias

 

It's hot and dry here. I have been going out right at sunrise to do a little work outside. That is when it is the coolest.  Around three o'clock in the afternoon the butterflies start visiting. When I zoomed in on the Zinnias I saw all sorts of visitors. 

Hope all is well in your world. Have a wonderful day!

Wednesday Wandering

I have to sneak out in the early morning to catch the Four O'Clock flowers open. I have them in pink, salmon and yellow in various parts of the flower garden. I collect seeds each year for planting the following year. For me they do not self sow. Four O'Clocks are temperature sensitive and so they open when temperatures cool down in the evening. One year I never saw any flowers because it stayed too hot and were probably open only in the middle of the night. So don't be disappointed if your Four O'Clocks don't actually open at Four O'Clock.

Morning glories open in the evening and close around ten o'clock.  These morning glories are self seeding annuals so I haven't had to plant any years.   I think this variety is called Grandpa Ott.  

I need to weed the Stocks next to one of the pathways. They are fragrant and make nice cut flowers (if they are given proper care) but with the dry weather I have not been watering or weeding them enough. 

Another old fashioned annual I like to grow is Balsam or Touch-Me-Not. 

I like it because it is rather unusual. (I like fragrant, unusual and old fashioned flowers). The seed pod form where the flowers are in between the leaves and with the slightest touch the seed pods burst. 

This is the year I need to divide a BIG patch of Siberian Iris. So far that empty space is what I have dug up. I still need to dig up that big clump and another big patch at the other end of the pathway. Gosh, that has been a lot of work. It is so dry it is like digging in cement even after I watered the patch three days in a row. 

A yellow Four O'clock. I think that little yellow patch is in too much shade so there are not as many blooms on it. 

Toothache plant is an unusual plant I grew for the first time this year for a border along a pathway. Supposedly if you chew on the flowers your mouth will go numb and tingly. I'm not going to personally verify that info but my husband says it is true. 

This is a hosta I need to divide. When I planted it years and years ago it was in a shady area. Times change and now it is in a sunny area near a very tiny pond. Even though it is in the sun the hosta is massive. And it is very tall. In shade the leaves were always blue looking but the last several years they have just looked green. It is flowering now and it is too dry so I may wait until spring to divide it. I'll wait and see. That's really going to be a back breaking chore but has to be done (so says I). 

I planted some of the Siberian Iris divisions along a wide pathway and in front of an area that has a peach tree and some flowers. I'm also going to put those hosta divisions along the back of this space. This area used to be rather sunny but now it is shady because lots of large mulberry trees have grown up along the barbed wire fence that separates this space from a field of corn. One of the massive mulberry branches fell into this space and took off half of the dwarf peach tree. It was too difficult to remove it and it looked like a nice place to sit so all these years later it is still there but not a nice place to sit right now because I see ants there and who wants ants in their pants? So, anyway, this peach tree space has changed so I guess I need to go with the flow. 

And I have also been clearing a new area of lots of scrub brush, brambles and weeds for a new cutting garden next year. (Hubby thinks I'm crazy at this age which happens to be 69). This is on the other side of the pathway from the peach tree and so I also am planting the Siberian Iris along this pathway. However, there are groundhog holes there and I'm kind of creeped out by that. I heard two of them fighting further back in the brush the other day and they came out of the brush with one big one chasing a smaller one. I keep covering up the groundhog holes but the darned groundhog keeps uncovering them. I'm still angry with Mr. or Mrs. Groundhog for eating all my lettuce and peas. I wish he/she would see his/her shadow every time they venture out so they could run back in and stay inside for six more weeks each time. But maybe that only happens with groundhogs from Pennsylvania. 

Purple, pink and white Prairie Phlox grows wild around here. The butterflies love it. 

Another thing I need to divide is my clump of Blackberry Lilies which are so named because the seeds look like blackberries. Weird, though, that it is named Lily because it is actually an Iris if I remember correctly. I started this clump from seeds someone gave me several years ago but I planted them too close to a pathway and now they have grown into the pathway.

I started Green Twister Echinacea from seed a couple of years ago and it has finally flowered this year. 

My husband likes to grow a variety of peppers. Since he had oropharyngeal cancer a number of years ago he can't eat those really hot peppers he used to love so most peppers that he grows now ,.are mild or sweet. 

He also likes to grow a variety of heirloom tomatoes. He grows them from seeds saved from previous years. Plus each year he tries out a new pepper and tomato variety. Some tomatoes we call volunteers reseed themselves in the veggie garden each year. We leave some of them and it is always fun to see what kind of tomatoes they will be. 

Add some onions, garlic and cilantro from the garden to the peppers and tomatoes and you have...

...Salsa for the entire year. Hubby loves his salsa and eats it on everything from eggs to taco salad and then some. 

We have an old cabbage cutter that is missing a part - a wooden box on top to hold the cabbage that slides back and forth. This used to belong to my husband's grandparents. The 8 gallon crock used to belong to his aunt.  My husband loves sauerkraut so I grow cabbages and make him sauerkraut every other year. 

But I don't use that cabbage cutter. I have an attachment for my Kitchen Aid that I use instead. This time I used 30 lbs. of cabbage. I cut five lbs. at a time and add 3 tbsp. of canning/pickling salt to the bowl of cabbage and mix it up by hand so juices start to flow.  Then I pack it into the crock. This is a recipe from an old Farm Journal cookbook I bought long ago when I started gardening and processing my produce.  In about three weeks we will have sauerkraut if all goes well. I'm not a big fan of sauerkraut but I have to say it is not bad when made fresh. 

Last year the rabbits ate most of my cabbage and I had found baby rabbits in a nest under one of my cabbage leaves. This year I think the free range cats have kept the rabbits at bay, thank goodness. I prefer my cabbage in cole slaw or salad or with corned beef or mixed with potatoes from the garden in an Irish dish called colcannon. I have memories of one of my brothers fighting with me over the cabbage heart whenever we had a cabbage at home. Now I'm all grown up and get those cabbage hearts all for myself!

So that's it for this week's wandering off the quilty path. 

Hope all is well in your world. Have a wonderful day!