Sunny Saturday

Just a few happy snaps for a stroll through the grounds here at H of C and E.

Scotch Broom:

Oak Leaf Hydrangea, preparing to bloom:

My False Indigo, which pretty much stayed looking exactly as it did when I bought it for all of last summer...

...apparently needed a year to get going:

The Edelweiss, which survived the move from our old apartment, is thriving, with 13 buds. The most it ever had before was one.

Our tree. all be-leafed:

And a vegetable garden update. The trench holds our potato plants. Apparently, one is supposed to plant potato eyes and then, when the sprouts start coming up, mound dirt over the plant for a bit until you have a mound around each plant that's been put in place. I found a blog where the writer recorded using her mother's method, which reversed the process – dig a trench, plant the potatoes at the bottom, then as they sprout, throw more dirt on them – built in mounds!

To the right of the trench is a line of onions that, to my relief, sprouted. I thought they might have lost their "goody" as my grandmother would have said, because some of them felt a little hollow. But so far, hardly any duds. We won't have lots of them, but it will be fun anyway.

Potato plant close-up:

Onion line-up: 

This raspberry bush...

...is now this raspberry bush:

And let me tell you, it is going like GANGBUSTERS.

What does that mean, anyway?

I don't know, but what I mean is that it refuses to stop growing. We may wake to find it snaking in a window someday. It has so many buds. The silver streamers are intended to keep birds away but I'm skeptical of their effectiveness. Plus, they are not terribly sturdy and they keep shredding themselves on the bush's thorns, so we picked up a net to put over the bush when the berries start coming in to keep the birds from plucking our precious, precious berries.

To my cilantro-hating cousin, check out what came up on its own from last year:

And finally, they are difficult to see but here are our spindly scallions, overshadowed by their chive cousins. I'm hoping they are inspired to grow, but having received unfortunate placement before the raspberry bush began to go crazy and the chives exploded, I'm not sure they'll get quite enough sun. We shall see.