Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Wet, wet, and cloudy and dreary!

My little corner of the world is very wet.....and dark and drear. Oh, did I mention cool......50° this morning.

No rain yet to day, but no sun and intermittent thunder and very breezy. I am betting rain is in our near future.

DH has the 'helper' of the barn crew helping him cut up a larger tree down somewhere on the farm....then I think they have some fence mending to do. I hope they get it done. 40 head of the neighbor's cows have been getting some free grass from us and I am not pleased! They don't take care of or feed anything so the animals are half starved and will push down or jump a low fence to get to grass. Also the helper needs gas money so this will help him out.

I planned to mow but it is much too wet so I transplanted tomatoes and basil. The tomatoes had the least roots I have seen. Don't know what that is about. I have enough basil to supply Greene County. I plan to plant it all and try drying some. Basil is my main herb in cooking.
So one flat became three I still have space for 3 or 4 more flats on the light stand and don't think I will need them.

DH requested oatmeal cookies yesterday so I made anther batch of Flower Lady's Create a Cookie recipe. I used, coconut, English walnuts, craisin and some raisins. Just took the last ones out.

I milked Willow for the first time in two weeks yesterday morning. I figured it would be a three-ring circus, but she went into the barn with a little prompting and began eating immediately. She let her milk down and I got two gallons very quickly. She cleaned up her feed; a first for us in the barn. I am now going to just milk when I need milk and let the calf nurse her once a day until dry up time of May 29. I made 9 cups of yogurt with part of the milk yesterday so now I am supplied again.

Garden Pictures

Over the years due mostly to mowing and trimming, I have almost lost my purple hesperis matronalis. I still have a few in the front ditch area. I am no longer mowing that ditch since the new road so will let it all go to seed. I want to get it started all along the front ditches and just let the flowers mix with the weeds and see who wins!


The Grass Bed has fully recovered from my 'burn-off'. A few of Barb's iris are blooming,



and the salvia Black and Blue in the middle that was started from a tiny rooted piece that I broke off and just stuck here has spread to about 3x3 feet.


The recovered scorched sedum,


This is a clematis that I didn't get trellised quick enough so it has become a ground cover clem. This is in the Kitchen Window/Foundation Bed.



Clematis Nelly Moser has never quite recovered from a severe pruning I did a couple of years ago, but the flowers are huge
.I took a picture with my hand to give you some idea of the size.



I wish I knew how to remove the unattractive fly, but don't. I never notice these things until I download the pictures.

I didn't get it tied up properly this year so it is lopsided on the trellis,


If we can just get some warm sunshine, the iris and clematis will be popping. This is the first year all the peonies are loaded with buds but it seems to take a long time for them to open....usually around Decoration Day.

Roses are budded, white hesperis is opening and the weigela is almost fully opened.
The heavy rains are not helping blooms.

11 comments:

  1. That is the largest clematis flower I have ever seen! I have Hesperis, too, and just let it travel about the place willy-nilly. You may be having rain again by now. There seems to be another front coming on. I guess that is the thunder you were hearing. Our weather alert system sounded out a few minutes after I got in bed last night. I got up and checked the weather TV channel, decided it wasn't that bad and crawled back in. Wish we could save all this extra rain for later use. I enjoyed your post. Seems you and the calf are both getting plenty of milk. Good Willow.

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  2. I guess I really need to get used to calling plants by their horticultural name. I thought I recognized Hesperis and looked it up. Sure enough, Dame's Rocket! I had a good stand of it two summers ago and it was WON-DER-FUL. You can't get any closer to lilacs without being lilacs than Dame's Rocket does! Heh.

    I've also often wondered about the Dead Nettle you keep cutting down. Looked that one up too and I see that it's Henbit. Boy, I hear ya!!! That stuff's all over my place.

    Our storm is over till Saturday, when they say we might get some more. I've been scattering seeds like crazy in between rains.

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  3. I hope you get some sunshine soon. I'd send you some of ours if I could, to trade for some rain which we really need down here. I hope you don't get any of the nasty weather they are predicting.

    Wowee, the size of that clematis is amazing. I love the color too and I don't mind seeing flying critters on flowers at all.

    I should make another batch of those oatmeal cookies. I'm planning to make some banana oatmeal muffins with a recipe I've got but never tried.

    Have a nice afternoon and evening ~ FlowerLady

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  4. There was wild dame's rocket all over the place here 30 years ago. No idea what happened, but it's completely gone now, but seeing yours instantly brought back the gorgeous scent. I may need to go hunting for some seed this week!

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  5. Your house reminds me so much of my Aunts who lived near Eldon. Hope it clears up soon & quites raining enough so we could work in our gardens. I only do flowers as there is a farmers market just down the hill from me.

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  6. I always enjoy reading your posts describing your flowers. Clematis is one of my favorite climbing flowers and that one is gorgeous. I planted some seed the last two years but no luck. Our dirt is horrible and when it rains everything floods out.

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  7. I've never seen a Clematis bloom that large! It's very pretty. I wish the sun would come out and stay out a while. This ole dreary, cool weather is getting right down depressing! I know it could be worse. We haven't had any real severe weather, for which I'm very thankful.

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  8. You have beautiful flowers! I wish I could grow peonies here, I really miss them. They are one of the few things hardy enough for me to grow.

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  9. Nellie Moser is so pretty and one I don't have. We were at my sister's for Easter and her DH has 7 clematis trellised along their board fence in the back yard. Nellie was blooming and the whole trellis was in flowers-gorgeous!

    Enjoy your pics.

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  10. Whoa, Nellie! That's some big blossom. Larger even than my H.F.Young. Looks like you have a lot of pale purple blooming right now. Isn't it funny how a lot of the same colors bloom at the same time? Looking forward to seeing your black & blue salvia in bloom.

    Only a TRACE of rain out of all that front yesterday, although the wind was furious - gusts over 50. Even though I put 2 huge rocks on my garden bench, the wind kept blowing it over. Also peeled off the trim strips on my bay window and send near-empty rain barrels flying. Good grief.

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  11. Loved the iris and that purple flower was very pretty!!! We have had nothing but storms,it seems forever. Sunshine today and maybe tomorrow. Blessings jane

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