Coming Home to Color

North Dakota, where I traveled to work at the 12th Annual Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival, was amazing, as it always is. Here I've just gotten up off my now damp butt having gotten frame-filling photos of a Nelson's sparrow on my absolute favorite piece of prairie. In this photo it looks like just grass. Trust me, it's everything. Sedges and wildflowers galore, even little pincushion cacti. 

 

JZ victorious photo by Rick Bohn

 The sparrow formerly known as Nelson's sharp-tailed sparrow. My best shot of a notorious skulker.

North Dakota was so sweet and special to me that I can't bring myself to blog about it yet. Or ever. I don't know. I get too lonesome for those skies, those spaces and those wonderful friends and I have to come back down to earth and write about something else, something right in front of me that's not just a dream or a memory.

I came home to some pretty nice things. Liam was charged with watering all my plants while I was gone, including the precious bonsai collection. He stepped right up to the plate and did an excellent job, with an assist from regular thunderstorms.  We have a wee bit of color going in the front...

Hanging baskets are coming into their own. I adore this new petunia called "Papaya."  Exactly.

Hibiscus "The Path," a Logee's specialty, and a gift from my dear friend Donna. Everyone needs a Path. Her enormous flowers stay open for two full days, instead of rolling up at the end of one, like all the other hibiscus. I feel like throwing a party when two salad-plate sized flowe

rs open at once, it's that wonderful.

A great big fishing spider, possibly Dolomedes tenebrosus. Nah, I'm not afraid of her. I rescued her from a cooking pot in the basement where she'd been trapped. A goodly spider, well met.

House wrens are nesting in one of my boxes for the first time in 22 years. This is not exactly cause for celebration, as a wandering male has already pierced and thrown out a clutch of bluebird eggs in another box. This pair in the driveway has behaved themselves, though. I plan to paint the babies for my upcoming book. Which I will likely never, ever finish. There are too many birds to include. Good news is I've fought back a lot of obstacles to start painting the plates again. It feels good.

June 22, 2014. The first egg appears. I breathe a sigh of relief. They've settled down.

Her mate won't be piercing bluebird eggs now. 

House wren eggs, exquisite red garnets the size of your fingernail.

June 24, 2014

June 25, 2014

June 26, 2014.  She's done, and incubation has commenced. 

You may remember my complaining a lot about having to repot the tomatoes and peppers I planted in mid-January in the greenhouse. I thought I'd have some nice healthy blooming plants by May. What I got was head-high monsters that needed staking before they were even set out, and had to be repotted three times before I was able to plant them in the garden. OK. I jumped the gun. I knew that when I planted those seeds, but spring fever hit me on Jan. 16 and I just had to do SOMETHING. 

Like a woman who wants another baby, I have forgotten the labor pains of growing them under glass. And all I can see now is the JUNE TOMATOES gracing our plates.

I have never had homegrown tomatoes in June. It is sweet beyond describing to be able to go out and pick a double handful in June. I usually have to wait until August. 

Also featured: sweet snack peppers, sugar snap peas, and bodacious Swiss chard, probably the most prolific and willing vegetable I grow. We eat a LOT of chard.

Temporary January madness=June fabulousness

Spring, and Things Coming Ripe

It's taken awhile to get around to lushness, but spring is finally here. It's about a week late. Maybe more. The trees are still all but leafless in the cooler hollows, but they're catching up fast. Everything's busting out. 

The greenhouse was still crammed with plants as of the morning of May 6. Tomatoes and peppers and hibiscus deeply resent nights in the lower 40's. 

They are waist high. And not only that, but...

the Sungolds have RIPE TOMATOES ON THEM!!!! SQUEEEEE!!! MAY TOMATOES TOMATOES IN MAY. Repeat until it sinks in. Well, why not? The plants are 3 1/2 months old! To them, May is August!

 I grew them. In my greenhouse. And soon they will go out into the garden. And we will eat TOMATOES IN MAY from our own garden. Yes I am SHOUTING.

(I'm reading this over, having written it the day before digging something like 60 holes and planted all those plants,  and I can tell you I'm not shouting now. I'm happy just to be breathing.)

However. If I had it to do over I would NOT plant tomatoes in mid-January. Because I have repotted them not once. Not twice. Three times. All 50 of them, peppers too. I don't have any more pots to bump them up into. I got so desperate for soil that I recycled a bunch of potting soil from last year's planters. I added some Osmocote. The plants didn't miss a beat. Learned something, I did. Learned a lot. You don't have to go out and buy fresh bales of Pro-Mix for repotting. You just recycle the soil and add a little Osmocote. That's what you do.

I also learned that there is a limit to how long you can soak peas before you have to plant them. You have to get them in the ground before the root starts growing, or they rot. They rot fast, and spectacularly. And then you have to soak a whole batch more. So don't think you can soak them for a week or something because it's still too cold and dry to plant them. Get them in the ground. Peas don't mind cold. They do mind being warm and wet...

And if you get them in the ground right before a few days of soaking rain, in the dark of the moon, you come home from working your butt off at a festival to find THIS. THIS!!! EVERY PEA COMING UP!!! promising Peas for Everyone come June!!

EVERY SINGLE ONE!! UP UP UP

and if that is not a sight for sore eyes nothing is. Man. I was energetic when I wrote this. 

Speaking of which, my Christmas cactus (now a spring cactus) just keeps dazzling me. It's like a living prom dress.

From kind of scoffing at Zygocactus, I am now their biggest fan, and I'm rooting pieces like crazy. What a spectacular plant! and all from a tiny grocery store impulse buy. I'm in love. I get it. Sorry it took me so long. Maybe it had to be an electric pink one to flip my switch. Still not mad about the wimpy red ones. This color does it for me. Shocking pink. I'd never wear it, but I like a flower that color.

All right. I think that's probably enough fabulousness for one post. I don't want to overload you. I have a gazillion more Costa Rica posts squawking from the cobwebby recesses of my brain, but spring just barged in the door with both elbows out and demanded her due.