I’m about to have garlic.
And I”m about to have salad.
But, the Japanese sweet potatoes are not happening. Beauregard it is.
-
-
We had a couple of nasty ice storms, this winter, and some nights of single digits, too. So, we lost some winter crops in the raised beds and a Bradford pear tree at the end of the driveway. I don’t regret the loss of the fruitless pear. I know they grow fast and are a boon to contractors, but I think I fruit tree that won’t bear is a waste of space. Because we lost that Bradford, I’m hoping the real pear I planted in that tree line will have a better chance this year.
It had a tall spike of a trunk. I cut it out a couple of days ago so that it would aim its growth outward, where I can actually reach any fruit that survives the deer. I dipped it in some rooting hormone and then in a pot of good, composty dirt. I don’t really expect to get a tree from it, but it didn’t cost me anything to try.
The Santa Rosa plum, to the right of the front door is covered in blossoms. The elephant heart plum by the driveway, isn’t as full, but still looks promising. The peach has blossoms, too. The apples have no buds, yet. The sour cherry had buds all over, but nothing has actually opened.
The kiwis are still dormant and the passionfruit is, too. But, there are buds all over all the blueberries.
The crabapple tree is covered in young leaves, not fully emerged, and I don’t see any flower buds. That tree has never bloomed. How does a crabapple never bloom? I’ve never seen such a thing in my life. And I got it to pollinate an apple tree that has since died and been replaced by two others, so I really find the lack of blossoms ridiculous.
Spring is creeping in and I am loving it.
-
I spent the end of last week driving to Nashville, Indiana to visit friends. I met Patti at her sister’s house in Forest, Virginia and left my car there.
We took Patti’s car through the coal fields of southern Virginia and Kentucky, finally getting a hotel room in Campton, KY when the snow got so bad we gave up on making it to Lexington that night. The only place to get dinner was a Mexican joint that had a Mexican man cooking and an Anglo girl waiting tables and no other customers. The waitress all but begged us to come back the next day. She had come to Campton to be near her mother, she didn’t say why, and, in her words, no one does anything there except drugs.
We got coffee breakfast at the Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe in Frankfort. It is in the funky part of the city with lots of interesting shops nearby.
Dinner Thursday night was at Jan’s house. She made a lovely marinara spaghetti with meatballs on the side. Ken chose a very nice Italian wine to go with it.
Friday night, I made Crab bisque for dinner and Ken chose a Washington state chardonnay as accompaniment. It was only mildly oaked so it worked well.
On Saturday, we went out for dinner in a bar that is trying to become a restaurant. The choices around the table were varied and Ken chose a very smooth Malbec. Trying to be quick, my photo is a little blurred.
I would have any of these again.
We took a northern route home on Sunday, stopping at Jungle Jim’s International Market to pick up snacks for supper in our hotel and generally entertain ourselves wandering around the Ikea of food stores. I got my son a bottle of Scotch bonnet hot sauce, picked up a Star Trek: The Next Generation Pez dispensers for a coworker and got a bottle of Plungerhead old vine Zinfandel from Lodi, California for myself. Happily for me, they have it at Total Wine.
It was a fun trip. I loved seeing unfamiliar landscape, prowling around Nashville, walking in Jan’s woods and visiting with my friends face to face rather than via the internet. Traveling with Patti was delightful. We looked for peculiar church names and looked up places worth noticing on my Roadside America app. But, I am very glad to be home, out of the car and sleeping in my own bed next to my sweetie.
-
This was the end of my driveway last summer. Those are two Bradford pear trees with a little fruiting pear tree that I planted in between them.
Bradford pear trees grow quickly and are often used here by developers to replace what they have removed while building. But, they’re brittle, so they lose limbs easily in bad weather, and the flowers stink in the Spring. Fruit trees that don’t bear fruit make no sense to me, either.
I have planted real fruit in between the Bradfords that run down the property line between my yard and my neighbors on the left. Now, the fruiting pear tree will get more sun.
An odd thing about my Bradfords, too, is that they must have all been planted at the same time, but they get progressively small as they get further from the road.
Last Friday, we had a massive ice storm that knocked out the power all over our part of the state. Pine trees and other evergreens, including our neighbors cedar tree, magnolias and Bradford pears were snapping branches left and right. The Bradford at the end of the row, by the street, broke three time and finally gave it up.
Tree and limb guys are all over the place, making money hand over fist.
Three trucks of workers were next door,yesterday, cleaning up the neighbors’ yard. Then, they went down the street to do another yard. Before they got out of the neighborhood, Chuck caught them and they dumped ALL the wood chips they already had in the truck in our back yard, where we needed it so desperately to renew the labyrinth.
Then, they went to work on our mess.
In less than an hour, they finished. and we have another load of wood chips.
The entrance to the house looks empty, now.
And the mulch pile is impressive.
-
The green coming up on the Beauregard potato was so enthusiastic that I wished it was time to plant it. But, it really isn’t time yet. There’s a bunch more of cold weather coming. So, I pinched off all the leaf clusters of any size and stuck them in a jar of water to let them root into slips. There are a couple of tiny leaves on the piece of potato that has roots coming out of the bottom.
The Japanese sweet potato isn’t doing anything yet.
I need to decide where to plant these when the weather is warm enough. I have put the sunchokes in the bed where I planted sweet potatoes last year. My neighbor hacks or Roundups anything that comes through on her side of the fence. So, vines over there are a really bad idea. And sweet potatoes do vine all over the place. I may decide to take Chuck up on his offer of a potato pot and put them on the deck. It would make harvesting easier and the vines on the rails would be attractive.
I am the Audience 