Pocket meadow and views

view through the front door I'm grateful today for the wonderful view out the doors in our small mountain house.pocket meadow- late August 2014We've certainly created the view out the front door, and the back -- well, the forest overstory was there, but it was my gardening companion's hard work...

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Garlic chives, a bountiful evergreen crop

The evergreen garlic chives supplies plenty of fresh greens all year. At the top of the photo on the left, you can see how big the spaghetti squash plants are that I talked about last time and the okra just is going nuts. We are harvesting several each day, which is a good thing...Harvest with a sharp...

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Sunflowers and morning light

I've just started walking along the path near the French Broad River in Biltmore Estate on a regular basis.  It's a magical place, and we've certainly enjoyed visiting the gardens and lagoon paths over the years, with Woody and our previous dogs, too.But the path that extends from Antler Hill Village...

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A cleaned up vegetable bed

I may just be preparing food for woodchucks, but I was so happy this weekend to get my main vegetable garden bed cleaned up. I'd be too embarrassed to show what it looked like at its worst. But this image is evocative.A last block to be weededNow, I've sown beet, spinach, cress, arugula, turnip, and...

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Gardening renovation and clean-up

Happily, a couple of days of spending quite a bit of time in our weedy and overgrown landscape (left alone all summer) is starting to feel like progress is being made.The main vegetable garden is almost free of its cloak of crabgrass and some sort of amaranth-like weed, my potting bench (which had been almost engulfed by the giant Florida Anise behind it) has been moved forward, with a nicely reordered...

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Taking my own advice (re gardening)

I've found doing landscape consultations both fun and rewarding (interesting, too).What I love to do is help encourage people to consider all of their "needs" in their landscape (they're all SO different), but most importantly, I find, is to encourage them to focus on what kind of gardening they enjoy...

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An overgrown garden

Hmm, coming home to the Piedmont, I just want to run directly into the house.  The garden, front and back, is overgrown.The front meadow is overridden with common milkweed and river oats (and needs a good bushwacking), there are weedy edges everywhere, and my "main" vegetable garden is full of weedy summer annuals, happy for a respite from the gardener, I guess.I hardly want to venture forth. ...

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Pollinators

pocket meadow -mid-August 2014The pocket meadow in front is being visited by all sorts of bees and butterflies.  What fun!  The Joe-Pye, Boneset, Phlox, and Ironweed are all in play, not to mention the South American Salvia guaranitica, which our native ruby-throated hummingbirds love.Bumblebee...

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Fall in mid-August

It was an amazing day -- cool dry air blowing through.   Highs in the 70's.  This is September weather, even in the mountains of Western North Carolina.We had delicious costata zucchini squash from the garden as part of dinner tonight -- the first squash of the summer. Totally curious, but I'm grateful. They were delicious.It's really time for fall veggie change outs, but what am I...

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Community gardening

I loved being able to help out with a median planting this morning.It's nearby, and one of my fellow garden club members had established it, when she was the director (for many years) of Asheville Greenworks (a wonderful local non-profit that plants trees and small-scale green spaces throughout the...

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Spaghetti squash recipes & planting

A store-bought spaghetti squash contained a bunch of sprouted seeds.How long had it been sitting there in the store?I was craving a spaghetti squash, so we bought one. The rind seemed unusually hard and quite a number of the seeds had sprouted. I try not to waste squash seeds of any kind, so if I'm...

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Finally, some green beans

I never thought it would be mid-August when I'd harvest my first beans of the season.  They're lovely French filet pole beans (I think). I poked in seeds very late, not expecting very much, but finally, I had 5 lovely beans to harvest. They'll be great with the (first) Cozelle zucchini that will be ready tomorrow!  Curious.I'm already thinking about fall vegetables, seeds, sharing thoughts...

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A curious summer in the (vegetable) garden

I just now have a squash developing in my vegetable garden.  The pole beans are finally flowering.  But wait, it's early August?Thankfully, I've been harvesting and putting up tomatoes since mid-July (also late!)I'm also harvesting some chard and beet greens, and making pesto with both parsley and basil, hooray, and have some summer-sown cilantro, too.A strange summer for veggies, to be...

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