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.  My gardening companion has mowed.  A good first start.  He removed the champion-sized pokeweed (the biggest I've ever seen) from border I see from from my study window (the oakleaf hydrangea and butterfly bush look fine).  And the giant garden phlox next to my garden shed (viewed from my gardening companion's window) looks beautiful.

So, I'll venture forth and start weeding, I guess.  I've ordered garlic for fall planting and yet another sort of arugula (MyWay) to try!

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Greens and clear mountains

A quick trip "up the hill" for a meeting found me admiring the clear view of the mountains and a lovely sunset.

late winter greens from a previous year

A bonus from this trip was collecting greens (arugula, mustards, kale and turnip greens) from my unprotected raised beds. It's rather remarkable how they've bounced back from sudden low temperatures in the low 20°s a couple of times already -- low temperatures are predicted again for tonight.  The kale isn't surprising, but the arugula and mustards?

The mache and creasy greens look great and I've left them for harvest later in the winter! They're quite OK freezing solid, amazingly.

The remnants of the broccoli stems (totally frosted)make me feel better about the woodchuck muching earlier in fall - I probably wouldn't have had a harvest anyway.

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Arugula

My arugula patches have sailed through the winter, so far, both here in the Piedmont and in the mountains. Of course, the winter has been mild! (It was 70° F this afternoon - peculiar).

I had the idea that arugula's frost tolerance was more like "normal" lettuce (not Winter Density or North Pole or Arctic King), and so it's been a revelation to have these flourishing patches -- happily, it's the one "green" (along with cilantro) that deer haven't eaten in the satellite garden (in the Piedmont). 

It's a bit discouraging to think I'll need to fence/protect/defend my less 'spicy' greens from deer, if I want to grow them. Kale, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, collards, etc. have all disappeared as deer forage over the last few cool-weather seasons.  Even French sorrel -- yikes.

Happily, in the mountains, my raised beds are in front of the house, and I don't think we have deer (yet), and only very brave woodchucks venture that far out of the woodland ravine behind the house (in dry summers, primarily).

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