More Flowers

One of my favorite spring flowers are maple flowers. There's a huge old maple tree in the yard that is probably about as old as the house (ca 100 years) and right now it is in full bloom. Years ago I embroidered maple flowers on the yoke of a nightgown I made for one of my daughters. When the night gown wore out she cut off the yoke and saved it. I think she still has it.

I finally got all the flowers knitted to decorate a dozen of my felted hats. I've been working on these for several days. They are a lot of fun to make. Today I ran them through the washing machine and by tomorrow will have the hats finished and labeled. As I will be setting up my first crafts booth of the year at the farmers market this coming Saturday I have been hustling to get everything ready. I always forget how long it takes to just get the labels on everything.

Joel got the tomato plants planted in the hoophouse and more onion plants out in the garden. The weather has warmed up a bit so her got a lot more garden beds rototilled. Tomorrow I hope to get some more flowers set out. I have stocks, godetias, and amaranths busting out of their soil blocks and needing to get in the ground.

Blooming plants inside and out

We have this Christmas cactus on the windosill over the sink. it blooms beautifuuly when it is suppossed to, between Thanksgiving and Christmas but then the silly thing keeps putting out a few buds every few weeks after that. this last bunch of flowers came out just a few days ago.
Outside the Asian pears are beginning to bloom. This is an especially pretty little tree with yellow green leaves bordered in a reddish color with the pretty white blossoms. Our oldest daughter has been giving us trees for our birthdays the last several years. Both of our birthdays are in the two weeks after Christmas so no one is particularly interested in parties, etc. We love getting the trees. She's sent us several apples, four hazelnuts, several Asian pears and a peach, a pluot (a cross between an apricot and a plum) and two tea bushes over the years.

Almost First Farmers Market of the Season

I meant to take pictures of the first weekly market of the year last weekend. I even had the camera with me. but I was just too cold to even think of doing it. Besides I just would have had snowflakes and rain on the lens anyway.

So, I took pictures of the second weekly market of the 2008 season. The weather was lovely, sunny and warm, at least if you stood in the sun. And no snow in sight anywhere.
We had lots of good stuff especially the overwintered brassicas such as the purple sprouting broccoli and overwintered cauliflower above. The purple sprouting broccoli is a popular vegetable in Britain but not often seen here except at farmers markets where the farmer grows specialty crops and things you never seen anywhere else. The overwintered cauliflower is a special treat as it tastes much, much better than summer cauliflower. They are just different varieities that grow over the winter and make heads in the spring. But all the brassicas are happier and taste better in cooler temperatures.

More rugs, and more farm work

I got started today on what will probably be the last rag rug warp until next fall. Once the market starts up on a weekly basis I don't have a lot of time for fiber arts. Not that I don't have a bunch of ideas for other rugs in other color combinations. But they will have to wait until fall.

Today we planted the second bed of onion sets, the first bed of sunflowers, more radishes and the first bed of beets. Joel also planted out a bunch of brassica seedlings and tilled up more ground. Our garden area is pretty wet in the winter and dries out slowly, first the slightly higher areas and last the lowest ones. So we don't till the whole thing at any point. We work up whatever beds are dry enough and plant in them and then go on bit by bit until it is all planted, usually not until June.

The apple trees are just starting to show a bit of color. If we get a bit of warmer weather they'll be in full bloom very soon. I've been wondering if we will get any plums this year. The egg plum has been in full bloom since last week's snow but it has been awfully cold for any pollinators to be out and I haven't seen more than two or three bee type critters in it. We don't have many honey bees here so we have always depended on native pollinators for our fruits and vegetables. They do a good job. Over the years several people have brought bee hives here but it is a small island and we don't have a lot of big areas of flowers so it is hard for the bees to make much of a honey crop.

Naked Sheep

Joel started shearing our 8 adult sheep today. He got four of them finished and we'll have some really nice wool to make rugs out of. He uses hand shears to do the job and doesn't try to do the whole flock in one sitting.
The lambs are so funny when you shear their moms. They run around and bleat looking totally lost as their once very wooly mother comes out of the barn a mere shadow of her former self. She just bleats in annoyance and would, I know, roll her eyes, if sheep could roll their eyes, at her offspring. "I'm right here, chill." Eventually the lamb discovers that all of mom's essential parts are right where they've always been and the family goes off together.

Living with wildlife (and chickens)

I woke up this morning hearing a ruckus from the chickens. I looked out the window and saw the rooster, out of his pen, running for the bushes near the house. I got dressed and went out to see what was up and startled a mature bald eagle who had just killed one of my Barred Rock hens. The chickens are kept in small pens called chicken tractors that are moved around the garden where they can eat bugs and scratch up weeds. The wire at the end of this pen was loose. It looked like the chickens had tried to escape the eagle by forcing their way out of the pen. Last spring I chased an eagle away twice who was chasing my chickens, probably the same one. Once it actually grabbed one and tried to take off with it. But a full grown Buff Orpington, like the ones in the picture, is too heavy for an eagle to get off the ground with, so as soon as it saw me it dropped the chicken, who ran for cover and survived the experience. I rarely let the chickens loose to run around just for that reason. In the evening when we are around I will often let them out for a couple of hours. Once chickens are used to sleeping in their pen they'll go back there when it gets dark and I can shut them up again.

April snow

Well, today was the first Farmers Market of the season and this was the beginning of our 22nd year at the market. And it was the most miserable day we have ever spent there. There was blowing rain and sleet and snow. It was COLD. My fingers gave up early on after handling wet vegetables and only the coffee guy's product kept them functional at all. Well, the vegetables didn't wilt, there is that. And there were our wonderful, wonderful customers who came out in the awful weather and bought our broccoli and rhubarb and greens. Thank you so very, very much to each and every one of you. People kept saying they were surprised we were there, but the snow didn't start until we were about three quarters of the way through harvesting yesterday. That's a picture of a flowering plum tree in the snow storm about 3:00 Friday afternoon. At that point with all those vegetables in boxes we either have to try and sell it or compost it. And we didn't really believe that it could be that cold in the middle of April. Oh, well, no where to go but up. In the middle of August when it's in the 80's and the vegetables are wilting we'll remember this day, with fondness???