I’m so enjoying my cool-season greens this spring:  spinach, lettuce, kale and swiss chard.  I’ve planted an assortment of tomatoes (San Marzano, Better Boy, and Sungold) along with an Italian pepper and Pingtung eggplant for our summer tenants. I’m delighted that they’re both interested in growing vegetables!  My raised bed are great, even as we’ve converted some of my former vegetable-growing areas to native plants as we now have a northern garden to tend, too ..read more

The cool-season greens in my raised beds are doing well, thanks to cool weather and the addition of mushroom compost and sustained release organic fertilizer after we returned from Quebec in early March. I’m a happy gardener when I can share a bunch of beautiful purple kale, harvested yesterday, with a good friend this afternoon and harvest chard for this evening’s dinner. There are harvests to come thais month, so plenty of kale, chard, and spinach ..read more

 In full flower now ..read more

A duplicate post from Places of the Spirit. As the forest below our house greens up, spring continues to emerge.  The dogwoods, red buckeyes, painted buckeyes, and yellow buckeyes are in flower, not to mention the recent emergence of Frazer magnolias.   The woodland wildflowers are doing well this year -- lovely to see them. Robin's plantain, trillium, celadine poppy, foamflower, and black cohosh, The coral honeysuckle has rebounded from an apparent demise a few years back, and is looking great. The flame azalea on the side of the house is about to pop! Beautiful ..read more

I planted cool-season veggie transplants WAY too early, shortly after returning from Quebec, on a very spring-like weekend in Asheville.  I think I planted on March 11th. It was an enthusiastic nod to gardening again, as I welcomed seeing green after 2 snowy months of wonderful cross-country skiing.  I actually hadn't checked the forecast ahead (a newbie gardener mistake for an experienced gardener!)  I did know better, but my vegetable gardening patterns have been upended with time in Quebec in summer and fall, different than my familiar year-round gardening practices here in t ..read more

I was so delighted to read my friend and former colleague's post on Facebook, about a Hepatica colonizing a mossy rock and now flowering at the South Carolina Botanical Garden, where I used to work.   My friend and former colleague, Sue Watts, posted this wonderful documentation of a spreading Hepatica. They don't reproduce prolifically at all, so a good thing!    I watched a plant at the Garden where Sue still works, for years. So heartened to see that this one is spreading on a mossy rock. And wonderful to see it flowering. She wrote, I've checked this rock every year for at ..read more

It's an encouraging trend, I think, as companies manage to grow vertical strawberries under LED lights or these in greenhouses. Savoura is a company that produces delicious greenhouse tomatoes here in summer; so why not strawberries in winter, too?  Their website doesn't provide much information about how they're growing them, but they smell good and the packaging is refreshingly compostable ..read more

We left early this year, taking a window of clear weather that fell over Jan 1-3.  We weren't sure what that would mean, hopefully less trucks, but maybe a lot more returning holiday travelers. That turned out to be pretty on-target, although I'd have been happier with fewer holiday travelers in a rush to get back home. The weather cooperated, with a bit of fog early on, then a few flurries, but nothing substantial.  Perfect. My venerable Volvo XC wagon was making its last trip, complete with snow tires and a few niggling issues.  It's been a really good car and hopefully will b ..read more

 It’s early, I think, for robins to be harvesting the winterberries from the tree next door.  There was a substantial flock circling from the big oak across the street to yum up the berries. But we’ve had significantly cold weather in the last week, followed by warm days, so the tannin levels must be fine, with lipid-rich fruits attractive. The number of robins was remarkable -a large flock, swooping in. They took all of the berries over a 15-20 minute period.     ..read more

I had hoped that I’d taken a photo of the flourishing Swiss Chard that illuminated the deepest raised bed. Our summer and early fall renters didn’t like chard, so the leaves to harvest have been large and delicious. But no such luck.  I harvested all of the leaves ahead of a hard freeze tonight. It made a delicious and nutritious addition to meals to come.   ..read more