Posted on January 1, 2023January 1, 202301/01/2023 new year frolic at Lexington Liverworts near the parking area! Briar is always blinking when she gets her picture taken. We saw some very green fine stuff covering the Sandy loam. Some obvious moss nearby. Then the green stuff with moss capsules! When I got home I saw Mom’s blog post from today. The very fine green coating appears to be the protonema life stage of the moss! Thanks Mom! Guess ‘tis the season. Dog eyes open this time. A big cluster of dead ants. No idea why. A mystery plant on the edge of the path cut. The leftover seed heads of the mystery plant. A second smaller individual of this mysterious plant. The habitat of the mysterious plant. Paula spotted this gorgeous greenbriar leaf! Briar leaps from the water. It was warm out! Bounce bounce bounce! miraculously she wasn’t muddy. Good clean water. Enjoying some last smells before we head home. The Chef made Hoppin’ John for dinner. The green is chard from our garden, frozen from a previous season. The black eyed peas were from the farm share. Paula made cornbread from scratch.
Posted on January 1, 2023January 1, 202312/2022 backlog of infrastructure and little babies Yesterday, 12/31, I finally glued on the rain barrel cap holders that the Chef 3D printed for me! I used epoxy after cleaning both surfaces with ethanol. Paula got solar powered outdoor lights for Christmas and has used them to make the path to the compost visible! Edit: thanks to Mom for inquiring if we can turn the lights out. Yes we can! It’s important not to pollute the dark with more light than we use at any given moment. I am hoping these tiny seedlings are the annual bluets that sometimes grow in this part of the yard. Keeping an eye on them. A tinier potential annual bluet seedling next to the comparatively large wild geraniums. These two pictures were 12/31/2022. 12/28/2022, the Ratibida columnifera rosettes survived the big cold! Two Verbena halei rosettes also exist and made it! Finally, and very thrilling, two potential Penstemon oklahomensis seedlings! They don’t appear to be hairy leaves like some other common seedling volunteers. Stay tuned. Shackleton enjoyed a leashed walk in the same excellent 12/28 weather. Jeanne kindly sent us some Salaginella riddellii- Riddell’s Spike-Moss. We put the biggest chunk in the rainbow garden (in green of course) on 12/25. We put a smaller piece of the spike moss in the cactus planter. 12/25 was so nice we also moved some volunteers. This is the big root of a poke berry! We moved those along the back fence where another pokeberry lives. We also moved several ampelopsis from random spots in the yard to along the south fence trellis. A blackjack oak acorn with a sprout on it! We planted this exciting find (12/24) into a pot on 12/25. Fingers crossed for a spring sprout. Judy gave us an adorable toad house! I have placed it near the veggie beds. Please come eat our earwigs, toad friends. 12/24 checking the pot containing Sedum nutallii from Jeanne. The sedums seem to have made it along with Verbena rosettes (V. Halei??) and other intriguing volunteers. Going somewhere! Wow!! Happy briar in the car. On 12/24 we visited the lake at Lexington WMA. This seasonal creek was frozen solid! The lake was too. Briar wears her hunter orange. After the deep freeze, only the top tips of the recently transplanted rosemary got frozen. They were pressed down by the sheets. But the sheets protected the rest of the plant!
Posted on January 1, 2023January 1, 202312/31/2022 turning compost, turning new year It was a beautiful day yesterday so Paula wanted to turn the compost! I fetched our pitchfork which is from Mom and Dad. The Chef created a new handle and stick for it. The back, older pile may be ready by spring! Weirdly it was drier, though. We set up some hoses to direct water from the closest rain barrels to both piles now, since it’s not good to leave water in the barrels when it might freeze. A very fast rollypolley! Paula adeptly captured this woodroach. It’s a North American native genus! For those worried about roaches in the house, I’ve never seen one in the house. This is an outside only friend, doing its ecological role of nutrient cycling by munching on detritus (here, in the compost- just what we need for veggie waste to be turned into good rich soil!). It’s the invasive and introduced-by-European-settlers (presumably accidentally) roaches that are human-associated, such as the German Cockroach. The tragic face of a dog not allowed in the compost area. She likes to eat eggshells. There’s also a great stash of feral cat poop down behind the house in the leaves. For Briar’s sake, please keep your cats indoors. She might be allowed a chance at the eggshells if there wasn’t cat poop!!
Posted on December 11, 2022December 11, 202212/11/2022 teparies in soup Yum. Tortilla soup by Wes. Paula made the beans and used up 2021’s mix of tepary beans from the garden!
Posted on December 6, 2022December 6, 202212/06/2022 green tomatoes Friends gave us the extra tomatoes from their garden when it was about to freeze. They have been gradually turning red over the last few weeks. Tonight Paula used some of the green ones in a spicy yet delicious dish!
Posted on November 24, 2022November 24, 202211/24/2022 plenty of thanks We thought it was supposed to rain today, so yesterday we picked up all the tomato cages and put all the vegetable debris in the city compost pile. (I don’t know that ours gets hot enough to kill any diseases.). We piled the dead marigolds on the bed where we’ll put peppers next year. We put some sugar pea seeds there to see if the debris will shelter them. We took the plastic off the greens so they could get rain. We put cilantro seeds everywhere and carrot seeds among the greens. For Thanksgiving, Paula started our Corrientes cowpeas soaking. The Turkey is from Paula’s aunt and uncle in Texas where they raise some. All the veggies in the beans are from the farm share except garden poblanos. Wes used some store apples and store ham as flavors. But otherwise the veggies are all our garden or the farm share!
Posted on November 13, 2022November 13, 202211/12/2022 frosty Marigolds are done. Photo by Paula. Winecup rosettes are fine for the winter! Photo also by Paula. We went to look at Saxon park. It was fun. Then we went home. Having dog thoughts in the backyard. Catctus Tom kha (Thai coconut chicken soup). Has garden lemongrass in it. Lemongrass is not frost hardy so Paula divided the stems to keep a few indoors over the winter, and froze a bunch of stems to use.
Posted on October 11, 2022October 12, 202210/09/2022 Saxon park Schinia gaurae moth (the clouded crimson) caterpillar on false gaura! We counted nine around our 1.75 mi loop. The tall rosettes of the false gaura were nice to see since they look just like my garden one. A Schinia moth I haven’t identified feeding on aster flowers. This bumblebee loved the Salvia azurea. Back of two spotted bumblebee where you can see the spots! Funnel web spider says no pictures, please. A tree cricket hiding on Liatris. The seed pod of a Baptisia. Mom said possibly B. australis var. minor Paula found two big beautiful lynx spider mommas! Wow! This is one guarding its egg sac. A tiny caterpillar on false gaura. The first Solomon’s seal I’ve seen in the wild! We have several in the yard but no idea if they’re volunteers or planted. Probably a buckwheat, the botany consulting committee says. Abby, Mom, and Jeanne also agreed this was probably a dwarf lead plant. Paula found a magnificent sumac leaf turning yellow to red. The Sumac is really turning beautiful reds all over!
Posted on October 3, 2022October 3, 202210/03/2022 Bean Club dinner and other excitement My colleague gave me these delicious tiny tomatoes from her sister’s garden east of here. She said it’s a hybrid between tommy toe and another variety and has bred true for two ish years! I’m saving some! A yellow iris by the rock garden. Polenta with cranberry beans from Bean Club and fancy sausage from California. Salad includes farm share peppers and the main mean also included summer squash from the farm share. A cooked cranberry bean. They were very creamy in texture! The cranberry bean broth was very savory. The Chef laughed at us taking a picture. Here’s some of the remaining cranberry beans. They have a tan base but occasionally the red speckles and stripes turn the bean almost completely red! You can see they are nice chunky big beans. Larger than the average pinto.
Posted on August 19, 2022August 19, 202208/13/2022 harsh sun Paula noticed some of the baby Coryphantha sulcata were possibly getting sunscald, because they were turning a bit brown on the tips. She has cleverly shaded them with thin coffee filters that let some light in. They seem to be happier now. Presumably this better imitates where a baby cactus might grow up in the wild.