Potpourri #2

I had to clean up the tabletops around here and get a handle on the place. I was getting pretty spread out with all of the potpourri material, the herbs drying, and the seeds that I've harvested for use for next year. (I did decide to start hanging things from the ceiling in the garage, btw).

I am thankful that I married a patient man. He hasn't said anything about nature completely taking over the house.

So I grabbed a coffee can and decided that the potpourris can be stored in coffee cans and if they pick up the scent of coffee that is okay, because I love coffee. So there I am looking at the materials again and decided to put together another blend.

The one pictured above is Eggplant leaf, Apple slices and Orange and Pink Zinna flowers. (The Apples are from my tree and they are Red Delicious hastened to the earth in an unripened state by the wind.) So I contemplated the blend and decided that it needed a bit more refinement.

So I added Lavender leaf to the mix and it quieted the need to do anything else to it. I think this one is ready to receive a "note" of coffee.

Enough cleaning, don't you think?

Thanks for visiting. To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Potpourri #1

Here is my first potpourri mix and I definately need to dry some more Eggplant leaves because I ran out already, and they do curl nicely in the mix. Here are the ingredients for this blend. It contains Eggplant leaf, Pineapple Quava leaf, Echanacea flowers, and Chase Tree berry clusters.

I haven't dabbled in the fixatives or the essential oils yet to embellish the potpourri. I did read where it is important to use a chopped root fixative and not a powder because the powders will trash the appearance of your potpourri, definately not the look I am going for. The idea of using essential oils is vexing too. I know myself and I end up getting overwhelmed smelling all of the fragrances and dabbing a few of them on, waving them about in the air (you are not supposed to drink them btw.) Anyway, I'm tampering with the balance of my Vata Dosha, so right before that goes completely out of whack I finally end up leaving smelling like a garden and affirming my love of vanilla.

My first instinct is to have everything smell like vanilla, and I also love myrrh. Vanilla, myrrh, but not everything can smell like vanilla and myrrh, and I don't even know if those two fragrances even go together. Oh this is going to be interesting! I will keep you posted!

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening freinds, carry on and hurry back!

Potpourri

I have been collecting everything that I can think of from my garden for potpourri. It's spread out across the table and I am sure it is going to start taking over my house.

Today I gathered Cucumber leaves, Lantana flowers, a tiny peach rosebud, Echanacea flowers and seedheads, Sunflower seedheads,

Yellow Purky Sue flowers, Chaste Tree Berries, Crape Murtle Blossoms, pink Lambs Ear leaves, Penstemmon blossoms, Garlic Chive seedheads, Butterfly Bush seedheads, Chocolate Mint, Calendula Petals, Eucalyptus, Zinna flowers, Blue Salvia flowers,

The items on the glass plate will fit right in, they are interesting seedheads from a tree during a walk in the park, Blue Hawthorn berries, Statice from a bouquet from hubby and a dried Zinna flower. The California Poppy seed hulls might be a stretch but we will see, there's dried Catnip seedheads, and Catnip leaf bundles which should work pretty nicely as a base.

On the kitchen table there are materials that can be used for the base. There is Tulsi, Sage, and Lemon-Lime (mixed) Basil.

The grow shelves have been repurposed as drying shelves and they contain Genovese Basil, and Lemon-Lime Basil.

The available horizontal surfaces are all taken, so in the garage are Apple slices with fresh and dried Zinnas. Once everything is dry I am going to start assembling combinations and maybe consider adding essential oils to the mix.

I enjoy collecting items for potpourri. It is just another way to be surrounded by the colors and textures of your garden.

Thanks for visiting! Garden on!

Help for Her Addiction

Here is the "official" first carrot of the season growing in the full shade bed. The "other"one was half the size, and I ate it and that is that.

Julie my neighbor gave me a mix of Heirloom Tomatoes which I then cut open and saved the seeds. After searching the names of a few on the internet, I believe two are Black Russian Pear (2nd from top left) and Black Zebra Cherry (lower left). When you save seeds, you don't know if it was crossed with something else at pollination, but saving seeds is a gamble that appeals to the Wrangler. I had to protect these cherry tomatoes from Julie's baby. He was popping them in his mouth as fast as he could as she shared them with me.

I belong to an online gardening group which I truly enjoy, (I belong to 3) and in one the thread it came up about gardening addictions and how to distract the husband while you unload a new purchase from the vehicle without him noticing. I shared how, when being confronted about if something is new, to avoid direct eye contact and immediately comment on the weather. It was a funny thread. Later in thinking about it, it shed new light on the little gardening pictures that I have in my kitchen. In the picture of the couple on the left, she is praying for the crop's harvest and the season, and he is praying for her. And in the one on the right, her man has already run off!

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Among Friends

On the indoor grow shelves in the kitchen rest 4 pots of cuttings from various trees and vines. There are cuttings from a blush colored Grape (from Julie's across the street), Bay Tree cuttings, Meyer Lemon cuttings, and a Green Seedless Thompson Grape.

They are in lightweight seed starting medium, in pots tented with plastic bags held by bamboo sticks. I mist them throughout the day.

One of the grapes is starting to leaf out. There is swelling of the bud and signs of green. It is the Green Seedless Thompson from Marilyn's garden. Yeah!

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Having That Space

I've had something on my mind for awhile, how to keep cedar bark from traveling via the wind, or as a result of the cat two stepping while batting at winged things or sometimes he gets filled with the dickens and high tails it around the place, and rocks and things go flying. He's a pretty big cat. So I had alot of the left over ends of tree stake poles from the green house and was tossing around the idea of using them as edging. Hmmm......it's too busy....

Looking further back, I recall thinking that I would like to weight the Blue Salvia stems to the earth so that they will sprout and multiply, and the flowers have all but dwindled. So why not now, while I need some space away from the edging to work out the details.

Coat hangers are perfect to press into rocky soil and hold the stems in place against newly placed black compost rich soil. A snow load would bend the stems down to touch the soil naturally and allow it to occur of it's own, possibly one fateful spring, if this were such a place.

You can see the new soil that has been placed atop the now secured stems.

Looking at the bed where the work was just completed, the energy created by the new edging is frenetic and that is what I was feeling when I was working out the pattern, so I still need some space as the resolution is conjured.

Planting an Aloe in another part of the garden, I know that I am not really working on the pathway per se. I am working on the green house plastic and venting system. I am having That Space.

Then back to the task at hand, and laying the tree stake pole pieces on their side end to end takes care of that frenetic energy, and it is alot quieter now and more in keeping with the overall feel of Black Mountain Garden's theme, Western Zen. This project away from the greenhouse plastic is a nice distraction.

So the cat dancing can resume, and just in time. It seems like he did most of it after dark anyway.

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Spiders on the Patio

I love to propagate plants for plant exchanges and giveaways. Do you have a place where you grow items that you have propagated until they are ready to give away? I use the shaded area of my patio to raise starter plants. I'll need to get more starter pots. The aloe, yucca and hens and chicks have pups that can be potted up. On a similar note, while adding line to the drip irrigation, I unearthed a Grape Hyacinth. The bulb fell into a half dozen babies. Talk about cute. They could be relocated to new locations, but not just then. I couldn't allow myself to be distracted. Task for another day.

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Watering Inside the Lines

Do you keep the almost dead, it has no leaves, plant (melon) that was in the little 6 pack and plant it anyway? Me too! I sprayed it with Die Bug, D.E. so that it wouldn't fall like the Caribou, and it's beginning to get it's leaves back.

Melissa, The Empress, writes that Life is Now, and I would like to say that it's like "right now". I was taking this picture of the twins, the cucumbers, there are two, and saw the hose and said to myself that I didn't have to move it, it was fine, it happens. The next moment I'm inside at the computer sharing about how much water I was using so I write about the drippers, and their concentric rings and trying to keep them inside the bed zones.

When I returned outside the hose had blown at what you can possibly make out as the lighter weakened area next to the nozzle. This was a fountain of 60 psi. It had been running for about 10 minutes or so in a lovely spray pattern that had to be stopped because there is no water play around here without the monitor. Then back I go, trying to keep the water inside the lines.

Thank you for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, Carry On!

Ming Toy Now

The first lily, Ming Toy opened this morning. Last year was the beginning of my obsession with lilies. When they bulldozed the frontage of a residential housing development in order to put in a 12 foot wide drainage channel, I noticed that the entire landscape was in peril, there were hawthorns, rosemarys, and lots of lilies. By the time I returned, it had been cleared by a bulldozer. I identified the green leaves of about 9 lilies and dug them out of the dirt. This is the kind of landscaping I enjoy. I like the thrill of the save, the fact that they were free, and the intrique of not knowing what color they will be.

So here is my surprise daylily, and my first bud. In a couple of days we'll be able to identify this lily by name.

Here is my latest foraging project. This is a start of a cactus that fell off from it's parent plant, and thankfully the landscaping crew doesn't wear gloves so that people like me can add to their cactus gardens. Looks rough, but you can see what one week in the dirt and some water will do.

The front lobe shows sign of it's past, but the other two are plumping up nicely. This is a Prickly Pear cactus and has yellow flowers.

As I am adding cedar mulch to the sunning bed, I look over and notice Symba who must have fallen asleep during a sustained yoga pose.

I need about 4 more bags of mulch for the beds so I'll pick them up next week. It's nice to look out and see something other than highly alkaline dirt.