An eastern black swallowtail enjoying my coneflowers.

More bees

Bee and lavender

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bird, asparagus, yard

I was looking around my back yard this afternoon after work, and paused in the back corner of the yard, under the tree branches. This is a spot under the boughs of numerous trees: The broken (but still alive) arms of a choke cherry, the scraggly limbs of young and crowded hackberry and ash, and, above them all, a towering tulip tree. Immediately after I stopped, I heard bird calls close over my head, and saw movement. I couldn't tell what I saw at first, but a tufted titmouse fluttered down to branches within 7 or 8 feet of me; then a red bellied woodpecker stopped on a dead cherry limb. Then came a hairy woodpecker to the same spot. Other birds, hidden from view in the foliage, weren't far away. It was weird; I spend lots of time looking from my windows, often with binoculars, trying to get a good look. But out there, in that shadowy spot, I was in their world, and they hardly paid attention to me. They were so close. I wonder how close they would have been had I not been wearing a bright white shirt? I should research how to build a bird blind.

I put quite a bit of effort into weeding the asparagus bed, then hauled several bins full of old composted leaf mould to the bed to use as mulch. To get to the leaves, I yanked up tons of ground ivy, wintercreeper, and Virginia creeper. The leaves seemed wonderfully composted; dry, crumbly, rich. Then I weeded a little more in some other spots, then mowed the front yard.

Now I'm going to eat focaccia with kale and garlic scapes and diced tomato on top.

Coneflowers

I love 'em.

Last night's dinner

 I'm pretty proud of the dinner I fixed last night. My family enjoyed it and expressed appreciation, but by golly, that's not good enough. I need to record it for posterity and put it in public. No pictures, unfortunately.

I baked and broiled chicken breasts with barbecue sauce, and the sauce clung nicely to it in the oven. It ended up having a very good flavor, but was just a bit too tough.

I sautéed red onion and chard stem; then sautéed salted summer squash with soy sauce; then combined all that with sliced chard leave in the skillet with a bit more soy sauce. That was to go with the white rice I cooked.

I some variety of long, mild sweet pepper that my fiend Gregg grew, split them open, seeded them, and boiled them. I stuffed them with a mix of left over taco filling, cream cheese, salsa, and sautéed diced pepper, then baked, topped with shredded cheddar.

It all went together quite well and looked very pretty.

Magic Labyrinth & Asparagus

Two days ago I picked the year's first three asparagus stalks.  They were sweet and tender; we ate them with sloppy joes and tater tots. mmm.

And tonight we played Magic Labyrinth.

Blackberries coming in

Which did I get more of: blackberries, or mosquito bites?

I almost have enough for blackberry ice cream. Maybe this weekend.

January carrots

I just pulled these from the partially frozen earth in my back yard. First of the year! No, wait...the last of last year's! ...or maybe a bit if both.

Coneflower with mason bee

Yay, they are blooming!

Spiderwort and bee balm.

Coreopsis

My coreopsis is blooming. It's good stuff.  Next year I think I'll move some things so that the yellow coreopsis and blue spiderwort are next to one another, since they bloom at the same time and the color contrast would be very nice.

Someone looking at my blog might think that I have a nice big healthy garden and take good care of it.  Not true. It's weedy and largely unmulched and is generally unimpressive.  I am happy to report, though, that my three tomato plants, in tilled soil, are the happiest-looking I've ever had, and I might actually be getting some edible carrots soon.  There are lots of little peppers on my cayenne plants and the basil is, as always, doing well.

Blackberry flower and ant

This ant was very happy with the blissom. I heard her saying, "Oh boy, yum!"

Wild flower detective work

I found a mystery plant growing among my Asiatic lilies and daffodils, and had to research it to figure out what it was.  First, I noticed that its flowers and stalk were similar to those of ground ivy (creeping charlie). I had recently learned that ground ivy was a near relative of mint, which completely made sense in light of its strong odor and invasive nature, plus its stem shape.  I put a photo of the plant on Facebook, and my friend Helga thought it looked like ajuga, which I also have in my yard.  It really was similar to ajuga, but the leaves were the wrong shape, but then I found out that ajuga is also in the family Lamiaceae, along with mint. Aha! So I started looking into other plants in Lamiaceae, but it’s a huge family.  But I knew I was on the right track. Finally, after looking at lots of categories of Lamiaceae, I hit upon some combination of key words that led me to the answer: Salvia lyrata, also known as lyre-leaf sage, a native wildflower.  I forget how I finally figured it out exactly, but I think I tried looking for lobe-leafed salvias and spotted it.

Anyway, I am happy to figure it out.  The information I read indicates that it reseeds easily and can be invasive, but since it’s a native flowering plant I think I’m OK with that.  That’s what I want.

Salvia lyrata

gardening

Yesterday I put in some work on the garden. I had done a little work already, planting some carrot and spinach seeds, but this weekend was the first time I was able to devote a real chunk of time (probably 5 hours) to it.  I moved around some perennials, weeded, turned over some soil, raked out some old stuff, and spent a significant amount of time staring at the garden trying to figure out what I needed to do.  There is a lot still to work on, however; it really feels like I hardly got started.

Garden de-briefing

I yanked out my big tomato vines last week; they were black and wilted, drooped over their cages, looking every bit how you would expect tomatoes to look after some hard freezes.  One of them never amounted to much, and only gave me a few tomatoes. The other, next to it, was quite large and gave me many good tomatoes, even with stink bugs ravaging it.  When I pulled it (with difficulty) from the ground I was impressed by its thick, strong root system.  I don't know if it was the cultivar, or the location, or the soil, or what, but I hope I can duplicate that next year.  I wish I could remember what cultivar it was.

Early last week I finished off the last of my fried green tomatoes, and they were very good.  My first efforts at making them a few years ago were only marginally successful, but I think I'm pretty good at it now.  It sure makes a big mess, though.

I think the only things that still look green are the lavender and the sage. If I can make some time, I still intend to dig up my glad bulbs for the winter; I'm sure it's not too late, and it needs to be done, but there are always some other projects that take priority.  That's made even more difficult by the facts that it's now completely dark when I get home from work, and on the weekends lately it's been snowing or raining.

I have compost I need to transfer to a small raised bed I made from cinder blocks; then I can put all my leaves and other compost over into the proper compost cage.  But apart from that, and cutting back some weeds from the back fence, I'll be mostly ignoring my back yard until March or April.

Fried green tomatoes

On Sunday I picked a dozen green tomatoes from my back yard. I left behind ones too small or scarred. 

I made a bunch of fried tomatoes slices, and have more tomatoes for later, too. Maybe I will make some green tomatoes salsa.

Fried green tomatoes are sort of a big production,  but I have finally gotten good at it, and streamlined it.  These came out pretty tasty.

A Fishing Spider

Dolomedes tenebrosus, a fishing spider, living near the green house at school.

D. tenebrosus photo by Mark Tabler

Stink bug molting

Just in case you thought you could not detest them more, here is a loathsome photo from my sunflowers.

Spiderwort, cilantro, bee balm, bachelor's button, mustard spinach