Pen and ink house portrait

 Here's another, finished late last night.  This one is 6 x 9 inches on cold press watercolor paper. This is a pretty house and it was pleasant to draw.

Asparagus

The last blog post is a photo of asparagus from my garden. I planted it the year before last, and this is the first year that I’ve felt like it is coming in well enough to harvest. I’ve sautéed a few bunches, and it has been quite good—flavorful and tender.  I have had quite a few gardening flops, but this isn’t one of them.

Kim doesn’t seem to react this way, nor does anyone else I know, but I find asparagus comical.  Every other thing in my garden starts as a seedling or a sprout that I have to wait on to develop, or I have to wait for it to grow fruit to pick, or to grow enough leaves to snip off.  But asparagus gives me the goofy impression that there is a tiny guy hiding under the soil with a bundle of full-grown asparagus spears under his arm, and he keeps reaching up and poking them through the soil for me to pick.

Creekside art

I had some time to kill in Taylorsville while the girls attended a birthday party. Luckily, Waterford Park was nearby.

Bedecked

Maybe a little gardening, 2013

My own personal 2013 gardening season is underway.  I don’t have any big, long-term plans.  Judy gave me some spare broccoli, arugula, and kale seedlings, which I planted on Sunday.  They look pretty happy where they are.

I also sowed some bachelor’s button and cilantro seeds, all mixed in the same spot.  Next to those, one of the two rosemary plants from last year appears to have survived the winter.  I hope it starts growing again.

I’m looking for signs of my asparagus, of which I have four of five plants.  I recall from last year that it was sort of late in the spring before I saw it pop out of the soil.  This will be the first year that I’ll try harvesting from it.

The Asiatic lilies and glads are popping out.  Last year, the lilies had just been divided, so they were looking a little scrawny.  This year they should look pretty good.

I have seeds for green onions (scallions) and peas, but I need to find a spot for them.  My windfall of arugula and kale took their space.  The girls have little garden boxes Judy made with them last year, and which are so far empty.  Those might be just the spot for them, or at least the peas, which the girls like growing, picking, and eating.

The hostas by our front porch looked bad last year.  They didn’t do well, for some reason, and so far I haven’t seen a sign that they’ll be back this spring.  I wonder if they actually have been “done in”? Over the weekend, Helga gave us some ground cover that she had dug up.  It gets little purple flowers on it, but she didn’t remember the name, and I’ll have to try to figure it out somehow.  Anyway, I put that at either end of the hosta bed, and I guess we’d better start looking for a replacement for the hostas. I still like the astilbe idea, but have not been able to sell Kim on it.