Showing posts with label mullein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mullein. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Probably gonna jinx it all...

At this point, I should know better than to publicly celebrate springtime-ish weather because it always leads to another snowfall or two and I get grumpy. It's bad enough we're back on stupid Daylight Savings Time which I can't believe became a thing and can't for the life of me figure out why it is STILL a thing! Anyway, here goes nothing and I will take all the blame for any upcoming horrendous weather which is sure to show up because this is Ohio.
IT IS SO NICE OUT!!!! I'm picking up sticks in a Tshirt! WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Anybody need any pine cones or pine needles? We have a few.


And a few more.


And there's water in the creek/ditch.


I found a solitary Virginia Springbeauty!


The lilies are coming up on the left and the slightly taller ones on the right are our purple irises.


A brave new mullein by the pond:


And oh, to talk about jobs I am NOT looking forward to. *huge sigh* Now that I have a wheelbarrow that works, I have zero excuses to not clean this out. It used to have frogs and even a few fish and was lovely but it is completely choked with dead leaves and it going to smell righteously bad once I start baling all of that out of there. We didn't even have any frogs last year. I think they figured out how disgusting it was. That is not a job for today, but someday soon I'll have to put on my big girl pants and boots and get busy. You'll know when I'm doing it because of the stench and the black cloud of piratey talk!


On the flip side is the cool, downed owl tree. It's so full of holes and busted bark- it really is fascinating!


I'm wondering if anyone has been playing in this hole... or if anyone will move in! 


 

Monday, August 12, 2019

Zucchini, anyone?

We've already established that I'm not the most OCD of gardeners, so this post will surprise exactly nobody. Some of what WILL drive anyone with OCD a little crazy, though, is the warning understatement my phone displays about "this platform is not supported and could possibly therefore result in unpredictable behavior"... y'think? Like, adding all the pictures I uploaded is too much to ask? Or posting them in the order that I click them? Hmph.

My apologies. Technology strikes again.

And they're, big surprise, out of order! *sigh* Here we go.

This is white mullein, even though it's yellow. I didn't plant it. I didn't even know about it. I found it and then used an app called Picture This to identify it, because one was growing in the garden and I thought it was pretty so I left it alone to see what it would grow into. I know, you're all dying of not surprise. 


I may have already mentioned that I planted corn this year. My incredulous husband reminded me, "you know that it takes like four rows of it to be able to even pollinate, right?" Nooooo problem. Four rows of five seeds each, voila. 

Something tells me that's not quite what he meant.

But lookie! I have corn! Granted, the bunnies ate most of them, but I have 5 or 6 that are struggling along and some even have tassels. Woohoo!


Somewhere along our 20 years of marriage we got a morning glory plant. I left them with Grandma Barb while we did one of our moves, and they took over most of her front yard along her porch, much to her delight. Purple was her favorite color, so she encouraged it, trellised it, potted it, and it just went wild. I have some wild ones growing both out front and out back, and they always make me smile. 


This guy below is Borage. He's supposed to be excellent for your pollinators, so I planted some both last year and this year. Apparently it is not safe from baby bunnies, as I had at least five good-sized seedlings ready to transplant one day and the very next when I went to put them in, they were gone. Completely disappeared. The plants in the same tray with them were untouched. Hmm.

So I started over again with seeds and was excited to see that I'm growing a clump of them in the back corner of the garden and a smaller group in the front. They get pretty tall, so I popped one group into a tomato cage and that seemed to help them stand up a little better. The ones in the back of the garden are mid-thigh or taller on me. 


Yes, I'm growing broom handles. Haha. That's how brooms are cultivated, didn't you know? Home Depot has huge plots out back and...

Anyway, on the left are my handful of zinnias, and the broom handles my Dad gave me all mark where I planted tomatoes. There is a tomato plant in a cage, too, and the cucumbers were behind those. The cucumbers been really wimpy this year and don't taste very good, perhaps because the water situation has been so weird? We have an incredibly wet spring and then it's been dry and cracked all summer. I confess to not watering perhaps nearly as much as I should have.


I LOVE these little blue flowers. They grow along the sides of the roads wild and I asked my dear, sweet husband what they were. He said, "weeds." I've argued that they're not weeds. I looked them up, too, and the name?

Blue Weed.

Ugh.

Also Chickory!

HaHA!!



Above, tomatoes and basil. I've been finding those bright green "very hungry caterpillars" munching happily along, much to my consternation, as they grab onto ME when I pull them off the plants. I've been flinging them onto the roof of the shed where some sharp-eyed birds have been swooping down to carry some of them off. 

Along what's left of the creek out back is regular mullein and some truly white white mullein. I was hoping to catch the bee who was nuzzling the yellow ones, too, but I guess she was camera shy. 



I only planted two acorn squash seeds this year, so to stumble across zucchini and spaghetti squash vines this year is making me laugh while my husband facepalms. Hey, free zucchini? I'm okay with that. Anyone want some?

No sign of the acorn squash, by the way. Maybe they'll show up next year. Teehee.

A close up of the mulleins. I can not get enough of wildflowers.



There's the spaghetti squash on the top and middle, and a baby zucchini coming along on the bottom.

And the white mullein that I found in the garden that started the investigation. Beside the broom handle. No, on the right. The one on the left is basil.


So how does YOUR garden grow?