Flowering Progression

I have forgotten to take photos the past 2 or 3 weeks but I meant to take a weekly photo of a certain bench against our house to show the progression of bloom seasons.  Here it is April 25th and the wood poppes (yellow), Phlox stolonifera (pink), Daffodils (white) are all in full swing with bits of Plox divaricata (lavender colored), Pulmonaria (pink aging to blue), Grape Hyacinth (blue), and Epimedium showing at the edges.

May 29th   Notice how it's all about softer colors of lavender now?  Sure, the Peonies are blooming and the yellow Baptisia in the right front is adding a nice counterpoint to the blue-ish theme and there is that splash of shell pink coral bells but really, it's a fully different view.

Here's a different view taken the same day.  The first red rose is blooming but it's the peonies and iris that reign supreme.

June 18th  Now notice how the lavender shades are gone and it's all about that red rose blooming and all those green shapes and textures.  Yes the coral bells are still blooming and the honeysuckles on the arbor are blooming as well.


Speaking of green shapes.....I am in love with green in the spring after a long white winter.  Here's the view out our front door.  It faces East into a ravine and it feels like being in a tree house.

And then there are all the other colors to fall in love with!!

Time to get back outside.........

And the title today is "Yum!"

Today I want to share how much yum is in my life.  There are amazing salads, garlic pesto, fruit over maple sweetened chevre and a multitude of other yummy greens.  There are the roses, lilies and more than 250 varieties of flowers standing in line to show their beauty.    Then there are the sweet connections with the animals that share our lives.  The sheep, goats, dogs, cats, chickens and rabbits.

The photo I've started with above is an evening's harvest that gives a sense of the diversity of yum I'm celebrating.  Dinner, dessert and roses to dry.

We started the year with fresh salads and then the strawberry harvest hit us heavy.  Many pounds of strawberries were picked to eat until our lips and fingers were stained and then freeze for smoothies.  A rare dinner out found Joseph eating a superb salad of greens with strawberries and sprouted almonds and I was impressed enough to recreate it at home for several nights running until something else caught our fancy.  Garnishing it with a mini garlic scape was fun!

Our salad season has been ever-changing in it's flavors.  Starting with a cold frame in the unheated greenhouse gave us red beet leaves, arugula, claytonia, baby kale and spinach to begin.  Then the outside crops started maturing adding 4 more kinds of beet greens, 5 kinds of kale, many colors of chards and 2 more kinds of spinach as well as herbs and fresh peas.  The health of our plants created an almost radiance at times.  This beet leaf was so beautiful I had to stop and photograph it before I could bear to eat it lest I forget it's shine and health.

The berry harvest has been fun because of it's diversity.  Red currents, honey berries, strawberries, red and golden raspberries and then a week after this photo the blueberries started coming in.

The berries have been eaten over fresh chevre sweetened with a bit of maple syrup.  Wonderful dessert!

Then it was garlic scape harvest time.  Hundreds of scapes to turn into scape pesto.

And having scapes around induced me to experiment with scape flavored goat cheese which I then used on pasta as a creamy sauce and garnished with parsley and ribbons of red Amaranth.  Adding a salad fresh out of the garden with homemade feta cheese and sprouted almonds and dinner was extremely satisfying and nourishing.