The winter garden, as I call it, finally has pickable produce! In this warm winter, with the windows on, the baby pac choi was already going to seed! We’ll leave the windows off now unless it turns really cold again.
We picked all of the baby pac choi, it was delicious, my daughter says it tastes like peas. It isn’t actually “baby” either, just a small cultivar which I didn’t thin.
Things not posted throughout the year, part four . . .
August
Here’s my townhouse yard in early August. Lots of leaves, not many flowers.
“Cooking” ice cubes. We took advantage of the curiously cheap organic raspberries ($1 a box!!) to make raspberry mint cubes. They were great in water or lemonade.
The Supertunia petunias I bought as an Easter gift for my parents.
After years of not being able to use their front door, my parents have a new deck!
The railing is old wrought iron from my great-grandparents farm.
Priscilla and Skippy are having a good day.
Best buddies.
September
The community garden at sunrise.
Interesting objects in a garden.
Dewy asparagus
“
When I run out of money, make the kid play for some change.
(That’s a joke for you humor-free folks.)
This is what happens when you are too busy to garden and ignore your watermelon, they explode! KABOOM! Five of ‘em! I never have to buy watermelon seed again. I’m sure they’ll be coming up all over everywhere next summer.
Finally, some flowers in my back yard. They took forever and a day, yeesh!
And the Chilly Chilis finally have fruit!
My pots never turn out quite like I planned them. I should know better by now, alternanthera (the purple-leaf monster) is a giant.
I haven’t been doing so well with December Photo Project this year. I will have to catch up on the last few days tomorrow. Today, at my parents’ house, I checked on the winter garden we created. They put in a new door leaving these old sliding glass doors. My dad bought a few straw bales to create walls for a make-shift greenhouse. I planted cool season veggies like lettuce, bac choi, broccoli, and parsley.
So far, everything has germinated. Skippy hopped inside to do an inspection. The seedlings are tiny, we started this project about three weeks too late so I expect they will stay tiny until it starts to warm up in the spring. Now we just have to make sure not to over or under water it.
Bulbs love my parents’ yard. Even tulips. They come back and bloom every year. I’ve been planting or giving them bulbs to plant for nearly ten years now.
Daffodil ‘Accent’ (I think?)
Daffodil ‘Tahiti’ – One of the very best double daffs I’ve encountered
Clematis ‘Etoile Violette’ – The toughest clematis I’ve encountered so far . . .
Usually it has even more blossoms than this
I love the red-tinged purple
I don’t have many words today. I guess it is Wordless Wednesday anyway. This is my Almost Wordless Wednesday post.
Though I make fun of my parents for cutting things down that they shouldn’t sometimes they DO cut the right things down. Their yard has this long tall hedge of shrubbery, mainly forsythia and fragrant sumac. Do you know how big forsythia and sumac will get if you don’t keep them under control?!! They are monsters. Anyway, last summer my parents did some work, and by work I mean chopping, on the monster hedge. This year, what do they find? Cherries! Cherry bushes! Cherry bushes I had never seen before! I had to look them up, they are Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa).
The bushes aren’t that small, how could all of us have missed them for fifteen years? Maybe they had just been so overgrown by the monster shrubs that we never noticed them, they are quite orderly.
But see that bright red? How could we have missed these? What shall we do with all of the cherries, they are pretty tart? I vote for jam.
Also, these cherries live right below a cottonwood tree. I love cottonwood trees, except for all that cotton. 
Perennial foxglove (Digitalis grandiflora) has become one of my favorite plants. It is surprisingly tough. I started these beauties from seed about twelve years ago. I planted them in a nice shady spot in my parents yard since I figured they might not like Kansas heat very much. The next year my parents decided they wanted to plant grass in that area instead and moved them! Without my permission! To the most horrible spot in their yard! I was appalled. It is at the edge of their drive way, right by the concrete, half of the heavy, clay flower bed is pancaked from being run over all the time. The other side of the bed is one of the dogs digging spots. And it is HOT! I was sure they would be dead in no time. Twelve years later, they’re still alive, and looking great. Well, except for the one my mom accidentally weed-eated (ate?) last fall. It doesn’t look so swell. She’s almost as dangerous as my dad with a chain saw. Men should not be allowed out of the house, unsupervised, with a chain saw. Especially if they have their eyes on that big, dead tree in the back yard. Consider yourself warned. And get out the yellow pages, cough up the dough, and call someone who knows what they’re doing.
I got a bit off track there, back to the foxglove. There are 5 1/2 plants in this spot, all grown from seed, all a little different, which makes me love them more. They are all unique individuals. One has the best leaves, another the most prolific blooms, and shorty is the one who was beheaded last fall. 
The fact that they are thriving seems even more baffling once I read up about them. Perennial foxglove is native to the Great Lakes region. Surely the summers there are drastically different than they are here?
The perennial garden at my parents’ house looks pretty nice. I haven’t even done much to it this year. Woohoo!
Hidden away is rose campion (Lychnis coronaria). Other Lychnis I’ve grown in this garden did not do well, they are dead, dead, dead. I kept thinking this one would die too. I hasn’t but it hasn’t grown quickly either. Each year it is a little larger, just a little.
Up close
I bought a plant of yellow meadow rue (Thalictrum flavum glaucum) about ten years ago for no particular reason that I remember now. I planted it in my parents garden. Now it looks like this. I love it! It is the blue-green mass in the middle with the sulfur flowers. It is usually more upright and orderly but it has rained a lot this year.
A close-up of the flowers . . .
and the foliage.
