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Bloom Day, April 2011
The last crocus flower in my yard apparently hasn’t noticed that all ther other blossoms have faded. Finally, spring is creeping in!
It’s mid-April, and I’ve planted nothing in my home kitchen garden! I’ve many seedlings literally dying to get out off their planters, but it has been cold and rainy, and working in the garden means wading in mud.
That said, today is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Carol, over at May Dreams Gardens, came up with this idea that one day each month garden bloggers would showcase their flowers. I try to post photos of whatever food plants are in bloom in my garden, but today there are none. So… I stepped over the garden fence and shot photos where the ornamental plants grow. I hope you enjoy the results… and jump over to Carol’s blog to find other garden bloggers. You’ll find all kinds of blogs that post awesome flower photos on Bloom Day!
Pachysandra came with the house. These seem to be blossoms, but it’s hard to imagine wanting to pollinate such things… then again, pachysandra probably isn’t trying to attract me as a pollinator.
The main ornamental planting bed in your front yard opens the season with a modest display of crocuses which is finally giving way to daffodils and hyacinths.
Every daffodil I saw as a kid was yellow. Now daffodils are all about fancy color combinations. I like!
I once heard an artist suggest that you can improve your ability to draw objects by focusing on the empty spaces. If you draw all the empty spaces, what you didn’t draw will be the object. I was thinking about that when I created this photo in a forsythia bush.
Sure, it’s another forsythia photo… and there are plenty more. I like the way this one makes me feel as though the forsythia towers over me… though I know the blossoms are quite tiny and unimposing.
So many colors of purple! This hyacinth becomes surreal when I enlarge it to full screen.
Philadelphia Flower Show, 2011
Most striking to me of the ultra-embellished exhibits was this long reflecting pool with modernistic light panels and an “alabaster” sculpture at the far end. It would take months to get this installed in your yard, buy I’m guessing the folks who assembled it at the show completed the job in a few days.
My seed-starting shelf is ready for me to start planting my home kitchen garden. I’ve cleared off the canned goods and hung the lights. In the meantime, we’ve had some late winter snow, so I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to attend this year’s Philadelphia International Flower Show.
The show is an indoor oasis in winter. If features many exhibits of all types of plants that experts have tricked into maturing out-of-season. Not surprisingly, there are many, many flowers. Happily, there are also exhibits of vegetable plants. I spent some time at the show on Tuesday and plan to return on Friday.
About the Philadelphia Flower Show
I live about 2 and a half hours from Philadelphia. As I drove 50 miles south, I saw that lawns were sprouting green and it made me a little sad since my town is under about eight inches of snow. The show floor was crowded, so it was pointless to have a destination in mind; deciding to move with the crowd helped keep my stress level low.
There were, of course, flowers at the Philadelphia Flower Show. They scented the air, and some formed eye-catching displays. A few got very close to my camera’s lens.
With all the flowers and other plantings, my favorite ornamentals were succulents and cacti; there were some gorgeous specimens.
The show’s theme this year is Springtime in Paris, and one vendor showing succulents had a sign that read something like, We thought they meant Paris, Texas. That amused me.
If your home kitchen garden is still under snow, please have a look around the Philly Flower Show. I’ve posted a few photos to give you a short respite from the cold.
Thank goodness, someone at the Philadelphia Flower Show appreciates food! The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society had an exhibit of edible plants that included some gorgeous Chinese cabbage. Something the exhibit taught me: when you grow vegetables in your greenhouse intending to transport them to a flower show, don’t plant peas. Pea plants are very delicate, and the ones at the show were more badly damaged than any in my home kitchen garden after the worst storms of spring.
Tulips and flowering trees lead up to base of an Eiffel Tower simulation. There wasn’t enough air space to handle the entire tower, but the structure is pretty convincing when you’re under it in the dim light of the convention hall.
Your Home Kitchen Garden Giveaway
The berry snacks in this promotional giveaway include apple chips, strawberries, cherries, and blueberries… they’re delicious, nutritious, and low-calorie.
Welcome to Your Home Kitchen Garden. This blog is the sister site of Your Small Kitchen Garden. Your Home Kitchen Garden is about growing food for your own table… regardless of the size of your yard or garden.
Your Home Kitchen Garden is participating in the same promotional giveaway as Your Small Kitchen Garden. We are giving away three cartons of freeze-dried fruit snacks. Each carton contains 12 individually-wrapped servings of berry snacks, and 12 servings of tropical snacks. These were packaged by Sensible Foods under a different label, but otherwise they match the Sensible Foods snacks that often retail for $1.79 per pack.
You might win a carton of 24 snack packets if you do any (or all) of the following:
1. Score one entry by leaving a comment in response to this post. Multiple comments from the same visitor/email address qualify as a single entry. If you also do #2 (below), the comment you leave for that qualifies you for item 1.
2. Score two entries by linking to this post from your own blog or web site. Of course, I’d be happy to see more links, but I’ll count only one link as qualifying for the two entries. (After you link, come back and leave a comment linking to your web page so I can verify the link… otherwise, I won’t know you did it. If you do link from your web site, the comment you leave here to tell me about it qualifies as entry #1 (above). If that’s confusing, don’t worry about it.)
3. Tweet a link to this post that includes my twitter name @cityslipper (so I can keep track). I’d appreciate multiple tweets, but only one will count as an entry.
4. Visit my other two participating blogs, Your Small Kitchen Garden and Food Dryer Home where you’ll find a similar post… each of which can earn up to four more entries: One entry for a comment, two entries for a link, and one entry for a tweet.
While multiple entries may increase your chances of winning a carton, you cannot win more than one carton per email address or visitor.
This promotional giveaway ends on Friday, November 6, 2009. My random number generator will select winners on Saturday, November 7 and I’ll post announcements on all three participating web sites.
A Gardener’s Need for Sun
Never mind the turtles in Aiken, South Carolina. There wasn’t ice on the ponds! I’ve bounced golf balls on ponds in central Pennsylvania. Every winter I develop an urge to travel south as an appetizer for the coming spring.
As you might learn from many web-based “tips” for beginning gardeners: you should put your home kitchen garden where it will get sunlight. I’ve yet to see the following tip in any of those beginning gardening articles: Make sure you put your gardener where he or she will get sun.
I’ve no objection to winter, but I enjoy it much more when I get at least a week of respite some time before the spring thaw. Every gardener in northern climes—and especially those who manage massive kitchen gardens—should try to head south for a break in January or February.
Winter Escape from a Home Kitchen Garden
Winter has suspended my own home kitchen garden, and it has slowed me down a bit. Most of that has to do with holidays; the rest of my family lives by the school calendar, and it was a particularly lengthy winter break this year. Thankfully, our break included escape from winter.
My in-laws have recently moved to Aiken, South Carolina, and on the Sunday after Christmas, we piled into the minivan and went for a visit. My mother-in-law, you might recall, introduced me to red pepper relish, one of the many fine foods she has fed me in the years since I met her daughter.
Aiken is nearly 700 miles south of Lewisburg. That’s plenty far enough to put winter out of reach. Some days ran more than 60F degrees, and all days but one were sunny. Of course, I Googled attractions in Aiken, and picked up brochures. The nearest public garden was just a few blocks from my in-laws. So, on an unscheduled afternoon, we were off to Hopelands Gardens.
No Home Kitchen Garden
Click the photo above to view photos from Hopelands Gardens in Aiken, South Carolina.
Even in winter, the gardens were green and gorgeous. There were squirrels, ducks, and turtles about, and there were spring flowers in bloom. Many of the plants at Hopelands Gardens were unfamiliar to me; I suspect they’re not common in central Pennsylvania. And, clearly, no one planted the garden with a kitchen in mind. In fact, given the same space and resources, a kitchen gardener could provide fresh vegetables and fruit for at least a hundred families.
Hopelands Gardens is a tragic misappropriation of gardening space, but it made for a very pleasant afternoon. The garden walk helped to recharge me so I’ll hold up through the next two months of Pennsylvania’s winter. If you can find a way, get out of the winter for a week, and find a nice garden to visit. Now I’m anticipating some warm days in March, pruning and grafting in my apple trees.