Carrots, Catalogues, and a Mixed Up Plant

What a great time of year it is for gardeners! It isn't meltingly hot outside, but there is still food in the yard to harvest for supper.  The carrots are only just now getting big enough, but it's looking like I can quit buying carrots for a month or so.

The carrots in the yard are extra-sweet, too. These look like they are probably a Danvers-type, but when I planted carrots I had a little bit each of several kinds. I'm not sure when I'll run across a Chanteney or a Nantes, but that will happen eventually, if any of them germinated (some seeds were fairly old).

Other good news is that the seed catalogues have begun to arrive. Seeds Of Change hit the mailbox before Thanksgiving, and Fedco came today. The Fedco catalogue is especially wonderful this year because it contains poems and quotes by Wendell Berry (bio here and a great poem here), one of my favorite writers.

Neither of these first two catalogues is my main source of seeds (that would be Sand Hill Preservation), but they are great for the beginning of planning next year's garden.

Yet more good - or at least interesting - news, is that my key lime tree, a.k.a. "Old Spikey," is in bloom.  The plant is a month or two ahead of its usual flowering schedule, but the year has been weird. How can I be surprised?

Plenty of beautiful, warm weather is forecast for the upcoming week, so we've rolled Old Spikey out of the dining room - its winter home - and out onto the back deck. For the next week, anyway, we will be able to maneuver around the dining room without the risk of being raked by two-inch spines.

Outside this afternoon, Old Spikey was host to some honeybees that must have been grateful, in their own little honeybee way, for some fresh pollen and nectar. The whole plant was haloed with scent and sound - a honeybee oasis!

I hope that everyone else's gardens are lively and productive, too!

Back from Colorado

We've been to Boulder, CO, to visit our oldest son who is in graduate school at CU. The trip included lots of hiking, and some pretty funny moments involving one slightly chubby mom (me!) and some very steep hiking trails. Here I am with my oldest son:



Getting up onto the ledge was easier than getting back down.

While I was gone, a Very Good Friend came by to water my plants and check on the garden (Thank you, Cheryl!). The weather here while I was gone was HOT, so she came by every day to make sure that the plants growing in containers hadn't all cooked right in their pots. I was happy to see that she had kept things harvested. Steady harvesting leads to more production, for many crops!

One of the crops she checked on (and watered) was my laundry basket of straw that had been inoculated with oyster mushroom spawn. I have a shiitake log out in the back yard that is a year and a half old and has yet to produce mushrooms, but I started this laundry basket just about 10 days before heading out for our trip. Look at it now!:



I put the basket together at a cultivation workshop with the Mushroom Club of Georgia. The workshop was a lot of fun, and these mushrooms are very good to eat. Joe thinks they are more tasty than chanterelles!

Also while we were gone, the limes matured enough for eating. When we got back, there were 28 limes on my tree. There are fewer now, because we've brought some in to the kitchen (for cucumber/tomato/sweet pepper salad, all chopped up small, with lime juice and olive oil; on the oyster mushrooms; in iced tea). This pretty good level of production may be enough that the rest of my family will tolerate the little tree's living in the dining room, by the back door, all winter long, in spite of its thorns.