Laowai

Just when the season for being skittish around the red wing black birds is finishing it's spider time. It's that time of year where when I go out in the morning there are spider webs all over. Like between the car and a branch or around the shrubs and trash bins. I do like the spiders in theory but I find myself so jumpy lately and after I walk through one big spider's web I'm on high alert for others. It's basically low-grade garden-creature trauma I'm suffering from – ha.

Other than the spiders you can find me standing around gazing at the bees in my garden. 

Since Claire and I are on our own this week I've been cooking a little differently or not at all. It's nice. Claire likes a variety of takeout options and she enjoys veggies like I do. Plus if you buy her a whole bag of apricots she will eat them in a day! Yes! 

I have vague memories of happily eating lots of swiss chard with my mom one summer. Maybe my Dad and Jennifer were away, I'm not sure, but I can picture cooking up pans of buttery swiss chard over and over. I seem to remember not eating a whole lot else for those meals but being completely satisfied with the swiss chard. And it was probably swiss chard from grandma's garden. You couldn't leave her house in summer without an armful of some sort of vegetable.

So other than spiders and swiss chard here are some garden updates starting with my front bed that is a work in progress but it's looking good at the moment.

At the other end of that bed is a shady area. Early this spring I dug out a section of grass between the flower bed and the tree to form a shade garden. I would love to did out all my front yard grass and have a natural garden. But I thought I better just take a small bite out of the grass. I used all native plants from Prairie Moon Nursery in Minnesota. They offer kits of plants for specific conditions. I feel like the kit was a great way to have success with some plants that I'm not really familiar with. There are some grasses and asters and lots of other things in there. And since the plants are just little when they ship the cost is not too high. So everything is little now but if I can keep the rabbits away for a while it should fill in nicely within a couple years. 

I turned over my compost pile and it made me very happy.

Morning in the garden – coffee, pruning and picking vegies.

I found a garage sale rake and it's the perfect size for my vegetable garden.

Totally missed my broccoli when we were on vacation – but this is it's small second harvest.

Here's my mini meadow along the driveway. 

I think these are globe thistles that seeded themselves from plants that I grew from seed a few years ago. I'm so excited to see them! 

Another self seeder from my hard won winter sown plants. This is a native called blue sage. I'm starting to be able to recognize more seedlings of my plants. This one is cool because its leaves are perfectly cross shaped from the top.

These are some more winter sown plants from this past winter – smooth blue aster. I want so badly to have some big patches of native asters but so far it's a battle with the rabbits. You might not be able to see in the photo but the plant is bitten off on the outside of the wire cloche. I'm trying to be patient.

And this feels like a big win. This is one of the geraniums that I overwintered in a paper bag in my basement. It worked so well!