Roses

My roses are blooming for the first time.  This is a big deal because every year at the Dudley Farm cane boil I buy a couple of heirloom roses.  Since we fenced the garden I've had this vision of coral honeysuckle climbing on the fence with fig trees, herbs, roses, bulbs and various butterfly-attracting flowering plants planted in front.  Sadly, Ethan and his friend who camped out at the farm for a few months while in between jobs have mocked my little garden beds terribly.  It didn't help that Ethan trenched in front of it with a trencher a couple years ago, before we discovered above-ground piping, and the goats have been just terrible for it.

But if I have learned anything with farming, it is persistence.  And not being afraid to look at what you've done, admit mistakes and do something different next time.  I only have four roses right now, although many have been planted.  I think May is responsible for eating at least three to death, and Nougat gorged herself on at least two.  They have tons of blackberries and other thorny browse to eat, but for some reason they prefer the roses.  Some day, when we move Mirin's refugee shelter out from in front, I'll take a picture of the front of the garden, because it is almost what I have always wanted it to look like.  The coral honeysuckle was spared from the goats this spring, and has started to really climb and bloom a lot.  The figs are small, but the bulbs got planted, there is a very healthy sage bush that has lived there since we began the garden, the aloe is still there and the pentas and verbena are blooming.  Oh yes, and the roses.

Spring Flowers

The narcissus bulbs I planted in January are blooming.  They are so lovely.  I wish we could have gotten more.  The amaryllis were really pretty, too, while they lasted.  We enjoyed them for a few days, and then May got out.

She doesn't care about electric fences at all, not even at 8,000 volts.  So when she ran out of the tastiest morsels in the new paddock, she escaped.  And now the amaryllis look like this:

Who knew they were so edible?  I thought lilies were poisonous.  The narcissus have proved to be much less palatable, so they are still okay.

The old summer garden

We keep the garden by halves, so that each season the land gets a rest.
The summer half of the garden has been interesting this year.
Even after the goats and cows trampled and munched their way through it, it became a wild tangle.  Roguish hybrid cucumbers, sunflowers, tomatoes, melons, dent corn and amaranth seeded themselves rampantly.  The dent corn even tasseled and bore little ears.  The zinnias became monstrous.

At it's peak, my children would get lost in the overgrown grass and weeds.

The Roselle is flowering its strange and lovely flowers.

Massive Spanish needles have taken over in places, each a humming and vibrant ecosystem, alive with many different kinds of bees, flies and butterflies and things that eat them.  I saw at least 5 different types of bees nectaring one day, and not a single one like our honey bees.  Just one of these bidens bushes is at least 10 feet across.

It's a jungle out there.