August Break, Day 12: Peekaboo

August Break, Day 9: Garden Fresh

August Break, Day 4: Blueberries

Squash Madness Season

It's that time of year, those few weeks where we desperately try to fit summer squash and zucchini into every meal. Where we beg random neighbors passing by to "Please take some home!" It's glorious, and by the end of July I will be thoroughly sick of squash.

This is squash harvest #2. On Friday we picked 6 or 8 squash. I picked 14 of them today, including that behemoth zucchini on the left there. There were at least 3 more in the garden that were ready to pick, but were small enough to leave on the vine for one more day.

Some of these will be going into work with the husband, in the hopes of pawning them off on his co-workers. Some of them will be dinner tonight, as Zucchini and Corn Tacos. (Which will go really well with icy cold Basil Gimlets.) As for the rest, I'm not sure yet. Any ideas?

Been a Long Week

Mom's Violets


My mother has beautiful flower gardens, and she doesn't mind me photographing them :)

Springtime in the Garden

Took a little break this afternoon and walked around the yard to enjoy the gardens. And to do my daily monitoring/pulling up of a particularly pernicious weed in one of them. Always satisfying.

I love these little beauties, which are gaining ground along a stone retaining wall.

Phlox

Grown in the Garden

There's such a deep satisfaction with photographing flowers I grew myself. I got to watch them each step of the way - when they first emerged in early spring, when the buds started to form, at the peak of flowering, and now as they start to fade...

Chive Blossoms

Pretty Things for the Garden

I was sipping coffee this morning and Twittering away when I came across a fellow Blogging Your Way Classmate - Rochelle Greayer of Studio G. Browsing through her lovely blog, I felt a keen urge to run out to some thrift stores, antique shops, and flea markets and find pretty things for my yard and garden.

Things like...

Temple Bells from VivaTerra,


Misprint Garden Messages, also from VivaTerra,


Moon Garden Jam Jar Votives from Anthropologie,



and these Volcanic Ash Mushrooms from Smith & Hawken.


Do you garden? What types of accents do you enjoy - kitschy? Natural? Modern?

Delicate Petals in Spring

Blue Zephyr


An outtake from yesterday's trip to The Good Earth. These tiny, daisy-like flowers are a kind of Brachyscome (in Asteraceae - the Aster/Daisy/Sunflower family).

Shop Tour - The Good Earth Organic Garden Center

I have a confession. I played hooky today. I was supposed to spend the afternoon in the basement, choosing which photos to use for an upcoming exhibit at my local library. Instead, I went to one of my favorite places to shop in Rhode Island - The Good Earth.

I hope you'll understand this weakness of mine when you see the photographs! (I tried to wait until tomorrow to share these but I couldn't help myself.)

The Good Earth is a beautiful organic gardening center in western Cranston, Rhode Island. The owners, Joyce and John Holscher, are kind and welcoming - the sort of people who get to know you right away and make you feel at home. They're also very good at what they do - growing beautiful plants, dosing out garden tips, and collecting lovely things for their nursery shop.

Let's start by browsing the plants, shall we? (Click the images to see larger versions.)




Their lovely shop is chock full of pretty things. Let's take a peek inside...



Can you see why this was more tempting than slaving away in my basement? Such a lovely place - I've already let them know that my snap-happy self will be back later in the season. I hope you've enjoyed this little tour!

You can visit The Good Earth's website here.

Hot Hot Sunshine

Good evening all! Hope everyone had a lovely Saturday. I had a chance to get outside in the 80-ish degree April sunshine (80 degrees!!) and do some gardening. To be honest, my husband did most of the real work. I sat in the grass and pulled a few weeds and let the heat soak into my sore back. Yeah..... I hurt myself yesterday watering some plants. I always seem to injure myself in ridiculous ways - the night before my 6th birthday I broke a collarbone falling off my bed...

Ah well, the sunshine helped tremendously, as did the yummy dinner at my parents' house in celebration of my sisters' birthdays.

I've been too busy lately to take new photos, so I'm going to share some more from the archives. These seemed to fit the season - we're saying goodbye to the Canada Geese as they fly back north. Well, those that haven't decided to stay year-round.







And now, I'm off to bed. Have a great night all! I'm taking Sunday off from blogging, so I'll see you Monday! (Hopefully I'll have some new images to share.)

To learn more about some of the environmental and management problems associated with non-migratory Canada Geese, click here. (You may need to download Adobe Reader to view this pdf.)

Events and Such

So - it's been quite the end of the week! I'm going to keep this post short (it's too nice out to be here at the computer), but I wanted to fill you in on what's been happening!

On Thursday night, I headed to the South County Art Association's Annual Photography Open. "Curiosities" won 3rd prize! Hooray! See how goofy I look? That means I'm having fun.



Today, I spent some time playing around with my new TtV (through the viewfinder) setup. I'm currently using my trusty old Kodak Duaflex with my Canon SX110 IS - the latter on manual exposure control & manual focus. I love the control you can get, even though it's a point & shoot. Plus it makes a smaller and less awkward setup than when I use the D70 for TtV photos.

As you can see - the seeds we planted a week or so ago are just starting to sprout!

Swiss Chard


And, as promised earlier this week, here's a shot of the forsythia - the buds are all pretty huge - not all the blossoms have fully opened yet, though.

Forsythia I


Enjoy! I hope you're having a wonderful weekend so far. Anything exciting going on?

Progress!

My forsythia is coming along nicely!



I hope you all had a great Friday. Any fun plans this weekend?

Spring Blooms

I'm literally forcing spring to come faster! Well, maybe not spring itself, but I'm at least attempting to encourage some forsythia and pussy willow to bloom a bit early.



This is kind of sad, but I think the first time I heard of forcing blooms at home was on Martha Stewart, last year around this time. I honestly don't like her show very much, but I was watching because my best friend was on air! Her company prunes Martha's own apple trees, so her crew leader, herself, and another worker got to demonstrate. During the show, a bit before that brush with fame, Martha had a segment about forcing blooms. I watched it, thought "hm, that's cool", and promptly forgot all about it.

The idea of hurrying spring along is now back on my radar. Since starting my photography business in earnest, I've noticed I am much more impatient for winter to be over. I crave vibrant, living, GREEN things to photograph. And really nice cut flowers are just too pricey for me to purchase often.



I researched the methods online and started my attack:

- My boss donated the branches from his huge patch of forsythia and an ailing pussy willow that was destined for the chainsaw.

- Once I got home, I mixed up a batch of floral preservative (recipe #3 from here), sans bleach. I don't use bleach in cleaning for environmental reasons, so I didn't have any around the house. It's in the recipe to cut back on bacterial growth - apparently switching the water every couple of days works as well.

- I poured the mixture into my vases, then quickly snipped of the ends of the branches and stuck them into the water. This is cheating a bit - I had read that I should snip the ends while they're already in the water, but I didn't have a big enough bucket.

Now, to wait and see what happens! The pussy willow was already starting to peep out when I snipped it, so I should have a lovely photo subject soon!