June!

Siberian iris Summer Skies

There have been glorious days this past week, with bright sun, low humidity, and perfect temperatures for spring. As I walked around my garden, admiring all the flowering plants, I kept singing to myself June is bustin' out all over..., that wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein song from Carousel: 

June is bustin' out all over
The feelin' is gettin' so intense
That the young Virginia creepers
Have been huggin' the bejeepers
Outta all the mornin' glories on the fence!
Because it's June!

The flowers in my garden are at their height this month. I look out the back kitchen window and see a mass of the perfectly named Summer Skies iris, with pale blue and white petals floating above green. 

Peony Charlie's White

The peony is the queen of the flower garden.  They have a frothy exuberance, and if I would describe their character, I would say that they have a great generosity of spirit.

Korean lilac Miss Kim, with Swallowtail butterfly

One of the delights of lilacs, aside from their form and delicious scent, is that they are very attractive to swallowtail butterflies. This late-blooming Korean lilac is a butterfly magnet: I see several of them at one time, fluttering around the shrub, landing and sipping, and fluttering and sipping again. 

Wild rose

This small pink rose with a delicate sweet perfume was growing in my backyard when I moved here over 25 years ago. It has since become a lovely large mound, which is dotted with bright color in June. 

Rosa Rugosa

I planted Rosa rugosa along the side wall of my studio, and it has since grown into a wide hedge. When it's blooming in June, the delicious scent wafts into the studio building, and I hear the sound of bees buzzing as they gather pollen. When I watch them inside the flower they seem to be ecstatically wallowing in its center, drunk with pleasure. 

Honeysuckle Dropmore Scarlet

A honeysuckle climbs alongside my front door, blazing orange. I do love the honeysuckles we can grow up here in zone 4, but I miss the ones of my youth, those with scent and taste. During summers at the Jersey shore, we saw masses of the white flowers with a delicious smell. I'll never forget how my father taught us to remove the end of the flower, pulling out the pistil with its drop of nectar. Tasting that was a magical treat. Whenever I see that variety of honeysuckle I'm moved to enact that same ritual. 

Daylily Lemon Lily

The Lemon Lily is the earliest of the daylilies to bloom, and its bright cheerful face is very welcome in June. It too has a lovely scent.

Yellow Flag iris

Another intense yellow flower blooming near the pond is the Yellow Flag iris. It loves wet spots and can grow in standing water. Its form is beautiful, with large drooping petals. It is thought to be a possible model for the design of the fleur-de-lis.

Wild Strawberries

June is also the month for strawberries, both cultivated and wild. The teeny berries have begun to color in my lawn and field.

Cherry tomato Sungold

The garden is producing asparagus, lettuce, and lots of spinach. One thing that I find very exciting is seeing the cherry tomatoes begin to form. Up here in northern Vermont, the growing season is short and tomatoes don't come into full production until August, but here is a sign that I may have ripe Sungolds in 3 weeks or so, depending on the weather. Events like this are what keep me gardening. 

There is a famous Henry James quote about a season: 

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the most beautiful words in the English language.

I would like to add to that "June day, June day..."

 

June, June, June!

White Rugosa rose

 June is bustin' out all over!
All over the meadow and the hill!....
....Just because it's June, June, June....
Rogers and Hammerstein, Carousel

I sing snatches of this song to myself during the burst of flowering of June, the most wonderful time in my garden, a month of roses and irises and peonies. The rugosa roses I planted have begun to bloom.....

Pink Rugosa

....and they're wafting their delicious fragrance through the air. They are especially lovely early in the month, before the insects––rose chafers and Japanese beetles––arrive.

Wild rose

 This tiny rose is a wild species that was growing in my backyard when I moved here. It isn't showy, but I like it for its air of tradition.

Tree peony

June is also peony month, though so far only the beautiful pale yellow tree peony is blooming. It too is sweetly scented; a single flower spreads its fragrance from a vase on my kitchen table.

Oriental poppy

There are lots of buds on the Oriental poppy plant this year and they've begun to open, at first looking like a spread fan.

Old fashioned bearded iris

Only two perennials were in the garden when I moved into my house over 20 years ago: the common daylilies in front of the house, and this pale yellow iris.

Siberian iris "Caesar's Brother"

I love the delicacy of form of Siberian irises, and this deep purple variety is a stunning one.

Siberian iris "Summer Skies"

Then there's the aptly named "Summer Skies" with its pale blue and white petals. Siberian irises are moisture lovers, so I have some of these growing by the pond....

Yellow flag iris

....along with the water-loving yellow flag irises, Iris pseudacorus, supposedly the model for the fleur de lis. 

Korean lilac "Miss Kim"

The main event of lilacs happens in late May, but the Korean lilacs, much smaller shrubs, bloom later. Their tiny flowerets look like miniature trumpets, and they blast out the most delicious fragrance.

Snowball bush, a viburnum

The lovely viburnums bloom in June. I look out the window behind my desk and see these white puffballs nodding in the wind.

Columbine

Wildflowers are blooming: the bright yellow hawkweed dots the lawn and buttercups the fields. At my house, columbine grows wild in the tall grass beyond the mowed lawn of the backyard. Its complex flowers ask for close attention.

Blackberry blossoms

I took these photographs on Friday afternoon, during a brief spell of sunny, not too cold weather. It has been chilly, gray, damp, and blustery for a week, and when I saw these blackberry blooms I remembered the definition of "blackberry winter": a cold spell during their bloom time. So it's not unusual after all to have a week of temperatures 20 degrees below the average! It's blackberry winter, but I long for a return to spring when it will be pleasant to work in the garden, enjoying the sights and scents of June.

The Myriad Forms and Colors of Tulips

Ballade

I wasn't going to do a tulip post this year; after all, 6 posts from 2010-2015 seemed enough. But then I saw this tulip, a lily-flowered variety I've never grown before; it was such a beauty, with its white-edged purplish pink petals that it insisted on being photographed and shared. Ballade is stunning when young and only the tips of its petals are out-curved....

Ballade, with Blinky the cat

....and also beautiful when more mature and open.

Passionale

Each fall I plant several varieties of tulips for cutting, usually choosing ones I haven't grown before. Passionale has a more traditional cup-like tulip shape, with a deep rich violet color.

Shirley

When Shirley is young, her shape and color remind me of pursed lips. In the catalog, this tulip is described as changing from day to day as the pink edge spreads. I didn't see this with the cut flowers in my house....

Shirley, later

 ....but I left one in the garden and the pink did indeed suffuse the entire flower as it aged.

Washington

This tulip is known as a "Rembrandt-type" because of its flamed petals. Tulips similar to this were at the heart of the tulip mania in 17th century Holland.

Washington, with Poppy the cat

I love having tulips all over the house in spring.

Menton

Menton is such a classic, stately flower that I grow it almost every year. Its colors subtly shift from pinkish to orangish.

Charming Beauty

Double, or peony-flowered tulips are gorgeously extravagant. This variety has wonderfully varied colors in its petals, glowing like a sunset.

Virichic

Lastly, here is a viridiflora tulip: tulips that have a green stripe running up the center of their petals. The green is in wonderful contrast with the pink in the petals, petals which are expressively narrow.

Passionale, dried

Even when they are dead, some tulips are still beautiful: instead of the petals falling they dry in shapes that are like expressive dances. Spring is moving on, from daffodils to tulips, and now to lilacs; each is a great pleasure in its own way, but for me, tulips are a new adventure every year.

The Intense Pleasure of the Early Spring Garden

How glorious it is to be outdoors in weather that is finally sunny and mild, and to begin to work in the vegetable garden! It is beautiful to see the early growth of bulbs planted last fall: tulips and garlic. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction looking at them, and this feeling is especially keen when there is so little evidence thus far of growth, except for the Egyptian onions and the robust weeds.

My first job was to march around the garden with my wheel hoe, slicing off the many weeds that spread across the soil. I then raked them up into piles and carted them off as fill in the various holes left during the winter by the road crew. I love the spare look of the early garden; it's the look of promise.

While I worked the wood frogs were singing accompaniment in the pond, making their joyous quacking mating noise. In the video above you can hear the sound. When I first lived here I thought there were ducks on the pond even though I couldn't see them. I was very confused and it took me several days to realize the sound came from frogs: the wood frog.
*If the video doesn't work in the email of this blog post, click on the title of the post above to go to the post online where you can see and hear it.

When I finished neatening up the soil, my next chore was to put up the pea fence. I had planned my rows a few days ago, marking them with small sticks, so now I put up the stakes for the fence––3 feet high for the 25 foot row of shell peas; and 6 feet high, with another foot or so added with broom handles for the 9 feet of sugar snap peas––and then rolled out the chicken wire to attach to it. Planting the peas will be next....and the spinach, which goes in a double row next to the snap peas. You can see the string I use to mark the rows; that's where the spinach will go. These crops are very hardy so can be planted when there's still a chance of hard frost.

Wood frogs weren't the only creatures adding delight to my day; there were also lots of chickadees flitting about, and resting on the chicken wire pea fence. They are friendly little birds. They're attracted to the garden because of the peanut butter I've placed inside aluminum foil packets and wrapped around the garden's electric fence. This is my method to discourage deer and small animals such as woodchucks, raccoons, and skunk, who will get stung if they try to get a taste of that delicious, highly scented treat. But birds hanging on the fence are not grounded, so they don't get a shock. They eventually finish off all the peanut butter and I have to replace it, but I don't begrudge them their nice little meal.

Another early spring chore is to finish up the compost pile I was building and start another one; I have three going: one that's cooking, one I'm building, and one that I'm using. I put a layer of soil over the one that will be cooking, then some hay, and I then cover it all with chicken wire because I have a problem with skunks getting in the compost and tossing it about. This is another satisfying aspect of the garden: turning food and garden waste into rich fertilizer and soil amendment for the newly growing plants.

The first greens from the garden are these perennial Egyptian onions; they come up each spring brightly green and with a crisp onion flavor. I cut some for my midday soup and they will flavor my boughten organic dinner salad. The anticipation of the harvests to come is delicious....and in just about another month: asparagus! Working in the sun, smelling the spring air, hearing the frogs and birds, knowing that the work will lead to large harvests of healthy, tasty vegetables: what a life affirming activity!

An Early-Spring Surprise: The Beauty of Freezing Rain

March is a flighty month, unable to settle on any one season or type of weather. After several lovely spring-like days, it turned wintry again. Temperatures in the 20s feel a great deal colder in March than they do in January. Sometimes unwanted weather can bring with it a gift, as did this morning's freezing rain: it encased branches and twigs and grasses in ice.....

....making a softly glittering landscape.

Branches were outlined in light, and rocks had thin coverings of snow and ice.

Each red line of the Burning Bush was emphasized by white.

It was poignant to see the swelling buds of lilac in their icy covering.

Sparkling ice made jewels of dried hydrangea....

....and goldenrod....

....and asters. The weather will warm again tomorrow, so I will be back in the orchard pruning apple trees, and in the vegetable garden laying out rows for planting. But there will likely be more winter events before spring settles in for good.

Beginnings....

It was a beautiful day yesterday, with bright sun and temperatures in the 50s....the excitement of Spring! We've had an almost worryingly mild winter, so things are getting off to an early start this year. Snowdrops are the first floral harbinger of spring: last year March and April were very cold; as I look back on the photo I took of snowdrops in 2015, it is dated April 7th, more than 3 weeks later than today.

As I wandered across the mud of my vegetable garden I saw bits of green: here last year's parsley regrowing. It's a biennial, but I've never had much luck having the plants for a second year, but maybe this year I will.

Perennial herbs begin to pop up early.  The slender fingers of chives wave upward....

....and the rounded leaves of sorrel poke up. They have a lovely red tint early in the season; as they grow they become pure green. At this stage the leaves are very small, 1 or 2 inches long, but so resolutely growing.

There are some green leaves on the parsnips. I went into the garden this afternoon with my shovel, planning to dig them up and have delicious roast parsnips with dinner, but when I put the shovel in the ground it only went down a couple of inches: the ground is still frozen solid under a layer of mud. Soon......

Other flowers are beginning to pop up: the tulips I plant for cutting looking like elongated candy corn....

....and some daylilies, encouraged by the warmth radiating from the south-facing granite foundation of the house.

Lastly, the earliest of daffodils, the small yellow February Gold is off to a good start. They will be the second flower to bloom in my garden. All this happens every year and is quite ordinary, but every year this reawakening thrills me and fills me with anticipatory joy.