On Fridays we find out what's been happening in gardens around the region. Send your updates and photos by clicking on the email link at right.
Laments and curses were uttered this week by several of my gardening friends upon seeing the mess that crows had made of their corn and potato plantings. It reminded me of Jill Breit's recent suggestion to add a scarecrow to the garden mix. For inspiration, here are two more scarecrows of years past sent in by Bob Washo.
His...
...and hers.
Anneke Larrance has been reveling in a different garden aesthetic. She writes:
Ever notice the smells in your garden?
Earlier in the week my front yard was so strong smelling that I almost couldn’t stand it. I have Miss Kim lilacs (Korean lilacs) in the front yard which bloom a bit after the regular lilacs. Wow! I first noticed it on a muggy, warm day and I straightened from my wedding job and just stood there, inhaling the odor—and almost got light headed.As I moved around the beds, weeding, I found myself breathing in my favorite flower scent: the smell of iris. Oh, I love that distinctive scent and I wish I could describe it for those of you who don’t grow iris. I can’t seem to find the words—lavenderish-sandlewood with a very faint hint of musk—is the closest I can come. Some of the hybrid iris don’t have the distinctive smell of the older “common” ones, and I’ve also found that blue iris seem to smell the best.
These two scents got me thinking about other distinctive smells in the garden right now. I’ve been pulling volunteer dill (Good heavens, no! I don’t discard it. It ends up in a salad or in my famous dill dip) since there’s so much of it– and its clean crisp smell is always a welcome one. I also recently thinned the garlic and whew–it can take my breath away. My garlic is a distant relative from my grandmother’s garden in Michigan some 40 years ago and I think of her when I pull it. I also have garlic chives and regular chives which are pretty smelly, but I cut them only when I need as a special garnish.
Oh, an update on Sophia’s radishes. Some of them are ready now and she’s not due here for 10 days yet. I hope we continue to have some cool weather so that there are still radishes to pull when she’s here. Another confession: I didn’t completely trust the “days to harvest” note on the seed package, and I also planted a few seeds between the celery plants—just in case the first ones were gone by.
