Michael brought these home for me the other day, orange chrysanthemums! I love the scarecrow head with the crow perched on him.

I really love mums but I have never had the greatest luck keeping them alive through the Winter. I heard if you get them earliest enough in the Autumn you can transplant them, but we are already having our daily hard frosts here so I doubt it would survive transplant. I’ve also heard the reason they don’t survive the Winter well is because most are greenhouse grown and not the hardiest varieties.

So do I just have bad luck with mums or have others had this problem? Has anyone successfully kept them alive and healthy through the Winter? I’d love to hear your tricks and tips.

Some puns are just too hard to resist.

I keep seeing these around but I am not sure what they are. The bees seem to love them.

“Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it”
- – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.”
- John Berger

Can you tell I have a favorite flower?

“Bring me then the plant that points to those
bright Lucidities swirling up from the earth,
and life itself exhaling that central breath!
Bring me the sunflower
crazed with the love of light!”
- – Eugenio Montale

I have no clue what-so-ever what this pretty yellow flower is. It is growing in the alley behind our house and along a fence. It receives only rain water and is in full sun, and is probably some horribly invasive weed, because lately all the flowers I love seem to fall into that category! (Spotted Knapweed for example.)

It’s official, as of today I like Frank Sinatra even more then before.

“Orange is the happiest color.”
– - Frank Sinatra

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.”
- – Denis Waitley

Spotted knapweed is the most recognized noxious weed in this area, so much so that it is actually illegal for you to have an outbreak of it on your property. Knapweed seeds remains viable in the soil for at least five years and with each plant producing over 1000 of them infestations are a rapidly expanding problem. Not only that but the plant releases a toxin into the soil that reduces the growth of native forage species. Ick, yuck, poo.

If you live in Spokane, you can report clusters of it to the city so that they can come deal with it. I only know this because we filed a report last night. The foreclosed home next door is positively infested with the stuff and the gardener in me dies a little each time I think about it infesting my beds.

I must admit though, that as abhorrent as I find the plant, that I do find the flowers rather beautiful. They also attract a huge amount of bumblebees, one of my very favorite insects. So while I most certainly want the city to eradicate this outbreak, I am appreciating the surge in my fuzzy favorite pollinators for the time being.

(Speaking of which, I received my new camera today so that photo is my own! I’ll blog about the camera more later though. For now it will have to be sufficient to say, it is awesome.)

“Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps,
Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.”
- – Amos Bronson Alcott

What is a weed but a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Photo intensive garden update time. Enter at your own bandwidth’s risk!

Do you remember what bed A looked like just a month ago? Now look at it!

Carrots and onions and green beans, oh my! Ignore that empty square in the back left corner. My cilantro bolted while we were at the Pagan Campout (I still need to blog about that don’t I?) so I pulled it up. Never fear though, I have the new crop already sprouting in bed B (photo to the right.) But while we are on the topic of bed B…


Cucumbers and Pumpkins (and zucchini which are not pictured.) Cucumbers… well they are rallying at least. My Sugar Pie Pumpkins are doing fabulously though, as you can tell, the kid in the corner won’t be boxed in, but I’m cool with that. I’ve always had a thing for rebels. Please ignore the weeds proliferating in the pathway, I know that I am!

I adore pumpkins, they just make me so happy. Look at this blossom! And who says yellow is an ugly color? (Oh wait, I do. I love yellow in nature!) My sunflowers have several more feet to go before their giant yellow beauties open up, and I really do mean giant, they are 12 foot heirloom Titan Sunflowers. I have them in the four corners of my beds, ants have turned them into aphid prisons.

I really love insects. Look at this jewel-like fly perched on my ground cherry. I am sure it and it’s six-legged cohorts will eat my garden (or their spawn will,) but lets just appreciate how beautiful Mr Fly is, before I catch it munching on my leaf lettuce. I just sowed my second row of lettuce a couple weeks ago (the old stuff was getting a little bitter.)

I have these beautiful Creeping Bellflower all along a section of our fence and one side of our deck. Initally I thought they were the more innocent Ladybells but they are spreading quite voraciously (they are a naturalized but ecologically invasive.) I am keeping them around for those gorgeous flowers, but I plan on annihilating them once they begin to fade. Gardening is a brutal business, I’m telling ya.

Here is a flower that will never be thinned. Mmmmmm cherry roma tomatoes or are they stupice tomatoes? Well they are one of my 4 varieties of heirlooms. Basil is keeping them all company. Basil and tomatoes are just meant to go together. Can you say bruschetta?

Tomatoes are to Michael and pumpkins are to me. It looks like my Giant Valentines (one of my two varieties of hybrids) are beating my Stupice in the race to be adored by him first. Granted, I think my raspberries will be the first to bare fruit. We are both cool with that though.

In fact, we are cool with everything in the garden overwhelming us with bounty. If there is too much for us to eat fresh it will just go in the freezer, in a canning jar, in the dehydrator, to Second Harvest or shared with friends (preferable all of the above.)

One of the exceedingly abundant black and white cats in our neighborhood.

Happy Valentines Day!

I don’t know what these are but I love how they are turning into star shaped seedpods.

Last night I had a dream in which I was a bystander, watching myself, or someone who looked exactly like me. The “I” referred to in this post is the person I am watching.

I was standing in the middle of a very flat desolate landscape, with hard white ground as far as the eye could see, perhaps it was a salt flat. I am standing looking towards the pale blue sky with my arms raised, palms up, the wind is blowing my skirt behind me. I am wearing a blue ground length skirt, almost exactly like this one and a fuchsia peasant blouse, similar to this one. I am also wearing Damian in my Maya wrap, except its fuchsia rather then grey.

(Yep, I said fuchsia, as in electric pink. Totally not my color, I do not even own anything remotely pink. In fact I avoid pink like the plague… but I do have to say, fuchsia didn’t look half bad on me in the dream. Dreams can make anything look good I guess!)

I was calling out some kind of invocation, I don’t remember the words, but as I spoke them everything around me turned every shades of pink imaginable. The sky, the ground, all pink, even the air seemed to take on a hazy fuchsia tint. The pink seemed to emanate from me. Gradually as my invocation came to an end the pink faded. The bright white ground and blue sky returned.

A few moments after my invocation ended, there was a rumbling, one that I felt more then heard, and suddenly it was as if the world around me was fast forwarding. Water flooded the ground, swirling up to my knees and then receding. As it receded, low growing plant life grew in its wake and insects buzzed. Small bushes grew, then shrubs, then small trees, the towering ones. Soon I was in a dense forest, not unlike Colville National Forest (that photo is taken in them.)

A huge tree grew around me and I stood in a hollow alcove within it. Ivy climbed up its trunk, draping in front of me like a curtain. The seasons changed and the ivy turned red and its leaves fell. A little boy, Damian I assume, came running out of the tree and I followed. Michael followed too (where the heck did he come from?) and snow began to fall. Spring came and the little boy brought me a (pink) daisy chain and smiled up at me.

I woke up.

The dream was very chaotic but felt powerful. I don’t know about all the pink but in a general way it represents love doesn’t it? From love life comes forth perhaps? Any thoughts?

I never thought my pitiful stunted hail bitten morning glory would bloom but when I woke up this morning it has a beautiful flower smiling victoriously at me.