Signs of life in the garden

This time of year is a fun one for Pooka. Daily and some times multiple times a day, she walks through her gardens and just loves watching to see what is coming back. Its almost like a second Easter bunny that comes daily. She will walk through the garden always looking for that new sign of green, and with all the rain we have had lately, things are starting to wake up.

Blueberry is waking up

One of Brother's blueberry bushes is looking rather excited to see spring. It was the first to bud and may even leaf in the next few days. The other two are budding out, but no where near this close to showing signs of green.

Raspberry

Just like the blueberries are all starting at separate points so are the two raspberry bushes. This one is green everywhere and showing lots of life. The other one I am not entirely sure it isn't dead, so we are going to focus on the fact that one of the bushes lived. Seeing all that green gave Pooka and I a bit of hope maybe we weren't getting in too far over our heads, maybe.

Chives

The chives were one of the first things up. They don't look like this much longer, but rather Daddy has been joking he may need to mow them soon. My response was more along the lines of maybe we need to be making some bake potatoes and eggs to use them up. Well, that and I need to let Pooka and her friend K at them They won't last long after that. Pooka has already gone through the chives and gotten herself a few snacks saying "Oh, how I love the first chive of the season." Seriously, I can't make this stuff up, it is how she is.

Tarragon

In the old reliable department is the tarragon. The "lets' eat the sidewalk and everything on either side" tarragon. I am actually going to have to do something about this guy since this was taken on today, and spring isn't even all that sprung. Imagine how big it would be by the end of the summer. Stay tuned for my first attempt at dividing something.

Rose bush

Gremo's rosebush came back this year. Pooka asked if her letter underneath had been destroyed during the winter. Being a coward, I changed the topic. So far all the growth seems to be at the bottom of the plant, and I am hoping that is a good sign. Never having done much with roses, I am kinda flying blind. Although Daddy asked if we should do something about the big spear.. I mean stem growing up the middle. It has HUGE thorns and no signs of life yet. I told him we wait and if its still dead looking by mid may, I will remove it.

stars

Not all of our stars survived. In fact, this seems to be the only set that did, but they are happy as can be. I am hoping they will eventually take over this area, much like they did at my grandmothers. Right now, we are just waiting to see what it does, since my attempt to bring one inside died horribly.

SURPRISE

In the "Wait that's alive?" category is the chamomile. Yeah, I am not sure why it is alive either since again, I heard it was a very temperamental annual. It seems quite happy in its little spot and Pooka actually told Ms. A (The owner of our favorite nursery) that it came back and even she was shocked. Free tea supplies for mommy and Pooka gets to once again prove people wrong.

Berries everywhere

Berries have been coming in almost daily. We get our choice of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. While we may not get enough to make jam out of, it has been great seeing Pooka and Brother sharing berries for lunch everyday. Sadly, I think we are just about out of raspberries and blueberries for the season, but at least we got a good snack out of them.  Maybe next year we will get even more.

A small harvest one day of berries and peas. 

Trellis on clearance

Look what I found on clearance. I was at target and this little trellis was 50% off. While it may not be big enough to handle the tomatoes, I knew we could find a use for it. Especially when it is under $5.

Clearance trellis

 I came home and looked around. The replacement raspberry bush seemed to try and sprawl onto other plants, especially including the lime tree. This looks like a good job for a small trellis.

I think it is trying to take over everything

 It took less then 3 minutes to open, unbox and install the new trellis. Is it meant for large amounts of weight, probably not, but it does a great job with the raspberry. Gotta love cheap little fixes.

All nice and neat now. 

Replacing a raspberry

On a quick side note, I know things have been quiet this week, but Daddy and I got into a rather involved project and have been a bit busy. Hopefully things should be getting back to normal, a ton has been going on here in the garden that I need to catch you all up on.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what happened. Sometimes things just don't want to survive, and I think this was one of of those times. Pooka bought some raspberries with her birthday money this year. They both seemed to do well, until suddenly one of them kept having it's leaves wither and die. Then it would grow a new set, and they did the same thing. After a few weeks of this, it stopped making leaves at all. I think it just decided the world was too hard and gave up. 

Pooka was understandably upset. She had visions of all these raspberries and they failed. She knows of the circle of life, and that sometimes plants die, but Mommy was nice. I talked to Daddy and we went to the store. They still had a few plants and while they weren't on clearance yet, the number of good looking raspberries was few. We replaced her dead one with a new one, that she came home and potted that day. We still haven't gotten the pot back to where it belongs, but we are working on it. At least its green and not a stick. But I doubt we see any berries out of it this year. Now to figure out how to overwinter these suckers so I am not replacing them next year.

Getting anxious

2 weekends ago, Pooka and I were getting a bit anxious for spring to really hit. We have had spring like moments, but nothing that is here to stay. Pooka and I were ready however and decided to get a start on a few things.

Cilantro to be compared

First we started some cilantro. They are only in 2 little pots (which I somehow forgot to get pictures of) but we did one pot of each to see how they compare. These may live in the house for a bit before we take them outside. The upside is we will have cilantro sooner than if we waited for the front bed to be ready.

One of 2 raspberry bushes Pooka bought with her own money

Next we decided to do something with Pooka's raspberry bushes. I will be honest, Daddy and I had no idea where we wanted to put these, especially long term and we didn't have a bed for them to go in. We decided this year they will live in pots where we are figuring out where to put them.

No sign of the stargazer bulbs

We ended up grabbing the pots that held my stargazer bulbs last year. There was no real sign of them yet this year, and seeing at least 4 times over the winter they had water frozen to the top of them, I figured it may be a safe to call them done. So Pooka dug some holes, and I put in her bushes. 

Ready to rock and roll

I am hoping the pots will be big enough and that it allows us to get some bushes but maybe not go to full size this year. We will see. I know nothing about raspberries so I guess it is time for me to break out my gardening books again and see what I can learn. The good news is less then a week later and both have leaves either budding out, or they have started to peak out already. I am taking it as a good sign. 

Spending some birthday money

Oh how hard it is to be 6. Pooka got some money to the local home improvement store for her birthday in January. Everytime we would go to said home improvement store (which I admit was quite often), she would ask oh so nicely if we could go see if the plants were in, or if they had seeds. But sadly, nothing was in until about 2 weeks ago.

That was the day that Pooka, Brother and I went by ourselves and the garden center had a few plants. Not many, but the beginnings.  They had berry bushes. Now imagine a Pooka who has wanted berry bushes and her realizing she had enough money for them. Yes, I am sure you can picture the face of a girl trying to decide between black berries or raspberries. I had veto'd grapes and more blueberries since we didn't have space for the former, and the later we already had 3 of.

Once we got home, Pooka rushed to tell Daddy. Daddy took a bit more convincing that this was a good idea. In fact, I had to convince him with "Would you rather she bring home 2 raspberry bushes, or that same amount of money in small $2-3 plants we would have to find homes for?" He did agree, but asked that we keep it reasonable.

Birthday money well spent by a Pooka

That evening we went out, and Pooka picked 2 raspberry plants. As of right now, Daddy and I are talking about just letting them go through one year in a pot. A bigger pot yes, but a pot where we can contain them until we are sure where we want them. I guess I need to do some research on how to grow raspberries. Pooka has decide to wait and name them once we get them potted which is on the agenda for this week/weekend.