Mint mania

On April 16, 2020April 15, 2020 By CarynIn Garden

I have read and been told that mint will take over a garden area. I have been trying to get this to happen at various houses in various garden locations for over 20 years. This house, on the side between the house and the chickens, is finally the spot. The chocolate mint is going bonkers. It has spread from its pot and is taking over the hill, which will be awesome.

I have so much I feel OK trying some fresh herb tea. I took 5-10 mint leaves, washed them, poured boiling water over them, and let it sit for about 5 minutes before take the leaves out with a spoon. It tastes good! It doesn’t have the dark color of dried leaf tea, but it smells and tastes nice especially when warm.

Pea harvest

On April 13, 2020April 10, 2020 By CarynIn Garden

The prodigy pea plant produced! I pulled five perfect pea pods off the plant.

White flowers

On April 12, 2020 By CarynIn Garden

They aren’t lilies, but we have some beautiful white irises blooming this weekend! My Dad gave me these two years ago and I planted them right away. This is the first year they’ve bloomed, which he says is typical for irises. They are pretty! And there is a promise of more!

The strawberries return

On April 10, 2020April 8, 2020 By CarynIn Garden

Well that is surprising. The strawberry plants I had last year have come back! The rosemary bush is bigger, so I’m not sure how much light they will get, but yay for their return!

Spring flowers

On April 8, 2020April 4, 2020 By CarynIn Flora, Garden

I no longer need to have spring flower envy for my neighbor’s beautiful bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and forsythia. We have our own flowers! And it really isn’t surprising that it is all the shade flowers: columbine and shamrock. Our property is very shaded. We have crossvine too, which does fine in shade, but better in sun. We do have some honeysuckle blooming, some speedwell, and a daisy that my youngest picked out two years ago that turns out to be a perennial. It will be interesting to see how the meadow does. I seeded bluebonnets, but we had only a couple flower this year. I didn’t reseed any other flowers, so we are looking to see what reseeded itself. The columbines in the front bed have done a great job of reseeding, and may manage to take over the whole bed eventually, which would be awesome.