Great Day for Gardening

Today was a beautiful day in the 70s and just perfect for gardening. I took advantage of the nice weather to trim grass away from the irises and pull what seems like hundreds of weeds. I was also able to get the sea holly flower my oldest gave me for Mother's Day planted, as well as a Jacob's Ladder plant. The coreopsis plants are showing off their cheerful golden flowers, and there is one open blossom on the clematis 'Niobe' vine. The white clematis is climbing its way up the bird house pole in the herb garden and will be showing off its beautiful blooms in a day or two. I've seen a lot of orange Oriental Poppies blooming in the area, but mine aren't quite ready. All in all, it was a lovely day to enjoy working in the yard.

The plants in the garden boxes are looking pretty good overall. I did go ahead and pull out a couple of cucumber plants that have given up and planted new seeds. I also replaced the Red Star tomato with an unknown heirloom variety I am calling "Buffalo Springs." The name comes from the Buffalo Springs Herb Farm in Virginia that Nick and I visited in September 2007. We enjoyed a wonderful herbal luncheon there which included slices of heirloom tomatoes. Being a weird seed-saving type of person who thinks seeds and plants make great souvenirs, I couldn't resist saving some of the tomato seeds in a napkin to take home. This spring I planted several of the seeds and they all came up. It will be fun to see what kinds of tomatoes the plants produce. I'm especially glad now that I saved the seeds. Earlier this spring we received an e-mail that the farm is closing. We were so sorry to get this sad news because he had hoped to go back and visit the farm again in the future. The stop at the farm was one of many on an herb-themed bus trip we took, and we were not able to spend as much time there as we would have liked. We always thought we would go back again one day soon. At least we got to see it once. Here are some pictures from our visit to Buffalo Springs.