Garden
It’s certainly shaping up that way. Here in the Hudson Valley we’ve had temperatures in the high 80’s (and more) on and off for about a week now, making this our third blasting heat wave before the first of June.
May 26th, 2010. Outdoor temperature on left, indoor on right. It WAS 4:30 in the afternoon, and the probe though in the shade is on the west-facing porch. But still...
It’s dry, too; the thunderstorms have missed our place, but even the people they’ve hit haven’t gotten much in the way of rain.
Midcoast Maine’s the same, in its cooler (but-not-as-cool-as-it-should-be) way, and now on the morning weather report, this:
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Sweet Marjorie, an impulse justified
The thermometer hit 100 (not a misprint, one hundred) degrees on the porch yesterday. The peonies are in overdrive and ‘Sweet Marjorie’ is already fading, just days after the first bud opened. But while she lasted she was lovely – proof that irrational impulses can sometimes be worth following.
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When our friend Eric isn’t managing Yale’s Marsh Garden or playing music, he’s cultivating his own garden, and – at least in this one instance – ignoring his own excellent advice. Unless he’s selling the stuff on the side or donating it to a food pantry, he has succumbed to temptation and planted too much lettuce all at once, just for the sheer beauty of it.
“Note the color and texture variation in the Larson Lettuce Bed,” says Eric. “ I prefer looseleaf and buttercrunch lettuce, but also grow Cos. But I love the salad bowl with red, green and even dark purple leaves. A very vigorous variety ‘Speckles’ is not pictured, but I’ll follow up in the fall with more.”
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For those of us with willpower deficiencies, a car with a large cargo area is a dangerous thing. There’s always room for another plant or six, especially if you get to the annual Trade Secrets plant sale too late to find any interesting dwarf evergreens.
I did of course buy a few other little things, and then as usual a few more, at my annual TS day next stop, Greystone Greenhouses, on rt. 343 right outside of Sharon CT and no I can’t put in a link because they have no website. What they have – in addition to all sorts of gorgeous tropicals you didn’t know you needed but gee the prices are so reasonable – is the tree peony of the century, in bloom early this year just like everything else.
depending on the weather, you probably have two or three more days to see this on the way in to buy your never-saw-a-pink-one before Clerodendrum thompsonii and other necessities.
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Ezra Pound, my latest adventure in tree peonies. There are purple flares inside but it rained hard the day Ezra opened and that was the end of that.
I have to say I’ve never had good luck with tree peonies, but that may not mean much; in 40 years of gardening I’ve only had three of them.
The first, an unnamed white, did beautifully for about a decade, growing ever larger and ever more floriferous – until it went into a rapid decline for reason or reasons unknown.
The white tree peony in the Maine white garden, at about 5 years old
Next came a weed-buried mystery, discovered after we moved into the Hudson Valley house.
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Forager Bill meets Gardener Bill in this post about about lambsquarter, one of the all-time great greens. It tastes wonderful (like a cross between asparagus and spinach); it’s easy to prepare and cook; it’s good for you – the usual dark green “high in vitamins and minerals, low in calories” – and as a major bonus, it not only plants itself, it starts so early and grows so fast that you can harvest multiple crops and still have time to plant tomatoes, corn, squash, beans or whatever in the very same ground.
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This year’s official* growing season started a full month earlier than usual in our part of the Hudson Valley. Although last week was spangled with frost, spring is already more or less over. Even late-flowering bulbs are toast. The lilacs are in full bloom.
Not wishing to miss the bandwagon, I’ll go ahead and be early too. It’s time to order bulbs for fall planting: pretties for the borders, shallots for the plate.
clockwise from left: chionodoxa, muscari, puschkinia, muscari, chionodoxa, scilla, puschkinia, chionodoxa, scilla
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Pioneer Winecap mushroom at lower left. They'll come up thickly in this area for the next 6 weeks or so - then keep coming sporadically through summer and fall, if conditions are right.
Winecaps (Stropharia rugosoannulata) are among the tastiest wild mushrooms: firm and meaty, with a taste of the nutty/smoky quality that makes porcini so special. They’re also large, easy to clean and almost as easy to grow as potatoes. Bill wrote a complete how-to last year.
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Excellent for lunch when there is unexpected company.
For 4-6 servings:
Go down to the upright freezer, where “ready to eat,” items are stored. Extract: the last qt. of Haddock, Corn and Crab Chowder with Chanterelles, 1 qt. Succotash (Black Mexican corn and Dr. Martin lima beans), 1 qt. of something labeled “Chicken and Corn stock, strong flavor, thin texture,” and 1 1/2 c. Chanterelle Cream Sauce.
Combine and heat. Decide more chanterelle is needed. Go back down to the mushroom section and get a little bag of Chanterelles in Butter. Add. Reheat. Serve topped with shredded lettuce and minced scallion.
In other words
Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your freezers!
Home grown asparagus can vary quite a bit in thickness, especially as the patch ages. Our patch (the source of these representative stalks) is 19 years old and about due for renewal.
Asparagus is not the first vegetable of spring. Dandelions are the first vegetable of spring (and ramps come next). But asparagus is in a class apart.
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