Wild Violet's Garden Blog

I haven't felt like writing here for a while because I wanted to write something about my Peanut and haven't been ready.  I am writing this for the process of personal healing, I guess, and for a record of my time with my loyal friend, although a stupid blog will hardly do a great dog justice.   Peanut puppy Peanut the pug loved to be out in the yard and was my best gardening buddy.  She loved to be anywhere her family was, actually, she was just a great companion dog.  She was a part of our family for 7 fun years and my Hubby and I called her our firstborn child.  For the last 7 months of her life she was having intermittant seizures.  They were scary as hell to me and sad because not only were they stressful on her body, as evidenced by her pounding heart, sore muscles and lack of balance afterwards, but she would go temporarily blind for a minute or two after an episode as well.  We would try to keep her from falling o...

I am a proud garden mama.  My girl and I went out to pick some parsley for a new chicken hotdish recipe I was trying tonight.  She kept saying "pickin' parsley, pickin' parsley" while we were out there, totally excited.  Then we got back in the house and Daddy says to her "What have you got there?", and she says "CILANTRO!".  I know, it's not what we were picking, but hey, I never even mentioned cilantro today and that's the word she remembered from who knows when the last time we picked herbs was, she's got so many new words!  Plus, they kind of look the same, I can't blame her.  Sweet corn: A few weeks ago, we ate 6 smallish ears.  They were pretty dang tasty.  The rest are so tiny I'm not bothering to pick.  The cornstalks are destined for my new compost bins that my handyman is supposed to be building ASAP.  Hello?  Handyman?  Where are you?  Dang it, if I just had a post-pounder-inner I could do it my...

I admit it.  I've been avoiding blogging because I hate to admit failure.  But in the interest of full disclosure and learning from my gardening mistakes and blah, blah, blah, now I'm owning up to some not so successful experiments this year:  1. I suck at growing sweet corn. 2. I suck at growing pumpkins. 3. I suck at growing strawberries. 4. I am a mediocre grower of squash. If you read my early season blogs, you may have noticed that these are all the crops in my Back 40 garden.  You know, the one that if I kinda squint at it, I just see green stuff and pretend it's not weeds needing pulling.  Once again, that garden proved too easy to ignore this year.  We did finally procure some straw two weeks ago and I gave my zucchini, acorn, and butternut squash hills a decent weeding and a generous layer of straw mulch.  They are already rewarding me w/ flowers and the promise that I might actually still get to eat zucchini bread this summer. Sw...

Today I picked the first raspberries!  Not enough for jam yet, but enough for a treat: I also invested $8.99 in a 50' soaker hose from Menards yesterday to water the huge raspberry row.  We haven't had measureable rain for a couple of weeks and I realized I better get watering if I want any berries this year.  I ran the soaker for 45 minutes this morning and will probably do that every other day or so during bearing season.  Beats wasting a day running out there every 30 min (and that's when I remember) to move a regular hose down the row.  By the way, I have no idea what variety these are.  They came with the house when I moved here. Peanut likes to pick raspberries too.  Holy man, look at that tongue. Yum!

Birds As I sat here typing my last blog, I glanced out the window and saw a goldfinch and bluebird sitting not three feet from each other on the power line, and a cardinal in the birdbath.  Quite a colorful afternoon.  Alas, I'm not skilled enough to get photos of the birdies yet, although I've begun saving my pennies for a fancy new camera, and potentially some kind of fancy zoom lens so that I can do better in the future.  Camera recommendations welcome. Bears Old Man Neighbor was firing guns at 6:45 yesterday morning, EEK!  He told me over the fence later in the day that he was scaring a bear out of his backyard.  Which yard happens to be right next to my backyard.  Which means if I hadn't still been in my comfy bed peacefully snoozing away my last few minutes before the Girl wakes up around 7:00, I possibly could have seen the bear next to my backyard and equally possibly could have pooped myself.  He claims it is ...

Or rather, the rose was blooming.  I've been meaning to write this blog for a week or two and this particular rose show has basically come and gone already so I'm behind the times.  My Grandpa K was quite a gardener.  He had a large veggie and flower garden bordering the whole east side of his yard, surrounded by a tiny electric fence to keep rabbits (and possibly overly-curious grandkids?) out.  He also had quite a lot of fruit trees, and walnut trees, and a real root cellar in the basement where they stored dug potatoes and all of Grandma's canned stuff, and chickens for fresh eggs, and lots of other way cool stuff that made a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's place one of a kind.  When he died in 1999, my Mom and I stopped by his house and took cuttings of one of his rose bushes to remember him and that special place by.  The roses are now flourishing both at my place and at Mom and Dad's in northern WI Zone 3.  ...

One evening this week, Monday, June 20th to be exact, my Hubby and I planted our new blueberry hedge around the two outside edges of the potager.  I ended up deciding on 'Northblue' plants since they looked nice at the nursery and Auntie Linda, who grows just a tiny ACRE of these blue beauties, gave her seal of approval to the performance of this northern-hardy variety.  Apparently they've only failed to produce once in twenty years for her, that's a pretty solid record in my book.  I don't really have it in the 'budget' to buy eleven #1 gallon blueberry plants, so Hubby and I declared them his Father's Day gift, pretty much making them a necessity.  That's how we roll. I wanted to act like a sober gardener and plant in straight rows for once, so I actually measured and marked the rows w/ paint before digging.  They are planted on center 4' away from the outside veggie boxes.  'Northblue' is supposed to get about 3'...