A Little Fun
Who said canning wasn’t fun? Last year I introduced a friend of mine the joy of pickled beets. He now loves them and always helps us pollish off jar after jar of them. I decided while canning some this year I’d make some just for him. Since he’s a fan of the The Office, I figured I’m make his with a special label.
Do you share your harvests with friends & family?
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Benefical Plants: Queen Anne’s Lace
I always love the season of Queen Anne’s Lace. It really is such a lovely wild flower (or weed). It’s like a snowflake in the middle of summer (particularly from underneath).
Queen Anne’s Lace was one of my grandma’s favorite flowers. I remember her always commenting on how much she loved it (perhaps that’s why her crocheted doilies always looked like it).
We seem to be having a bumper crop of them this year, and I don’t mind! Sometimes in order to not see something as a weed all you have to do is look at it closely and find something beautiful.
It is a very beneficial plant, even though many people classify it as an invasive weed. Queen Anne’s Lace provides beneficial nectar to insects during this dry part of the summer when they don’t have many options. Caterpillars of the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly eat the leaves, bees and other insects drink the nectar, and predatory insects, such as the Green Lacewing, come to Queen Anne’s Lace to attack prey, such as aphids.
Can you appreciate the beauty and benefits of a weed?
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Quote of the Day: Morning
I can see the orange haze on the horizon as the morning
exhales a yawn, and seems to be ready to rise.
~Jeb Dickerson
Mr Chiots and I usually aren’t early risers. We are usually up working late into the night and we sleep until we wake up in the morning, generally around 8-8:30. A couple weeks ago we were up before the sun (at 3:45 am) for a road trip.
Mr Chiots managed to snap these photos while zipping along the bumpy back country roads at 55 mph (he wasn’t driving). Not the clearest photos, but they still convey the beauty of the sunrise that morning. It was particularly foggy that morning in the low-lying areas which made the sunrise all the more beautiful.
Are you up early enough to see the sunrise?
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A Naked Lady in the Garden
I was just as surprised as you when my grandma said, “Oh look at the Naked Ladies in the garden”. She was referring to Lycoris squamigera of course, also known as the Resurrection Lilly, Miracle Lilly, Surprise Lilly, Magic Lilly and of course my favorite, the Naked Lady!
The wonderful thing about these lilies is that they bloom so late in the year. They send up their foliage in spring along with a lot of the other spring bulbs, but they don’t bloom until a few months later after all of the foliage dies back. Then all of a sudden, long after you’ve forgotten they were there, in the garden appear these wonderful pink flowers atop these long slender green stems.
My mom gave me these earlier this year. I was wondering if they would bloom since I planted them just this year. Much to my surprise the popped last week, giving me the perfect title for a blog post!
Have you ever heard of the Naked Lady Lilly? Any other great plant names you know of?
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Quote of the Day: Robert Louis Stevenson
“Judge every day not by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds you sow.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s that time of year to put aside thoughts of harvesting and canning and plan out your fall garden. I started seeds for mine last week (which is a tad late, but oh well). A lady at the farmer’s market had good luck growing a fall crop of green beans last fall, so I’m trying it this year.
I’m planning on covering them with plastic on those hoops we built. If this fall is colder than usual, as our summer has been, I’m only out $1.50 for the seeds. If it works out, I’ll be eating fresh green beans in October. I also started: red cabbage, brussels sprouts, radicchio, broccoli, cauliflower, and zucchini for my fall garden.
Are you planning & planting a fall garden this year?
