Peaky Top

This is the view from the porch of 'Peaky Top' where we worked last week. Peaky Top is a private family retreat, right on the edge of the gorge. The home was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. We are upgrading a few steps, adding some stone walls, upgrading the patio and clearing some views.

I got there before Mike that morning and snapped some photo's. In this photo, Finn is watching intently as Mike pulls into the property. He loves his buddy Mike. Within a second after snapping this photo, Finn made a mad dash for Mikes truck to say good morning.

As always, the two boy's are excited to see each other in the mornings, and had a moment of playtime on the wall. On the other side of that wall, it is about 3,500 feet to the bottom of the gorge. We are pretty much standing on the continental divide here.

Last week, the weather was cool and dry, much better for working

in the gardens. Perfect weather for the 4th of July holiday.

The Town of Blowing Rock was filled with happy visitors for the Holiday weekend. The American flags were waving in the breeze, often hitting me in the head while I worked, the families were visiting and the party atmosphere was all around. All the gardens are ready for visitor's.

Mike's wife Jennifer, and his baby son Malone came by for lunch, so we had little picnic on the porch. Babies do love Finn. When my granddaughter talks to me on the phone, she always mentions Finn.

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Earlier in the week we were working on upgrading the entrance beds at the Chestnut Hill Condos. There was a little girl toddler out playing, and Finn played with her so gently, giving her his paw to shake. Malone enjoyed riding on Finns back at our picnic.

Malone also got to do a little bouldering with his dad before we had to get back to work.

I am always amazed with the properties I get to work on here. Each one is so unique.

I just never know what I am going to find at the end of the lane, the first time I drive in.

Like I say...everyday is an adventure.

Seasonal Shifts and Changes

The Summer heat intensified with the Solstice last weekend....it's official. We have shifted from being too wet all spring, losing much in the vegetable gardens to slugs and drowning, to an intense and dry heat wave. Working in Happy Valley is like doing hard labor in a sauna.

Up in Blowing Rock, there is always, gratefully, a breeze. OK, well Friday there was a windstorm right along the ridge where I was working, but the air is almost always in movement in Blowing Rock. The town is full of visitors escaping the heat from down below.

If I correlate the heat of summer, to the emotional temperature of the world, it is heating up as well. So much is shifting on the world stage it is hard to keep up.

In the dog days of summer I like to stay away from intensely colored flowers. Hot colors in the garden tend to make you feel hot and agitated. Of course, this is the time that nature puts out all it's orange and red daylillies, Black Eyed Susan's, and Coreopsis....all hot and intense colors. I drive by gardens filled with Stella D'oro daylillies, and magenta petunia's...I call it technicolor madness. Summer is intense enough in my opinion with out adding more heat to the pallet.

In my own gardens I tend to plant colors that soothe the emotional state if possible. I will usually pick a softer color of the native species if I can find it, Like The soft ivory colored day lilly 'Joan Senior' , or the variety of coreopsis 'Moonbeam'. I love the 'Jade' Sunflower, and the 'Green Envy' Zinnia for that reason. I also tend to hang out in my garden at night. So the lighter colors tend to light up the garden longer in the evenings.

These blooms are fun to sketch as well.

I love this pot of creamy yellow tuberous begonia's mixed with Veronica reptans alba, tucked into the boxwood.

The best part of the hot summer evenings is the fragrance. I love the spicy scent of my nicotiana alata greeting me at the end of the day. That is when I can say Ahhhh, I love summer.

I had a little giggle over finding these sweet potato's growing in my compost bin.....what a nice surprise. Summer is so full of bounty. I am watching the blueberries ripening this week, it will be a great crop this year, just in time for the Fourth of July. Perfect, it is all so perfect, but we could use a little rainstorm right about now.

There is something about Hydrangea's

Someday, I want to settle into a spot of land and stay there until I keel over in the gardens and become fertilizer. Then I could actually collect and save all the plants I love.

I have collected hydrangea's for years. Other people are enjoying the rare Japanese lace caps I planted years ago in various places. This white lace cap is now blooming in my current home garden.

I am working on a painting of it to see if I can get it on paper in a lovely way. After attending a workshop last weekend with Robert Burridge I decided to try painting with acrylic paint instead of my usual watercolors....a whole new medium to me...I doubt I will do it justice.

Here are some photo's of the Japanese Lace caps I have planted in my various gardens and no longer have. I do miss them and they would grow well here in the foothills of North Carolina no doubt.

This delicate Pink hydrangea is called Hydrangea macrophylla 'Izu No Hana'

I do not know Japanese, but I believe most of these are named after waterfalls and Islands in Japan.

Hydrangea serrata
'Midoriboshi-Temari'

I love this Hydrangea

macrophylla 'Jogasaki' bearing the magical silvery blue florets!

There are more than a few orchards bearing fruit long after I get them started... I have had a very nomadic life. Sometimes I feel like the Johhny Appleseed of gardens...... I collect, plant, and as soon as things mature a bit I move on to the next geographical location that calls me. When I think about leaving my rare Martagon Lillies, after years of looking for the mauve ones....I wonder if the next person living in the garden realizes their rarity and hopefully hasn't weeded them out accidentally.....as the gardener goes, so does the garden.

My white Siberian Iris are blooming this week as well. As is the Annabell Hydrangea with it's greenish white blooms.

With all the rain we are still having, all the white flowers are so beautiful set off by the green lush foliage surrounding them, creating a wonderful luminous effect in the gray foggy gardens.

All this rain does allow me a little more indoor time for sketching and painting, but not much.....there are designs and estimates to do...and the billing and book keeping......such is the life of a wee busy gardener, Finn is finding me to be terribly boring. Must get back to business now...Enjoy!

White Iris sketch....June 09

Full Strawberry Moon

On this full moon Sunday I am feeling a sense of completion. We finished up the last of major spring planting jobs this week. The vegetable gardens are mostly in and mulched. I finished my own spring cleaning and overhaul of my house and have put it on the market for sale. I love my house very much, but it is simply too large for me. I don't have an exact plan for what is next, but a smaller home and bigger garden are calling me.

Not that things will let up one bit, but a corner has been turned and all the things on my to do list are accomplished, just in time for the full moon. I love how the rhythm of life works! Now, I get to savor my ripening strawberries and look around a bit...it is beautiful.

We are still having rains and storms, hail hit some spots in Blowing Rock last week, meaning we were grooming lots of hosta's. This garden wasn't hit, as we just put a lot of energy into re working the perennial gardens surrounding beautiful stonework terraces and patio's.

In between storms, it is getting hot and humid when the sun appears. Finn is taking cover in the cool lush foliage. This week we were working in a huge bed of daylillies, it felt like we were working in a hot oven. I hadn't seen Finn in a while and called his name. Not three feet from where we were working, a little fuzzy brown brown dog head popped out of a clump of daylilly foliage where he had been sleeping, invisible to us. I gave us quite a giggle, and I wish I had my camera ready in that moment.

Michael took him for a lunchtime swim for relief, while I spoke to the Blowing Rock Garden Club on Wednesday. I think it was the garden along main street in Blowing Rock that these ladies created that led me to move here. I am looking forward to their 'Miles of Flowers' tour on August 29th that will be featuring nationally renowned horticulturalist Chip Calloway, ASLA..

Finn did pose for me under the rhododendron that was proving him shade while we worked to finish up.

In the heat, we have reached a shift from the spring blooms, to waiting for the summer color to begin. A resting moment, before the Solstice, and the beginning of the celebration of summer and the enjoyment of the bounty that the efforts and challenges of spring make worthwhile.

There is much to do still, but for this one day I am going to enjoy my beautiful clean and spacious home, my private woodland garden, my strawberries and my silly sweet dog.

Happy Valley

When I was visioning moving away from Virginia, I told a friend that I wanted to live somewhere with a happy wonderful name.  Now I find I am gardening in a place called Happy Valley, North Carolina.  It is a happy little farming area between two mountain ridges. It is so green and lush and beautiful.

I have been putting in a vegetable garden at the Ripshin Dairy Farm there.  Liza and her family make goat cheese and sell to the local restaurants and farmers markets.  And...after looking at the above link, I find out they make Truffles as well in the fall.  I can't wait to try them~

Liza and William are so precise and thoughtful in the way they work the farm. It is a joy to be there and see how it all works. They don't have time for a garden, and I don't have any sun on my wooded 1/2 acre.  They kindly let me use their tiller and garden space.  It is wonderful soil to work in, and all around me are piles of old straw mixed with goat droppings to mulch with. I am in heaven.

Liza's flower gardens are pretty extensive as well.  Mike and I have been helping to get them into better shape, as well as some college students from Appalachian State University.  Things are looking so good there. 

When I arrived last fall after the death of her longtime gardener, the gardens were a solid mass of chickweed.  We have been diligent about mulching with chopped up leaves from last fall and they are doing the job so well.  We just had 5 days in a row with inches of rain everyday, and today...no weeds in the beds we have done.  The sun is out this weekend and it is so fulfilling to see the result of months of tough work. The butterfly's were having a wonderful time dancing from flower to flower to Finn.... sometimes they take a little rest on my shoulder. 

I spent the day planting red okra, melons, sweet potato's and squash.  By the time I had mulched all the rows I was way overheated, as was Finn.  I felt bad for Finn, panting in the heat. Every weekend last year I took him swimming in Wilson's creek.  Between the Leola street community garden plot I also keep in Boone, work and keeping up a large home, I have had no time to do this for Finn. 

 

I was considering how long it would take me to get to Wilson's Creek and give him some fun time when I asked Liza, as she brought out an ice cold glass of sweet tea, if they could build a pond for Finn to swim in.   We decided instead to take him to the beach at the end of her property on the Yadkin River.    Heaven~  Everywhere I go around here I am in my own personal heaven... 

The River was really moving fast around the bend after recieving 7 or so inches of rain this week.

It didn't take Finn but a minute to figure out how to work with the current to grab the sticks.  He got a good workout and I snapped a few photo's and talked to the butterfly on my shoulder. Finn was at last, in his own personal heaven after waiting so patiently for me to get the gardening done.

I had an opportunity to go to Myrtle Beach and meet my daughter for a spur of the moment weekend.  After getting rained out all week, I had to finish a job on Friday that was half done. Then, I realized it is the end of the month, I need to send out bills for the work that was done all month, and I hadn't put my veggies in the ground.  It was a tough choice, but I took the responsible route and stayed home and motored on.....I would have loved some girl time laying on a beach with my oldest gardener daughter.  I am sure there will be other opportunities for playing together soon. 

Meeting the Yadkin River for the first time today helped a lot, as did being in a place called Happy Valley.  Just like I wanted when I moved here. Things like that make it so much easier, when I realize how far away from my family I am. I have a really great family, they are my favorite people in the whole world.  But, I am also loving the people and places I am discovering here. Now, I can't wait till all those veggies are ready to eat!

Crazy Giant Morels

We have been finding morel mushrooms in the gardens of Blowing Rock for the last month. Last year we found a few, but this year there has been an explosion. We came to work on Ski Mountain on Monday and found the largest morels I have ever seen growing under the deck of house in some pea gravel...so much for theories about where they like to grow.  

I suppose, in a cool wet year like this they will grow just about anywhere, and will swell up to huge proportions over a rainy weekend like we just experienced.

I collected two to take home before the blackberry frost due to arrive turned them into mush.  

The Morchella, a genus of edible mushrooms, are very difficult to spot in the woods. They are the color of dried leaves, and disguise themselves well. But one you find one, your eyes then learn to spot them more easily.  

Morel hunters are secretive about their favorite spots to find them.  

They are yummy. I generally cook them in garlic and butter and use them as a topping on Pasta Alfredo. It is not recommended to eat a morel without cooking it first.

I'll never forget being approached by a woman coming outside from her office where I was working to ask me very secretively...'So...have you found any yet?'  I had no idea what she was asking about. When I realized she was whispering about morels, I had in fact been hunting and found them a few days earlier.  So, apparently Morel hunters tend to recognize each other for some odd reason. I tend to share spots with people if they ask for any info on how to find them.

Morel hunting is a great motivator for getting out into the woods to see all the spring ephemerals, like Trillium, Lady's Slipper and the terrestrial orchids in bloom. Though here in Blowing Rock, these showed up after the trillium tried to bloom but froze in an earlier spring frost.  

I brought a few home and sketched one while dinner cooked.  They are now drying on the counter. These seemed too big to me to eat.

If they dry well, I can always rehydrate them later.  I think morels sell for about 15.00 /pound.

I should have picked them all sold these fella's!

I left the rest for the chef, who I noticed wasn't all that interested. Nether were a few other people I showed them too.  Not morel people I guess. 

I suppose I really love morels for the hikes, walks, memories, treasure hunts and delicious meals they provide me.  Not to mention trippy sketches......Nature is so cool that way, and mushrooms are very trippy beings psychedelic or not.

 

Poppy Week

With all the rain the May flowers are in their prime. This week was poppy week. All kinds. They are so delicate looking, but tough little plants in reality. They self seed easily, and need no special pampering or conditions to colonize quickly.  

Poppies have captured the imagination of gardeners and artists for eternity. They have a narcotic effect, even in just gazing at the crepe blooms.

The California poppy has always been a favorite of mine.   Years ago, when I was discovering the Doctrine of Signatures I read that taking the flower essence of the California poppy works on the rods and cones of the eye and can assist one with the ability to see fairies.  

Now, the descriptions of it's healing qualities are associated with helping us to "find spirituality within our hearts and to develop an inner center of knowing versus seeking outside of ourselves for a false sense of higher or altered consciousness as through addictions or the lure of glamour. When you think of how and why the Gold Rush drew so many people to California, the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood, and the height of drug activity during the Haight Ashbury days, I think it is only fitting that the California Poppy be our state emblem, encouraging people to go within and seek out that “inner gold” that is of most value for ourselves and for humanity. Isn’t it lovely that our state flower provides the  medicine for people who are star-struck (I’m talking Britney not the Big Dipper!), into cults or fleeting fads to be able to strengthen and develop a solid inner life that leads to self-responsibility and quiet inner development? May we all truly appreciate the healing gifts of our lovely state flower, the California Poppy."

This little Iceland poppy color was new to me. I am not sure the camera got the color quite right. But it has scattered itself about Liza's garden here and there and was such a sweet little visitor for the week. 

Then, the Papaver somniferum were in full glory.....my longtime favorites for two decades....

This is a low toxicity form of the opium poppy. I used to use this plant to train my new gardeners on how to research a plants medicinal qualities. They would find articles about making opium, and soon enough I would see carved X's in the  milky buds in our clients yards. I used to giggle as they loaded their cars with the harvested plants, only to report a few days later of a nauseous feeling and headaches as a result of their experiments. To me, these are definately not the poppies that grow in afghanistan, but they do have some potency, but not enough to cause dreams or visions by any stretch. Just a mild headache.

But it was fun and the young folk that worked with me learned to love to explore old herbals for information. 

Though,ignorance is bliss as far as this plant is concerned according to Michael Pollan. 

When I worked at Oatlands Plantation, Alfredo scattered these seeds everywhere and was our mothers day showstopper with thousands of poppy blooms exploding in the 4 acre garden. Originally they were orange in color, but I noticed a few lavender ones in the garden. Over the years I would pull out all the orange ones and eventually the Oatlands garden poppies were mostly lavender. Occasionally they morph into a double bloom. 

Like this one on the right. 

For a great article on growing baby greens Airynee has posted her tips for growing them on her wonderflul blog at Goodstone Farm.  I was going to post on all the wonderful baby greens I have been enjoying all month, but she beat me to it, and did a much better job! 

Next week....Peonies!   Enjoy!