Dogwood trees

Dogwood trees peek through the foliage of the East Texas woods, giving a glimpse of snow white blooms. The many native dogwoods in the area are a joy to behold this time of year. Those on the edge of the woods are easy to see. The extra sunlight they receive makes them dense and full of flowers.

Many of my neighbors have planted dogwood trees in their yards. Where they get a lot of sun they look like the one above, round and covered in blooms. They are showy but in a white trash way.  I prefer the look of the dogwoods along my driveway.

I like the surprise of seeing the flash of white high up above me, reminding me that spring really is underway (actually, the amount of work at the nursery reminds of this every day). The rest of the trees will leaf out soon and I won't notice the dogwoods much until fall when they display bright red seeds.
For now, I will enjoy the beauty of my natural dogwoods.
                                                                      
                                                                            

This is the way I think dogwoods should look: sparse and architectural. I agree with the Japanese aesthetic of the natural appearance of gardens and nature. I love seeing the open form of these trees in their natural, beautiful state.

New herb garden

I miss growing herbs - the scents wafting through the air on a hot day, the buzz of bees and fluttering of butterflies around the plants. I know this seems incongruous for a professional herb grower, but I have no herbs around my house.
We moved into our new house two years ago and have done very little landscaping. For the past 14 years we have lived in the woods with lots of shade. And it is ironic that a landscaper and nursery owner would not have a lawn or landscaping, but both of us like the fact that we don't have to work while we are home (except for the vegetable garden, which is a huge chore for several months of the year).
But I really want a herb garden close to the house. Even though the nursery is just up the hill from the house, it is far enough to make it inconvenient to walk there to cut fresh herbs when you are in the middle of cooking. So I am making a new bed out the back door where I can grow herbs and other sun-loving plants.
I am using the lasagna or no-dig method of bed building. My business partner Sharon always uses this method now at her house. It sounded easier than digging up the hard soil that surrounds the house. However, it took me 3 hours to put down all the layers which was longer than I anticipated.
Here is my process:

Put down a layer of cardboard or sheets of newspaper. I had cardboard boxes from work which I decided to use. I congratulated myself on recycling, but once I pulled the boxes apart I realized they had metal staples that needed to be removed and packing tape all over them. I pulled all the staples and tried to remove all the tape, which would have made a great video as it stuck to my hands, then back on the box, then on my hands, on and on. I finally got most of the tape off and laid the cardboard on the bare ground. Then I watered it.

I have a lot of fallen leaves from the oak trees surrounding the house, so I raked them up and added a six-inch layer of leaves on top of the cardboard. I sprinkled it all with organic fertilizer, then watered again. The fertilizer helps the leaves break down.

The final layer is compost. I wish I could say I made this compost myself, but I used bagged composted cottonburrs that I bought at Blue Moon Gardens. I think it is great compost and it is made here in Texas, using the by-product of cotton ginning. It smells awful after you put it out, but the odor dissipates in a few days. I will plant directly into this mixture in a few days. It is only about 5 inches tall. Eight inches would have been better, but this was the best I could do. I will do a larger area in the next couple of weeks and post updates on how the bed is progressing. The bamboo muhly grass (the tall tufts of tan on the right) should be green by the end of the month.
Now I just need to figure out how to hide the grill and the smoker.

Planted tomatoes today

James and I spent our one day of the week off working in the garden. It was a beautiful day to be outside, although the sun was intense. Here is a view of the garden.

Our garden in early spring

We have coming up: radishes (I thinned out 4 small ones today and ate them for lunch), lettuce, kale, turnips, onions, potatoes, peas, chard and spinach. The turnips are getting eaten by caterpillars and the parsnips and beets are not coming up very well. This is not a problem for me as I do not like beets and the parsnips were a whim. The pinto beans I sowed last week have sprouted, but no sign of the sweet corn yet.

Plant tomatoes deeply

Some of the plants we got were already tall so I stripped off the bottom leaves and planted them about a foot deep. Tomatoes and basil will root on their stems so you can plant them very deep to develop a large root system.

I like to leave a well around the base of the tomato plants to collect water. We have such dry weather, it helps hold water to ensure they get enough.

water well around tomato plant

We planted 16 tomatoes today. Did one of each variety except Viva Italia, a plum tomato, because I think we will make spaghetti sauce this summer to can, so we need a lot of those.

Here are the other varieties we planted:
Lemon Boy- new to us. Big, yellow fruit
Cherokee Purple - an heirloom with great flavor we have had good luck with in the past
Sweet Million - the only cherry tomato we are growing
Money Maker - New to us, an heirloom that is supposed to be a good producer like:
Mortgage Lifter - another heirloom that should produce for a long time
Aunt Ruby's German Green - a very tasty green heirloom we enjoyed a couple of years ago
Park's Whopper - a modern hybrid that one of my customers swears by
Celebrity - a determinate variety that is one of the most popular in our area
Chadwick - I know nothing about this one. James got it from Jim in Ben Wheeler
Paul Robeson - another heirloom with large, tasty red fruit


I don't remember the other varieties, but I will keep you posted on our results - how they did, which tasted the best. 


After I planted all the little tomatoes, they we very wilted. James thought they needed some protection from the sun and wind so he built these teepees with stakes and covered them with feed sacks. If it gets cold, we can pull the sacks down to the ground for protection.

Protecting newly planted tomatoes

Visit to Community Gardens

Yesterday the Blue Moon Gardens' Garden Club did a field trip just down the road to the Ben Wheeler Community Gardens. Our host, head gardener Jim Bundscho, did more than just give us a tour. He gave us programs on the many activities and experiments he has going on there. It was fabulous!

First, we got a demonstration of his vermiculture operation (worm farming). It was a simple set-up: 55-gallon barrels with the top cut out and a drain, with a drain pipe attached, on the bottom. He puts in table scraps (no meat), paper, and thinnings from the garden and the worms turn it into fertilizer - sold on the market as "worm castings". The liquid that drains out the pipe, worm tea, is collected in a bucket and used as a foliar feed.

Here is the contents of the bin. As long as you keep feeding the worms and keep them moist, then continue to grow, multiply, eat and poop. Turning that waste and trash into fertilizer.

These are the workers on this project. Red wigglers.

I encourage you to visit the gardens in Ben Wheeler, TX. I will share more of our visit and what is going on down there in future posts.
For more information about Jim, visit his website at
www.homesteadservices.org

My Nook-Book reader

Several of our friends received Nook Colors (the Barnes & Noble e-reader) for Christmas. They love them and were showing them off. Since I love to read, James thought I would enjoy one as well, so he bought me one as an after-Christmas gift. And yes, I do like it, but I have a few issues with it.
Here is what I like about it:

Night view

• You can have a 900 page book (or a thousand 900 page books) on there and it is still the same size and weight.
• As my sister Gaile says, you can be reading an inappropriate or totally trashy book and no one will know because they can't see the cover.
• The Nook keeps up with where you are in the book. A lost bookmark is no problem.
• My favorite feature: you can highlight a word or phrase and immediately look it up in the included dictionary or Google it (which is the next best feature).
• Internet access: if you have a Wi-fi connection, which I do at home and at work, you can surf the internet, use your email, just like a laptop or notebook. Very cool, and handy for travel if you don't have an IPad.
• You can change the background and text colors for different light situations. I haven't tried it in blazing sun, but the night feature works great. You can read in the dark, which is nice for me because I read mostly at night and James' often goes to sleep while I am still reading. I don't have to keep a light on to continue reading.
• The text size and font style are adjustable. It also has a setting for Publishers setting, which shows the published book's font style and all the publishing notes (copyright date, acknowledgments, etc) that I really like.
• Show pictures well and in full color.

Here's what I don't like:

• The covers they sell at Barnes & Noble are really ugly. Luckily, we found some great covers for Nook Color at market so Blue Moon Gardens will have them soon. Then I can have a lovely, stylish cover instead of a black, vinyl one.
• Even though there are no expenses of printing, paper, shipping, stocking, etc., the cost of new e-books is not much cheaper than the paperback. This is outrageous! The cost should be $2-3 at the most. For the price, I would rather have the real book for this reason:
• You can't pass along an e-book. They have a few titles that you can "Loan" to another Nook user, for 2 weeks only. And you can only loan a book once. I love to pass along books and have them passed on to me so I resent this limitation.
• I don't like the hardness of the Nook but I do appreciate that you can virtually turn a page. James has pointed out to me that I 'pop' my book as I read and riffle the corner of the pages. I can't fiddle much with the Nook (which he probably appreciates!)
• I hate the fingerprints all over the screen. It bugs me on my smart phone as well. They need to work on that technology.

But in the world of E-readers, I am happy with the Nook Color. You can download free E-pubs from several sources, unlike the Kindle where you are limited on the types of files it will read. If you have been considering a electronic book reader, this is the best one out there now.

10+ reasons I love books

My bedside table full of books waiting to be read

I am an avid reader. Paperback fiction is my favorite reading material, but I read anything in front of me: the cereal box, a years-old magazine in the doctor's office, a trashy novel I picked up somewhere. Here are some of the reasons I love to read.

One of our bookshelves

1. Books take you to places you have never been and will never go (the past, the far-off future, other planets).
2. Books teach you things, lots of things. Before the internet, books were my go-to references.
3. You can read sitting or lying down; easy on the feet.
4. Reading improves your spelling.
5. Reading improves your writing. As a writer, this is important to me.
6. Reading improves your vocabulary. I constantly amaze my fellow workers with words I know in crossword that they have never heard before. I read it in a book.
7. Paperbacks travel well. They slide right into your purse or travel bag and weigh less than a hair dryer.
8. Books are good for travel. They help pass the time while you wait at airports: at the gate, on the plane waiting to take off, waiting for your connecting plane that is late. The time passes a lot quicker if you have a book to read. And it doesn't irritate other passengers like cell phones, and DVD players can.
9. Reading a book on a plane discourages most people from initiating a conversation while they sit next to you. I like this, having had some really awful conversations with boors on planes. 
10. Books make for good conversation, "Read any good books lately?"is an interesting topic to me.

There are more reasons I like to read books, but this is what comes to mind now. It is my favorite way to relax and be entertained at the same time. I like to trade books with other readers. A group of friends had a "bookworm party" years ago where everyone brought old books to trade. It was great fun and I got a lot of books to read that I never would have purchased. Have your own "bookworm party" and discover new authors and genres.

Books given to me by friends, including some from my favorite authors.