The weather is supposed to take a cold turn tonight with temperatures dropping back near freezing. After making sure that seedlings and tender plants were safely tucked in the greenhouse I decided to take a few pictures of some blooming shrubs and edible landscaping. If it all gets hit by frost tonight I’ll have gorgeous photos to remember them by. You know, exactly like Better Homes and Garden’s gorgeous photo spreads… I’m pretty sure they use a little bitty Canon and a cell phone to take their best shots, too…

First up for my show and tell, my favorite lilac-Mount Baker.

The fragrance is delicious.

Honestly-I just want to shove my nose into these flowers, snort deeply and keep it there all spring.

Mount Baker Lilac

Next…

Blueberry Blossoms

Blueberries in Bloom

Most years we don’t get many berries unless I cage them early. The chickens pick off the lower ones, and the wild birds get the upper berries. They are all such little pigs.

And finally,

Apple Blossoms

This crazy tree does not know it’s been pronounced dead…twice. It has blown over, been completely uprooted and snapped at the base of the trunk. Now it simply reclines.

This photo is from a few years ago – after the second time it went over in a bad storm. We had lots of trees to clean up and I hadn’t gotten around to cutting it down when I noticed it was still producing fruit.

It’s a Zombie Apple Tree!

Recumbent Zombie Apple Tree

Although a professor of mine from some years ago would have told me to “prune it at the roots” I did not have the heart to cut down a tree so determined to live.

Today it still grows in it’s happy-yet wonky-condition and even produces plenty of gorgeous Rome apples for me each fall!

I just consider it a living sculpture these days.

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This is hard work, gang! All the concrete blocks had to be dug up, cleaned off and stacked. You can see a pile in the background. There are several more just like it littering the garden area. Now…what to do with them all. Suggestions?

So, here’s the plan… the goats will eat the rest of the garden down and fertilize it for me over the next few weeks, then we’ll put new wood beds in for the fall season.

I have found a few ambitious youngsters in need of some cash. They are digging out the raised bed concrete blocks in the flooded,weed filled garden. Here is the garden at the beginning of the makeover.

So as not to burn the kids out, the removal phase of the project has been tentatively scheduled to take two weeks,weather permitting…which leaves the next two days out.

It’s almost unbelievable how fast these weeds pop up! This  photo I took not long ago shows the garden devoid of any vegetation.

You can see where some volunteer sunflowers have taken off. I plant them every year for the birds, bunnies, and goats.

Gold Finches come around every summer eat the seeds right off the flower heads. I guess we’ll just work around the sunflowers for the time being.

I have not transplanted any herbs from this little square bed at the foreground of the photo below. They are so happy here that I am going to leave them in place and replace the concrete with a wood bed.

Garden Overhaul in Progress

See all the concrete blocks the kids have cleaned and carried to the back of the garden so far?

I am hoping to get some photos of my shy garden helpers in a future post!

Herb Garden after rains and flooding

Too much water + herbs = never a good idea.

With all the 2008-2009 heavy rains and flooding in parts of the Midwestern USA (where I live) something had to give.

What gave? My concrete garden beds…and the roof on the goat shed you see on the right. Attractive tarp, no?

Yep, my back herb and veggie potager was flooded.  In fact it flooded many times over the last year.  Each time the garden got worse looking until I knew that the whole thing needed to be redone.

In this 75′x20′ odd space, I built raised block beds to keep my herbs up out of the wettest soil during heavy seasonal rains, and it worked pretty well for 10 years. Oh sure, I occasionally had a plant heave up out of the soil during the winter and croak, but this concrete block bed system really worked well in this lower part of the garden.

The problem/blessing is that we have flatland. It’s great for livestock, soybeans, corn(maize), and wheat- but water just stands, loitering on it.

This is great when the weather has been dry, but when the ground is saturated the water has no place to go, so we slog around in 6″ of water. This  plot is in the one area where water from the yard and barn flows to lower ground.

This herb garden was also once home to a small barn. The previous landowner burned the old barn on the spot, so there were lots of nails and glass shards that surfaced after every rain.  In order to use this bit of land, we laid a double layer of landscape fabric down over the whole thing, then laid gravel paths between the raised beds.

Now only the front part of the wide gravel paths remain intact, the rest has washed away. The solid pavers that graced the top of the beds also washed away, but many were reclaimed to make high and dry islands for the goats to stand on in the worst flooding.

The garden lies between a dog run and the buck goat pens. Perfect for keeping wild bunnies out, not so good when someone forgets to lock the gate and those ornery boy goats get loose in the garden!

I don’t mind overhauling the garden so much( OK, well actually I do) but what really slayed me was the gorgeous three foot tall pile of aged compost at the back of the garden. It’s mostly washed away. What is left is useless now, full of weed seeds and who knows what.  Do you think me silly to mourn my compost? Yeah well, it’s a gardener thing.

Never fear, there is more where that came from and the bunnies, goats, and chickens are hard at work for a new pile in time for me to use this fall. Horse poop goes to the pasture to improve the soil there.

I am considering putting in plain old untreated wood beds. What do you think?

That way I can anchor the wood and not have them shift around should it ever rain for 7  months straight again. In such an event there is the added bonus of having  the wood handy for building an ark!

If you have ideas, please leave me a comment! I would LOVE some ideas for my garden and want to know what works in your gardens.