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bloom day
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in Ithaca
May 16, 2013 | 
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For years, these grew densely among the periwinkles alongside our driveway. Now there are a few clumps of Lillies of the Valley just starting to blossom. I suspect mulching with compost for two or three years would dramatically revive these plants.
I haven’t been home much in the past four months. My dad moved out of our family home and I’ve been in Ithaca making repairs and moving stuff out. I’m hoping to have the house ready to rent in June so a property manager can start showing it. All that to explain why I don’t know exactly what’s blooming in my garden.
Still, I like to participate in Garden Bloggers Bloom day, so I captured what’s abloom in my dad’s yard. Things are a lot different from when I lived here as a kid. Rhubarb is gone from the old patch and there’s no evidence of the sandbox or the tomato garden that occupied its space after we kids outgrew it.
The borders Mom planted each spring with annuals now sport evergreen shrubs. The trilliums that grew near the garage are gone, and Dad’s previously over-pampered rose bush barely peeks out from behind an evergreen hedge. English ivy, periwinkles, and lilies of the valley still grow along the driveway, but they’re beaten down. Once a lush, green display, this space clearly needs soil additives to perk up its plants.
Well… it is what it is. After 52 years, the family no longer lives here. Soon, tenants will take over, and chances are the ornamental plantings will receive attention only from the deer that often graze in the yard. I enjoyed what is abloom here, and I hope you will, too.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t know when I was a kid that this was a periwinkle. I certainly didn’t know it was a periwinkle when I photographed it this morning. I used to harvest these flowers to make little gift vases for my mom.
My dad went on today about how the lilacs are nicer this year than they’ve been in years. Our lone lilac tree has looked sketchy to me since I was five years old—and that hasn’t changed… but the blossoms are gorgeous.
There’s a good chance these flowers will be sour cherries in early July. Dad planted the sour cherry tree long after I moved out, and he has enjoyed many harvests from it. I planted a sour cherry tree about five years ago and it’s still deciding when it’s going to produce its first harvest.
Until this morning, here’s what I knew about woodruff: May Wine is a sweetened white wine, usually low quality. Some people serve it in May and add woodruff, a traditional seasoning. Not much context. Who serves May Wine? Whose traditions? I think it’s a German thing, and I’ve enjoyed my share of May Wine over the years. This morning, for the first time ever, I learned to recognize woodruff. It’s pretty but beware. My dad tells me it grows enthusiastically and will take over a planting bed or yard if you give it the chance.
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, Aug 2012!
Bean blossoms look far too complicated; I’m glad bees can figure them out. The green bush beans I planted this year have pink blossoms; a nice change from the white bean blossoms of past years. In the bottom-right of the photo, you can see a bean starting to develop.
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day originates from Carol Michel’s blog, May Dreams Gardens. She wants to see blossoms all year long, and the garden blogging community rallies: post blossoms on your blog, then link to it from her blog. It’s simple, and it helps other people find your blog!
Please enjoy my Bloom Day post. Then, come back on the 22nd and participate in Post Produce. Just as Carol does, I’ll write my Post Produce post and include a Linky widget before I go to bed on the 21st. On the 22nd, you write your own post about what you’re eating from your garden, then link to your post from Your Small Kitchen Garden. I hope you’ll join me on August 22nd and Post Produce.
Here’s what’s abloom in my garden today:
If it’s Bloom Day and tomatoes are in bloom, you’re going to find at least one tomato blossom in my post! This photo is more about hairy stems than it is about blossoms. I’ve harvested about a bushel of tomatoes so far. Barring a late blight incident, I may see three or four bushels from my plants this year.
My thyme plants are struggling a bit this year. One has some seriously involved fungus that I’ve treated a few times with the copper-based fungicide I use on my tomato plants. Amazingly, the stems of that plant touch the stems of a perfectly healthy-looking thyme plant. Too much information? This flower stalk is from the healthy thyme plant.
The mint has been in bloom for weeks. It has overwhelmed the planter holding it, and blossoms hang over the sides. I fear an impending mint invasion and will be vigilant for plants that decide to germinate next to the planter.
Bush cucumber plants I set in a deck planter have grown vines as long and tendrilly as the non-bush cucumbers I planted in my garden. Cucumber blossoms look happy against the deck flooring.
Pepper flowers are among my favorites.
For flower drama in a vegetable garden, you can always count on squashes! This is a butternut blossom, and it clearly understands flower sex. For this photo, it attracted four pollinators, though the reliable pollinator was holding the camera. Despite all the bee activity among my summer and winter squash blossoms, I hand-pollinate every female flower. The bees didn’t budge when I brushed this female flower’s “parts” with a male flower’s “part.”
Posted in bloom day | 
Tags: beans, bloom day, blossoms, cucumbers, flowers, garden bloggers bloom day, peppers, squash, thyme, tomatoes, vegetables | 
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Garden Bloggers Bloom Day June 2012
This is the very first chili pepper flower of the year from plants I grew from seed. I bought a flat of four pepper plants and they’ve all flowered already, but buds on the ones I started two months ago indoors have just started to open.
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day found me erecting tomato trellises in my small kitchen garden. It also had me prepping soil at the south boundary of my emerging rain garden and planting some ornamental grasses, poppy seeds, and elephant ear tubers. I don’t have a plan yet for what will grow in and around the rain garden, but elephant ear plants need to go inside for the winter, so their placement this summer is simply to get them through
Despite the gardening, I snapped some photos of what’s blooming. This time around I photographed only food plants from my small kitchen garden; many have reached reproductive age, and the garden has been abuzz with all kinds of bees, flies, and butterflies. Please enjoy what’s in bloom in my garden and thanks for visiting!
My cilantro is from last year’s planting. It wintered over nicely, providing flavoring during avocado season, and it’s making bunches of coriander (you can see some of the seeds in the background). I hope to plant more cilantro seeds during the weekend so there’s plenty available during salsa-making season.
At least one onion flower photo makes it to Bloom Day each year. I planted about 150 onion sets this year. They’re a tad crowded but growing vigorously—some yellow, some white, and some purple. I use onion nearly every day in my cooking, so 150 plants may not get me through the year.
While these look a lot like broccoli flowers, they’re actually Pak Choi. I’d never grown the stuff, and this attempt was an abject failure: there is no fleshy bulge of tightly-packed leaves at the base of my plants. I surmised from the poor growth that the soil in my kitchen garden annex lacks nutrients and am making adjustments so the carrots, onions, and lettuce I’ve planted there perform better than the Pak Choi did.
Peas are awesome! Well… fresh peas from the garden are awesome. Close to half my pea plants suffered during a three-day rainstorm in April, so it looks like a very small harvest this year. I’ve been snacking a lot on raw peas while “gardening” and I’ll mix up a vat of new potatoes and peas during the weekend.
Yeah! It’s been a while since I published a photo of a tomato blossom. I’m so happy to be able to do it now. This is a Black Krim tomato blossom on a plant growing on my deck. The plant already holds a developing tomato about the size of a golf ball, and I’ve hope that I’ll be harvesting tomatoes some time in July. I’m growing a few tomato plants on my deck but I’ve supplemented them with 74 plants in my raised vegetable bed.
If you enjoy Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, perhaps you might also enjoy Post Produce. Join me and other bloggers on the 22nd of each month by writing a blog post about what you’re eating from your kitchen garden. After you post on your own blog, visit my Post Produce post and link from there to your own. Show the world the goodies you’ve grown in your own garden! Here’s more about Post Produce.
Small Kitchen Garden Bloom Day—May 2012
The forget-me-nots are getting old, and the light was weird today. All told, my photo makes them look pale. But pale or deep baby blue, forget-me-nots are among my favorite flowers. This is about the twelfth season we’ve had forget-me-nots from when I first planted seeds.
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day celebrates flowers the world over. Learn more about Bloom Day at Carol’s blog: May Dreams Gardens. My small kitchen garden is still getting started (though peas may be in bloom within ten days), and there was quite a bit of rain today. So, I toured my yard and found several plants in bloom that had nothing to do with my vegetable garden. If the photos have a common theme it’s wet. (I mean that “wet” is the theme.)
I’ve always enjoyed Bloom Day and felt there should be a similar opportunity to show off your homegrown produce. Last autumn I started Post Produce to fill the void. The 22nd of each month is Post Produce. Write about whatever you’re eating – or growing to eat – from your garden. Then visit my Post Produce post and use the Linky there to add a link to yours. Find more about Post Produce at this link; I hope you’ll join in. In the meantime, please enjoy:
There is but one bachelor button abloom in my yard. Oddly, last spring I planted bachelor button seeds along with four or five other types of seeds. There wasn’t a bachelor button plant in the garden all season. This spring, that planting bed erupted in lush green growth very early: nearly all bachelor buttons. This is the second blossom. In a week or two, there ought to be dozens of blossoms.
Sage is the only food plant in my small kitchen garden that made Bloom Day this month. Only a few branches have blooms on them, but there are buds all over the plants. Soon I’ll be singing that it’s great to be in Texas when the bloom is on the sage. Except it’ll be Pennsylvania.
I once looked up this plant so I’d know what it is. Of course, I can’t remember. It’s on the same schedule as our azaleas. The lighting made the image look quite a lot like an impressionist painting.
A photograph of flowers or foliage? The azaleas are a day or two away from dropping their blossoms… but they’ve put on a terrific show. These flowers are two steps from the fence of my main vegetable bed. Peas, cauliflower, broccoli, and lettuce all are doing well in that bed, and I’ll be planting tomatoes and peppers over the coming week. Along the way, I’ll be serving frequent lettuce salads as my earliest planting is mature enough now to harvest. I’ll show and tell about it on May 22nd when I celebrate Post Produce. I hope you’ll join me and create your own Post Produce post. Follow this link to learn about Post Produce.
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