Category: Gardening

Today's post is brought to you for the early spring garden. You might want to skip this if you're on a slow connection, because it's going to be photo-intensive.

Spring starts in March in Alabama.  We've already been through cherry tree blossoms, pansies, Dogwood trees and the onset of allergy season.  Now we're into the serious season of lavender and roses.

Then there are lilacs.  Technically, lilacs should not grow in Alabama, but I adore them and I nurse two of them along by the front steps.  They've been there for 13 years now, through drought and snow.

They smell heavenly.  In the morning, you can smell orange blossoms and lilacs.  It's incredible.

The bay tree started as a 7" seedling 12 years ago.  It too should not grow in our climate, but it has prospered.  And, I have not bought bay leaves for cooking for the last decade.  Having them growing in the front yard is amazing, and every time the tree needs pruning, all of my friends have enough leaves to last them for the year.

Our tall garden iris is almost done blooming, but the Siberian Iris is just getting ready to start.  I love how it goes from being a tall grass, to swords with dark tips, to slowly unfurling deep purple iris.

This year we have some garden projects — first off the addition of a retaining wall down our driveway, which will give me the chance to add some bee and butterfly plants, lantana, asclepias, ajuga, and perhaps a few more roses.

It's not very pretty yet, but I have high hopes.  Similarly, the backyard, currently the preserve of children and bad dogs, is going to get a bit of an updo this year.  Although the swings and trampoline are permanent, and not particularly attractive, features.  I'm going to replant the beds (often used by dogs for rolling in the mud, but I'm hoping they're more mature and will restrain themselves), bank some azaleas down one side, and see if some drip irrigation will help.

Yes, gardening does cut into knitting time (why is why you're seeing flowers, not knitting, today).  But the results are so well worth it.  I'm looking forward to knitting outdoors later on this summer, hopefully under a cool leafy bower, while the kids ride their bikes and play.

I always gauge the end of summer by my wedding anniversary.  We were married outside in early October on a bright, sunny day.  By the time we came home from our honeymoon a couple of weeks later, it was C.O.L.D!

This seems to hold up every year.  Our warm sunny Alabama weather is just about through.

We still have tomatoes.  Two huge trails of vines through the flower beds in our front yard.  The children and I go out every day and eat them fresh, like little pieces of glinting red candy.  There are still hundreds of them out there — I'm not sure what I'll do with all the green ones when the sun stops being hot enough to turn a handful of them ruby red for us to eat every day.

There are still bees on the flowers on our front porch — huge bumbles.  We love them.

This is the end of our summer oranges.  I bought the Judge a "sweet" orange tree to go with our Meyer Lemon tree and they are the bitterest things you have ever tasted.  We like to pop them whole — they are Tootsie Pop sized — into our mouths and grimace in disgust.  But they do sort of grow on you.

It's goodbye to summer.  Sweaters are coming out which is always good — fall is the season of knitting and the adoration of all that is knitted in our household (at least by certain persons in it).  Ollie has already plucked a hat out of storage and realized that he felted one of his favorite fingerless mitts when he left it in the pocket of his jeans.  Ellie has developed frighteningly good judgment about her favorite fibers (cashmere, alpaca, and silk).  So we have something wonderful to look ahead to while we say goodbye to summer.