Big Bmore snow killed my rosemary, too, but it wasn’t in a good location anyway and kinda scraggly at that. But I am all dug up and fertilized and waiting for…potentially the end of the workday today, then I’m planting my cold weather early stuff (greens, broccoli, brussels, lettuce, etc.).
I like to read Frank Norris’ “The Octopus” simply because the way he describes the earth as a force of astonishing potential, the ‘fecund’ earth laying in wait to rise again…
Then, as the imagination itself expanded under the stimulus of that measureless range of vision, even those great ranches resolved themselves into mere foreground, mere accessories, irrelevant details. Beyond the fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the globe, the shoulder of the earth, were other ranches, equally vast, and beyond these, others, and beyond these, still others, the immensities multiplying, lengthening out vaster and vaster. The whole gigantic sweep of the San Joaquin expanded, Titanic, before the eye of the mind, flagellated with heat, quivering and shimmering under the sun's red eye. At long intervals, a faint breath of wind out of the south passed slowly over the levels of the baked and empty earth, accentuating the silence, marking off the stillness. It seemed to exhale from the land itself, a prolonged sigh as of deep fatigue. It was the season after the harvest, and the great earth, the mother, after its period of reproduction, its pains of labour, delivered of the fruit of its loins, slept the sleep of exhaustion, the infinite repose of the colossus, benignant, eternal, strong, the nourisher of nations, the feeder of an entire world.
Our rosemary was in a big pot so we could bring it into the house for over winter. The pot weighed a good 30 lbs, not something a simple wind gust could move. Damned tornado took it off our deck rail and dumped it into the elephant ears below.
I love that it grows damn near everywhere in California, so it’s easy to just walk by and run one’s hand across the leaves to get a big headfull of that lovely smell.
I have this giant rosemary bush, that started out about seven or eight years ago in a pot like yours. It got planted outside and ignored for a while. Now it’s so big that it’s taking over, and it has so many bees around it that I’d have to get a bee suit to prune it.
The punch line? I can’t remember the last time I took more than a tiny sprig off it to cook with.
Yeah, I have a Langstrauth (sp?) hive way out on the back of the property. I traded it to a guy for some garden products a couple of years ago. The first year the queen died and all the workers died or ran away. Last year was better… I got a couple of pounds of honeycomb out of it. Nowhere near as much as I was expecting. I find beekeeping to be frustratingly difficult.
I love your idea of a border full, next to a wall. Good idea…
Also tulips in the garden, different kind. They are stacked, four layers of botanical tiny ones. Will bloom together and after one and another.
Sorry bad picture, to much sunlight, and no I’m not complaining about the sunshine. Maybe I can replace it this weekend with less sun and also the red ones peeping.
We are keeping Langstroth hives because those are common and simple, and we are staffing them with rescued bees (swarms and cutouts). Where (as in, what part of the world) are you keeping your bees, if I may ask? And apart from having the queen die (of what, would be a followup question here but I don’t know if you found out why), what sorts of problems are you experiencing with keeping your buzzing, honey-making microstock?
In the hot and dry seasons, bees need watering. And forage, whether from things that are growing within a few miles of the hive, or from supplemental feed a keeper supplies them. In the cold, they need their hives “winterized” with some attention to entries and bottom boards. Harvesting honey must be timed/sized in such a way that the hive doesn’t starve in the lean of a season. In areas with a lot of bee antagonists (wax moths, mites, etc.), there are some non-nuclear options that are effective and low-cost.
I sense this may end up being a separate thread, but for now…
And thats not all. Peppers downstairs, in the living room windows, like other plants which like some more warmth. Growing from seed can be very rewarding and nice to do (and saves a lot of money), but I still underestimate how much space it takes.
(And effort, and love, and care, neglecting of other things, worries, oh… plants…)
I have a very small cottage. Originally the house had some shrubs which were out of proportion to the house. My husband built these beds and I got the fun job of filling them. (Yes, it’s great having a husband who worked as a landscaper throughout grad school!) It took me a while to hit on the tulips for the early spring, but now that I have the bulbs all down it’s a blast of joy after the cold weather.
It was really easy to do and I just bought the tulips at the local big box store in the fall. I have early, mid, and late season blooming tulips planted in there and generally the larger ones are planted at the back of the bed.
Of course I am dreaming of the more expensive tulips from some catalogs I get, but since I had the idea of tulips, doing what was affordable for me at least got me started. I will hopefully have the money to add more exotic ones in soon.
I have a lot of perennials that come up in late spring and will continue on through early summer. The only down side to the tulips is that after they are spent, the vegetation needs to stay in the beds to nurture the bulbs for next year, so there’s the transition period where there’s a bunch of dead crap in the beds. I leave it in until I can tug the dead leaves off and throw them out.
Maybe I can replace it this weekend with less sun and also the red ones peeping.
