What can I say? We just got a puppy, I’m working on a major deadline for work, and I’ve been outside helping the landscapers place rocks and shrubs, all of which needs to happen before any of my seedlings have a hope of seeing real sunlight. So I forgot to water, and fried some penstemons, my Roma tomatoes, some Missouri Evening Primrose, and a couple of Prairie Zinnias, which really bums me out because those have such a low germination rate to begin with that I now have only four. Oh well, live and learn and come up with a more fool-proof (or should I say busy-proof) watering system for next year.

The good news is that everything that survived the mini-drought is now doing really, really well. I moved some tomatoes, peppers, Rudbeckia hirta, hollyhocks, and English lavender up to 3 1/4 inch pots yesterday. And did something I have never before brought myself to do: thinned seedlings. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have room for 24 Zapotec tomatoes, or because my stomach can’t managed a dozen habanero plants, or maybe it’s just because I’m becoming ruthless and selecting the plants with the strongest stems in hopes that they’ll be able to resist the Lyons winds. Either way, I had a fairly good pile of thinned seedlings to go on the compost pile after my work downstairs and that freed up room in the tetra-packs to start the other seeds that have been cold stratifying in the fridge since January.

One small lesson learned (besides setting some sort of reminder to water) is that you can’t give plants like tomatoes the number of hours of light they need (I’ve got them on 16 hours a day right now) and, under those same conditions, grow greens. Yes, it’s true. Despite the fact that my arugula is only an inch tall, it’s sending up the characteristic 4-petaled mustard flower. It would be sort of adorable–garden in extreme miniature–if I wasn’t really hoping to eat those greens. I might have to buy a second timer for the greens next winter, but I’m still trying to calculate return-on-investment before I, um, make more investments

So I’ve finally gotten around to taking some pictures of our edible-landscape-in-progress. You can probably see that we have our work cut out for us since the only plant matter in the yard at present is 4 non-fruiting trees and non-edible (except to goats and puppies!) sod.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like my St. Patrick’s Day peas are going to happen. First, there’s the matter of the landscapers not being done driving heavy equipment across my garden patch (they still have several large boulders to place for us). Second, there’s Mother Nature’s silly sense of humor; it’s currently snowing and the various weather folks are predicting anywhere from 5 to 18 inches.

Even I’m not hardcore enough to go out and plant peas in 18 inches of snow! So instead, I guess we’ll just have to be happy with what we got done this morning, which is leveling and starting to lay out our front yard patio. This little rough set flagstone creation will have creepers like Thyme and maybe even some chamomile planted between the gaps in the stone. It will house two chairs and a small table and allow Matt and I to sit somewhere other than on the front steps when we’re out watching the children ride bikes in the cul-de-sac (or at least it will provide a place to set our drinks where the pup can’t knock them over!).

I guess I’m stuck just dreaming about spring for at least a few more days…

I don’t know if it’s the time change, the warm weather, the nearness of the first day of spring, or the fact that our landscapers have kicked it into overdrive, but I seem to be bordering on spring-garden-mania!!!

Tuesday afternoon, I spent a blissful afternoon planting bulbs with the children. Yes, I know it’s the wrong time of year (these were spring bulbs!), but I bought a bunch of stuff on clearance last fall, half of which never got planted, so after a winter of cold storage in the garage, they were sending up shoots. So what the heck? We planted scilla, snowdrops, crocuses and grape hyacinth under the area where our grass will be. If they come up, they will dot the yard with purples and blues well before the warm season grass greens up.

Yesterday, they laid our tall fescue sod over the newly-planted bulbs and although the water-Nazi in me is in a panic about the three-times-per-day watering schedule, I know in the long run that we’ve minimized our turf area (<1000 square feet) and chosen a low-water variety. The water will also probably give an added jump-start to those bulbs, as will the bone meal that Gabriel & Lily carefully sprinkled in each bulb hole (while I fended off the pooch, who was determined to eat the bone meal!).

Today they started rototilling the soil, pulling out even more rock as they went, and really doing the fine grade. This means that I may yet make my goal of planting peas by St. Patrick’s Day (yes, I know that’s Monday!). I sat in the bath with my husband the other night laughing about the dirt between my toes and under my (broken) nails. It looks like his hopes for a girlie girl are dashed for yet another gardening season

The warmer temperatures have not yet driven away the wind and, although it doesn’t much bother me, the children and the pup protest loudly whenever they have to be out in it. Sigh. And all I want to be doing is digging in the dirt.

Elements in Time has posted her own personal experience with her kitty getting poisoned by pesticides and I think you should read it. She follows up her story with a lot of good resources, as well as all the reasons we shouldn’t use pesticides in the yard. I echo everything she says and can vouch for the fact that you can indeed have a healthy, beautiful and productive garden without using a single poison to maintain it.

When we bought our first house nearly ten years ago, one of the things I loved, loved, loved about it was not the beaded curtains in the shower or the swag lights, it was the gigantic Jonathan apple tree in the back yard. This thing had perhaps never been pruned (or at least not in the last 15 years) and was a full-size tree about 30 feet tall and 40 feet wide. It took up half the back yard and was much overgrown (that first summer the branches bent to the ground with fruit, which made mowing a bit difficult), but I started dreaming of pies and apple sauce and lounging in its bountiful shade.

The tree did not disappoint. A couple of heavy restoration prunes brought out the hidden glory in this tree and one particularly bountiful summer we had over 200 pounds of apples. Luckily for us, that was the summer before my son was born and my mother spent Gabriel’s first days making his first food–homemade apple sauce double blended for extra Grandmotherly goodness.

I was sad to leave that tree behind, but knew that apple trees would be part of our next home’s landscape. In a fit of giddy garden lust, Matt & I stayed up one December night researching apple tree varieties. He had his cider book in hand, I had various Cooperative Extension reports on fire blight resistance and preferable root stock for our windy, dry environment. By the end of the evening, Raintree Nursery in Washington was loving us and we had ordered a whopping five apple trees (Ashmead’s Kernel, Honeycrisp, Roxbury Russet, Striped Gravenstein, and Liberty), a Montmorency cherry tree, a Warren pear, and an Italian Prune (plum) tree. Did I mention our lot is slightly smaller than a third of an acre and that I have tons of vegetable garden space built into this landscape already? Or that I also ordered eight grape vines to cover part of the 425 feet of fence line? Or that I have a 25 foot row of raspberries built into the plan as well?

To answer your questions, no, we’re not going to have much turf in this edible landscape and yes, I’m a fruit in more than one sense of the word

Anyhow, there was one tree missing from my order list and I ordered it today: a Northern Spy. I’ve never tasted a Northern Spy and, compared to some of the other varieties I’ve ordered, it may not be quite as unique or tasty (although I hear it is pretty good). But there’s a story behind this tree that makes it perhaps the most special one of all. In August of 2006, my husband had to go to China for three weeks on business. This was just a few months after my darling daughter, Lily, was born and when she was still prone to bouts of inconsolable screaming for hours at a time.

To say that I called my parents and begged them to come visit is to understate the desperation of my situation. As always, they came through and arrived just a few days after Matt left. One sunny August afternoon, my father and I drove to the local fruit stand to get some of Colorado’s famous Western Slope peaches. After a pleasant lull in conversation, Dad said, “Have you ever had a Northern Spy?”

At the time, I had no idea that this was a fruit, let alone an apple, and was wondering if we were talking old army stories here, or a mixed drink (unlikely, knowing my father), or what. Then he told me it was an apple that he had eaten as a boy and he wondered if anyone still grew it. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but that story has come to have a great deal of meaning to me because Dad passed away very unexpectedly just over a month after this conversation. Had Matt not taken the trip, I would have missed the opportunity to spend one last week with my father, and would have missed out on this one final story of his boyhood in Pennsylvania.

So I ordered a Northern Spy from Seeds of Change today and will plant it next month in honor of my Dad. And hopefully, several years for now, it will bear fruit. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing eating that fruit will be pretty sacred around here, regardless of whether it’s as floral as the Ashmead’s Kernel, or makes as good a cider as the Roxbury Russet.