Flowering Miscellany

These are Outhouse Hollyhocks we grew from seed we ordered from SeedSavers Exchange. They are an heirloom variety that should produce a variety of bold colors with lots of blooms. According to the literature, Hollyhocks were often used to both identify and hide the outhouse. So, if you were at house you were unfamiliar with, instead of embarrassing yourself by asking where the outhouse was, you could just look for the Hollyhocks and figure it out. I'm just hoping I don't find some old timer rooting around next to the house after these things bloom.
Here are the day lilies in full bloom in front of the rain barrel on the East side of the house.

This is a mixed planting of flowers and greens with Amish snap peas growing up the fence. We've had a great crop of peas this year. On the right is our Clematis, which I was certain I had killed this past winter. It hasn't bloomed yet, but it has more vines than ever, so I'm optimistic about the flowers, whenever they show up.
Here is the front yard bed showing its first blooms. The light colored flowers are poppies, the yellow ones are Jolly Jester marigolds. The red tinged flowers are Bishop's children- not sure what they are going to look like.

New Addition

Not to be confused with Bobby Brown's original boy band, this new addition to our flower garden is called a Balloon Flower. It's a shade loving perennial which has flowers that look just like purple balloons as they ripen, then they burst open into large star shaped blooms.

Compost Tumbler 2.0

Here is the compost tumbler I made from a recycled car wash detergent barrel on its new improved stand. The original version was much lower to the ground and difficult to work with. I also added baffles to the insides of the barrel, similar to those in a clothes dryer, to help mix the compost more thoroughly when I turn it. The stand is high enough that I can wheel my neighbor's wheelbarrow under it to empty the contents instead of digging it out like before. I still need to add a few more handles to make it easier to turn and finish reinforcing the hatch, which has warped slightly, but so far the new version is cooking the compost like it's on a mission. The other day I opened it to check on something and heat just blasted out at me. It was awesome...

Rogue Squash

Earlier this spring I noticed a few sprouts in my compost pile that looked a lot like squash or cucumbers. I had intended to transplant them up to our community garden so they could spread out and so I could finish changing the composting process here at the house. Well, I didn't get to it right away and now I regularly need to move the vines so they don't grow out into the alley. This is the biggest squash plant I've ever grown. I keep waiting for it to shout, "Feed me Seymour!"

Planter Update

Here's our lettuce garden, going crazy. We are fully out of things to do with lettuce, except eat salads. I wonder if you can make it into biofuel...?

These are the tomatoes we've planted in the Growbox 1.0. They are now nearing the top of the frame and will undoubtedly overgrow the whole thing. They are now sprouting bunches of little flowers and should be loaded with tomatoes in a few weeks.








The double impatiens in this planter are full of blooms.

On the right is our pear tomato, which is very full of blooms.





The geraniums are coming back after their initial shock at being planted in this window box. There are bunches of blooms about to open on each of them.



This begonia is also doing quite well. In front of the left blossom are three blueberries, which are shaping up to be our total crop for this year. Behind the planter our grape vine is growing several inches a week. Soon it will cover the whole fence.

Lily profusion

These are my favorite flowers at our house. They were planted here when we moved in and were a pleasant surprise the first summer we lived here. Had we negotiated our deal in July instead of February, we may have been tempted to pay more for the place. Since we've lived here these wonderful, orange flowers have proliferated. We hope that at one point soon they will fill this entire flower bed.


These are two new lilies we purchased this year at the farmer's market. They are dwarf lilies and won't get any taller than this, which is about a foot. They are already loaded with blossoms and we look forward to next year's crop as well.

Just Dangerous

Imagine the force of water needed to hurl these two tree trunks down the river and fling them over the falls, where they landed and stayed suspended precariously over the rocks below. Now imagine if a person were to fall into that torrent and get sucked down stream before your eyes. Sobering thought, isn't it?









Then what, you might ask, are these two morons doing walking across this raging river? There is no excuse for the one in the blue, but the one in the yellow later admitted that he only agreed to cross because he needed to use the restroom and didn't want to walk all the way back to the sanctioned crossing. Amazingly, there were no casualties.

Beautiful but DANGEROUS!

How did they know that TJ Mackey was coming to the Presque Isle crossing?
We spent an awesome afternoon in the Porcupine Mountains State Park in early July when we went to pick up Squid.

This is the waterfall under the suspension bridge to the island.
We found the perfectly round holes in the rock fascinating.












This is the river joining Lake Superior. The overhanging trees seemed to provide just the right shade and shelter.








Still dangerous, but significantly less beautiful, Trevor dangles over the precipice. Or maybe just over the weird brown lagoon.









This is the biggest waterfall we visited that day. We hiked up the East side of the river and explored some interesting terrain before we made it to the spot we chose to cross.

What a Relief!

Today I dropped my thesis off for binding and applied for graduation. I am officially finished with grad school. Holy crap that was a lot of work...

Planters

My wife is very creative and has a knack for adding significant color to our back yard palette. This is a planter she fell in love with at our local garden center and carefully directed me to fill it with flowers that accent planter and create an interesting color scheme.
Here's my attempt to be creative. Notice that everything is orange or nearly orange. This planter makes me think of orange creamsicles or push pops I used to eat when I was a kid.

This is another interesting collection designed by my wife. It's flowering very well. I especially like the flame flowers and how they interact with the pinks from the impatiens and the coleus.

This is a planter I built last year and filled with geraniums. I forgot to fill the drain holes this year (I noticed it got very dry last year) so the flowers had a rough start. There are several blossoms ready to open now, though. I'll get another picture shortly. In the meantime, who's that two headed ghost in my garage?
This is a planter that I picked out. It belonged to my wife's mother. We brought it here after her passing and I planted this red and white mix. The allysum has nearly filled the container and the geranium is ready to send out a bunch of new blossoms.

Alley Development

Our house came with a well established colony of bleeding hearts on the alley side. In addition to being beautiful, I found these especially fitting considering the connotation of some liberals to be 'bleeding hearts.' Mixed in with the traditional pink blossoms are some interesting white blossoms.

It's hard to make out in this picture, but these are bold yellow tulips in full bloom. To the left are some stragglers from the bleeding heart group and a hearty collection of my favorite irises in the world. There color is a deep sunset orange and there are tons of them.

Here's a shot of the house with the crab apples in bloom. Initially these trees appeared to be dying and our first two springs were disappointing because the petals fell off the blossoms right before they bloomed. We then learned that they were being attacked by a fungus which caused the leaves to turn yellow and fall throughout the summer. I try to avoid using many chemicals in my yard (as evidenced by the impressive crop of dandelions I turn our every spring, much to the chagrin of my neighbor), so I was reluctant to start spraying fungicide around the front of the house. Instead, I found an application that mixes with water and is introduced to the plant at the roots. I've used this for the past two springs and have been extremely pleased with the huge blossoms and lush foliage the trees produce now.

Here's a shot of the rain barrel shortly after it was installed. The green branch hanging over the edging is a raspberry of some sort. It seems to be doing well and may actually produce fruit this year.

This was another pleasant surprise this spring. We had been trying to cultivate columbine in our ally wild flower garden and had been having no luck until this awesome white columbine flowered. It made several seed pods and I intend to help it propagate this fall as the pods dry out.

Enjoying the 'Stay'-cation

Partly as a way to reduce our carbon footprint, partly because gas is so expensive we can't plan any long trips right now, we have embarked upon a stay-cation. The Superior Hiking Trail runs through Duluth now and we have nearly forty miles of trail to explore right in our own back yard.
This is the view from the top of the winding steps that we encountered near the beginning of the trail, from where we started at Spirit Mountain. We chose to start here and hike two sections of the trail, so we ended up on Skyline Parkway. We drove two vehicles, but neither of them drove much further than we would have if we went to the mall, if we did that much.
This is as close as Lulu would let me get with the camera.

This is a picture from the bridge over Kingsbury Creek, which flows into the Lake Superior Zoo.
A special thanks to everyone along on the trip that day- I had no idea how dumb I looked wearing that hat until now. I know I can count on you guys to let me wander around, oblivious to and resplendent in my dorkiness.

As we trekked northward on the trail, we emerged from the heavily wooded portion and meandered through several upland meadows. The wildflowers were in full bloom.

All along the way were amazing vistas like this one. I had no idea that we has such great scenery so close to home. It was interesting to have this kind of wilderness with the highway so close that we could hear semi's down shifting on Thompson Hill.

New Rain Barrel

Here's a look at the Rain Barrel 2.0. I added two new barrels to the front of the house this spring; this one is on the alley side. The goofy snorkel looking thing sticking out of the top is just that- it allows air to escape from the barrel while it is filling. So far, we've had rain and dry spells staggered sufficiently that I've watered mostly from the barrels and have been able to use most of the water in them before the next rain.

This is a close up of the flower planted on top. This is aesthetic- it reduces the industrial look of the barrels.