A Perfect Gravenstein

A year ago, my granddaughter and I went to Flower World, a wonderful multi-acre nursery close to home in Maltby. We were shopping for an apple tree. The selection was amazing, and we spent quite a bit of time looking at the trees and the pictures attached to the trees, showing us what the apples would look like.

The Gravenstein apple has some red blush and stripes over yellow flesh, and this new tree has produced only one apple this season. It is perfect in every way. I'm looking forward to future years when the tree gets larger and the crop gets more abundant.

This summer, I found a great old sign at an antique store that says 'Apple Orchard'. I hung it on the fence by my new tree, and it points to the other apple trees in our burgeoning orchard.

I can already smell the apple pies and applesauce and apple crisp of future years, all to be made possible by this one new tree. A tree is certainly an investment in one's future.

September

Today, the sun was out and the air was crisp. Red leaves have appeared at the top of my neighbor's maple tree across the street, and I know that fall is on the way. The air is cooler and moist, and the grass and the garden love this respite from the heat of the summer. I coiled up my garden hose today, as I probably won't need it for a while at least.

I worked in the yard and garden all day today. The grass clippings went into the new compost bin, and I spoke to a Master Gardener today at Home Depot, wanting to know more about the process that I am learning about in my own Master Gardener class. I weeded the garden, admiring my September garden of peas, beans, cabbage, lettuce, onions, and pumpkins. The tomatoes are still green, and there hasn't been enough warm weather for them this year.

This was my first year raising gladiolas, and they all came up and flowered. The colors range from hot pink to light pink to light orange. They are lovely.

I extended my rose flower bed, and created just enough room for one more Julia Child rose bush. I'll have to go down to the Antique Rose Farm next Saturday and pick one up, along with a couple of climbing roses for the picket fence in the front yard.

Tomorrow I'll be testing the soil in my yard for a class assignment, and this will give me valuable information for future reference. I'll be able to amend my soil, apply my own compost to the soil where needed, and learn more ways to take care of my plants and trees.

It was a good day.

Master Gardener Program at Oregon State University

I just completed my first week of the OSU Master Gardener/Home Horticulture program! I was very excited to be accepted into this 12-week online program, and I've enjoyed doing my reading and my homework this week. I just took my first quiz, and got 14 out of 15 questions correct! A good start, I think.

My classmates/cohort group are located all over the world! I love this aspect of online courses. One guy is in Kabul, Afghanistan, and another woman is in Pennsylvania. The rest of us are scattered from Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington.

We are getting acquainted with each other on our online Discussion Board. This will be a great way to talk about our assignments and share our botany questions and answers. It's been a dream of mine for about five years to find an online course so I could gather together all of the information I will need to care for and nuture my trees, plants and shrubs, and to make my property look like I have envisioned it.

By December 1, I will be finished with the course, and then the real work begins. Wish me luck!

Heirloom Tomatoes from the Farmer's Market

Yesterday at the Woodinville Farmer's Market, I found these beautiful heirloom tomatoes. The colors and patterns are amazing. It's kind of humbling to think that these tomatoes were grown from seeds over 100 years old!

I'll slice them and put them on a plate for my Labor Day barbecue tomorrow, and they'll look as good as they taste!

A Shelf for the Garden

I spotted this unique hand-made shelf at an antique store a couple of weeks ago, and I knew it would look perfect in my garden. I hauled it home and nailed it to the fence. I've got some great clay pots that would look festive sitting on the reclaimed wood, so I'll dig them out of the shed and put them up soon.

I love the rusted antique trowels that are used to hold up the shelves. It's a very clever idea!

A Peek Into My Late Summer Garden

My garden this year is a crazy-quilt of everything I love--yellow and purple irises sharing a raised bed with rhubarb, peas and beans fighting over the same trellis, and beets and onions growing tall in a straight row like military men. It is all so lush and orderly and wild at the same time!

The cool wet weather has slowed down the crop growth, but the greenery is beautiful and everything looks so healthy. Interspersed among the vegetables are three rose bushes (Julia Child, William Shakespeare, and Ebb Tide. They are still blooming!). Also, this is my first year growing gladiolas, and the scarlet and burnt orange colors illuminate the garden.

I'll pick and shell the peas this week, and I'll also keep a close watch over the beans. The radishes and beets are small but colorful, and their foliage is as compelling as their edible crop. The Sugar Pie Squash is growing over the garden fence, reaching for the trellis on the side of the solar wood shed. The vines are huge!

This year has been my best garden since I've lived here. The picket fence has kept out the rabbits, so that was a worthwhile addition to the garden area. I can't wait for the final harvest, when I can bring in the results of the planning and planting of seeds, the watering and nurturing that has to happen all summer long, and finally, the fruits (literally!) of all of my labors. Gardening is truly a labor of love.

Indian Blanket Sunflowers (Helianthus)

Today, my friend Alex and I visited Bob's Corn, a lovely, pastoral farm in Snohomish nestled in a lush valley. We were checking out the place so we could come back in a few weeks and go through (run through!) the corn maze. It's become an annual event for us, and we are looking forward to this year's exercise.

While we were visiting the country store on the property, we took a look at the pumpkin patch. With the cool and wet weather this summer, the pumpkins are only large yellow blossoms the first week of September. Behind the pumpkin patch, however, there was a beautiful display of Indian Blanket sunflowers. Their rusty-red color is striking, and it's a nice change from the traditional yellow sunflowers. They were at least 10 feet tall, and the picture I got of the flower featured a bee right in the center of the flower. Pollination is still going on this time of year! (there are two kinds of sunflowers--pollinless and pollin-bearing. This was a pollin-bearing variety).

As a border in front of the large Indian Blanket sunflowers was a row of small, yellow miniature sunflowers. They made a happy statement in the afternoon sun, enjoying the warmth radiating from the old red barn that they adorned.