Bees and Peas

The time is finally almost here, my bees are due very soon. Not sure I'm ready, we'll see. The hive is in the screened porch. I need to level in 2 concrete blocks over looking to pond for the bees and place the hive on it.

 Not sure  many of you know that Tulip Poplar flowers are the main bee pollen source right now in our area. Followed by blackberry flowers. This Tulip Poplar flower was one of many that were on the ground after high winds the other night. If not for the fallen flowers many of us would not even know the poplar was flowering high up in the trees.

 Here is 'Carolina Moonlight' baptisia, doing very well for a three year old plant. To the right of it is Meg's Sugar Snap Peas, just started flowering two days ago. Oh and that is the garden watch kitty Grumpy on the railing.

Here is another trellis of Sugar Snap Peas nearly 4 foot tall. I see peas on lots of blogs nobody seems to know the best way to plant them. I don't mean to insult anyone by that. This is how Meg plants them. Two rows about 1 foot apart plant the peas thick almost next to each other. Yes I said almost next to each other. You got to plant lots of peas as birds and other varmints will get them, other wise after they get what they can your left with very little pea plants. The yellow flowers at the top of the peas is our kale flowering in the cold frame.

This iris I have had for years, I used to know the name, great showing with three flowers at a time.

Clematis henrii in full bloom. I have had this plant for nearly 15 years. I counted 32 blooms this morning, once fully open maybe 60 flowers will open. Wish I knew how to control it better?

Spiderworts in bloom. I know many of you further south hate these as they are so invasive. Our hard clay and dry summers makes them stay put, so far.

Here is part of the garden. Fava beans in flower in the lower front center, peas at the back left side, the cold frame has bolting kale, to the right of the cold frame bolting mustard greens and rape. The dark green mass in the enter is Swamp Sunflower, massive isn't it. I trimmed it back a lot too!

 This peony I just happened to have a tape measure with me when I took this photo. The tape measure read 6 - 7/8 inches across! I believe the clematis henrii would match this in size too. Hard to believe we get 7 inch blooms in our garden!

Back in the fall when I planted these pansies I never imagined they would look this good in the garden. The pansies will falter once it gets in the 90s here and they will be pulled out. These were grown locally from seed less than a mile from here. The primrose next to it is my oldest primrose over 12 years old, it barely flowered this year and the flowers were stunted.

Sometime this weekend we have to pull up the kale, rape, mustard greens, arugula, muzuna all of which are bolting. And we need to plant potatoes (very late) tomatoes, peppers, basil and other plants we grew from seed.

Cob Cottage on the Farm Tour

Folks,

We visited the 14th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour last year and it was a huge hit. So we went again this year. The Farm Tour is a fund raiser for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association  

Anyway this is the first posting about one of the farms. The Pickards Mountain Eco-Institute I was taken in by the Cob Cottage. Cob is something I read all about months back when I was thinking about building a huge bottle wall in our garden. I had met this guy named Greg in Durham who just happened to be working on his sisters garden across the street from where were were working.

Anyway Greg and many others built this Cob Cottage and here is a tour.

The front entrance, ok the only entrance.

The view from these windows is very breath taking, what a place to wake up to in the morning. That pole you see behind the cottage is a small wind turbine.

For those of you who do not know what cob is it is mud and straw that is made into a clay like consistency and piled and shaped to build walls and other items.


The roof has a herb garden growing on it, is case you were wondering.

A view of the inside the cottage, lovely and so cozy.

It took 10 months to build this cottage with1-10 people helping when they could. Sure wish we had one of these, I've read they can last for a very long time, some cob built buildings in Europe are said to be 600 years old if I remembered that correctly.

 Above is a look at the entrance to the garden. Note the girl on the horse, they were giving rides to the kids, one of the girls was in Meg's class a few years ago. Right under the sign you can see the back of the solar panels. The Cob Cottage is slightly down the hill on the left out of sight.


Now time for our first peony in our garden.
 We have two plants that were planted last year and this is the only bloom.

This bloom is about 6 inches across!
This Swallowtail Columbine is from Helga's Garden at Four Leaf  Farm which is with in walking distance from here. She delivered us some tomato plants tonight!