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Yesterday I stole an hour between work and school and moved rhubarb from the old big garden to the new big hugel. Sadly I neglected to take my own photos of the move but the root mass on the several-years-old rhubarb was impressive. I ended up with 6 crowns I hope will still leaf out to anchor the corner of the northwest side of the hugel. They will still get full sun and the drainage is way better than out in the field so I think they'll be happy.

The chunks of root - which are bright orange btw! - that came out without crowns found a spot in the ground in front of barely born hugels out front by flower stand. I don't know what will happen there but the conditions should be ok if they are able to regenerate.

There's a house I pass sometimes that has a huge bed of rhubarb in their front easement, free for taking. Goals! I also love the memorial sunflower field, free for taking, and the lavender u-pick also on that drive. Too bad you can't get all three in one trip.

I've only transplanted rhubarb twice and it only worked once, so to my mind they're fussy. Is that an accurate assessment?

Yeehaw!! I went a'trollin on Craigslist for plants and found the conservation district's sale with ONLINE ORDERING. Oh yeah! Just a little something, just a few ah erm 40 bare root perennials. Whoops?

Here we go again with the justifications but! I had $100 in my cart the other day from some sketchy feeling TN nursery. I'm aiming to invest in ostrich ferns for fiddleheads, yum! and to add to arrangements. I had 50 elderberry starts in there? It was all wholesale and I was going to end up with so many dead plants and I got nervous and pulled the plug.

Instead I can spend about half that (garden math, yo) get a reasonable number of plants grown here and not shipped. They will get picked up in May, so I have time to figure out where to put my:

10 elderberry seedlings 

Butterfly/Bird Mix - 2 each: Elderberry (for 12 total), Butterfly Bush, Ninebark, Apricot Beauty Daylily & Liatris Spicata (Dense Blazing Star) (I bought 12 liatris bulbs in a moment of box store impatience too.)

Fern Mix - 2 each: Christmas Fern, Cinnamon Fern, Maidenhair Fern, New York Fern & Ostrich Fern (only 2 to start the fiddleheads but the other ferns will be good for being ferns!)

Hosta Mix - 2 each: Ventricosa, Hyacinthina, Albo Marginata, F. Aureo Marginata, Undulata Varigata (I don't know if hostas make good cut flowers because I haven't cut mine before (see first post!) but I have a shady spot that needs help and they double so easily, they're a good one to have around)

Thing is, once I learned how much they've accomplished at Beltaine Cottage in Ireland, I started to feel really BEHIND on our property. She did it all by herself too. But I still have 2 years to catch up hahaha. Just as soon as I finish grad school .... ? AS IF!

But this is my vow: no more plants! (except for the already planned rose, and whatever comes my way for free, or you know really seriously cheap... and the divisions and volunteers of course

BONUS BLÓM

BLÓM the band that is!! Enjoy these amazing tracks. I love this so much.



Skank Witch

Toxic Dependency

You can get their digital cassette here. 

blóm!

Hello! Welcome to blóm!  

The sign, still under construction.

The word blóm (blome) is Icelandic for flower. Inspired by a friend's recent visit to Iceland and the sheer beauty of the word itself, I chose this word as the name for our pop-up roadside flower stand.

A lot of projects come and go at Affable Acres but one constant is gardening. Ever since my bestie in high school started that summer job gardening, and I understood hard work and being dirty wouldn't kill a person, I have been hooked on digging. I love to dig! I have a shovel tattoo I love to dig so much. (It was admittedly more fun to dig in Florida than here in rocky New York, but still.) Most of what I dig is for plants.

Do you ever feel like you have to justify something that's just nice for you, something you enjoy but doesn't seem practical? too indulgent somehow? Maybe that's just me. I LOVE having flowers in the house. To my simple heart, fresh flowers in a bathroom is the ultimate in luxury. And the #3 reason I always always use the ladies room at Wegmans. (Hee hee, see what I did there? #3?)

Annyway, despite season after season of trying to find ways to trick myself into cutting flowers for my pleasure I had opportunity to cut someone else's flowers and it was a revelation. The cutting is its own pleasure! I had to give myself permission to stop thinking like a gardener and think like a florist. And that's when the idea began to form in my mind. 

The plan is to continue planting and enjoying the gardening of perennial flowers. No problem there. But instead of trying to convince myself every single time I'm out there to go ahead and cut a few for the house, I am going to cut flowers twice a week, rain or shine. Depending one what's available, they'll go into arrangements and/or buckets and then out to the stand. I'll have a sale sign up until the sun comes over the fence and then they all go inside for me to enjoy. And just like that, flowers in the bathrooms twice per week. Unless they all sell? In which case I can buy more flowers to plant? That's what the Icelandic would call a "vinna vinna" situation.

Future hugel and flower stand location, also under construction.