Category Archives: Garden & Yard

Mystery Tree – Solved – Paulownia tomentosa

By
The mystery is solved.
This tree is a Paulownia tomentosa
(common names empress tree, princess tree or foxglove tree)
It’s a deciduous tree in the family Paulowniaceae, native to
central and western China, but invasive in the USA.
Paulownia tomentosa is the fastest growing tree in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa
https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/species/paulownia/tomentosa/

IMG_5954
Do you know what type of tree this is?
My husband and I saw it growing down in a gully, next to a waterway, by the side of a road. I’ve never seen one like it. It’s such a curiosity to us that I had to make some photos to help me search for what it is.
I haven’t been able to find a photo of a tree to match it on a search engine.
I wonder what type of fruit or nuts it produces and if it’s edible.

IMG_5952

Do you know what it is?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Have a lovely rest of the week.
I hope all your mysteries are pleasant ones.
🙂

spgrnbgln

Ornamental Tiger Lilies

By

a-IMG_5223These flowers are ornamental Tiger Lilies and precious heirlooms to me. They came from seeds that my Mom gave me a couple decades ago from her own ornamental lilies. Mom’s ornamental lilies came from seeds given to her by her Mom from her ornamental tiger lilies. As close as I can figure, this line of ornamental tiger lilies has been in my family for probably 90 years or more.
c-IMG_5423I’m always anxious each year waiting for the bright orange blooms to burst into full color. It makes me smile to see these living beauties of love from my Mom and Grandmother.
b-IMG_4520
d-IMG_5219

I hope you all have a pleasant rest of the week.
🙂
spgrnbgln

Mostly Corny Post

By

IMG_5029We had sort of a corny weekend with gardening. We harvested a lot of produce.
My husband harvested all the potatoes and onions over a 2 day period. He had to stop the first evening because after we harvested the corn and squash, he started digging potatoes as the sun was setting.IMG_5078Some of the potatoes are huge.IMG_5196IMG_5118The onions are drying on a table on the back-porch, and the potatoes are drying on garbage bags in my craft room.
My craft room is fast becoming a food-cellar. lolIMG_5152It may not look like a lot of potatoes, but it’s more than plenty for us. After the potatoes dry a couple weeks or more we’ll put them in mesh bags and stack them somewhere…  and then I’ll have my floor back. lol
But I fear my craft table is going to be full quite awhile before I can use it again. So, for now, I’ll use the dining room table for sewing and stuff.

My BFF knew we harvested some corn, so she sent me a link to a video on how to cook and shuck corn using the microwave. She wanted me to try it and see if it would work.
How to cook and shuck corn with the microwave
I was super surprised that yes indeed it does work just like the video says. It took only 4 minutes and there was no silks on the cooked ear of corn. I like that. Here’s a photo of my using the microwave cooking & shucking method. IMG_5105
My husband harvested all the mature ears of corn. We’re not planning on harvesting the rest of the corn when it matures. We’re going leave it for the deer, racoons and other wildlife.
IMG_5005IMG_5135We used the normal method of shucking to prepare our corn for freezing. We’re happy we had about a bushel of corn. We put up 26 bags of corn-off-the-cob.
we used this method:
How to freeze corn – pickyourown.org

Here’s of photo montage of our corny process that we did.

0-corn

Click on this photo to see a bigger photo

I put up 4 bags of corn-on-the-cob for our Grandson when he comes to visit.
I used the same method for freezing except I left the corn-on-the-cob. I wrapped the ears individually in cling wrap, put a few ears in a gallon Ziploc vacuum sealer bag, sealed it and put it in the freezer. By wrapping them individually, they won’t be stuck together and I can take out the amount I need to cook.IMG_5186
And so it goes in our neck of the woods. We’ve been busy busy busy.

I hope you all had a good weekend.
Have a super week!
gardeningcouple
spgrnbgln

Garden Update – 7-8-2014

By

IMG_4449We had another good harvest of squash and beans. I figure we’ll get one more squash harvest about half this size. Right now I have more squash than Carter’s got had Liver Pills. (Oops, my age is showing lol )
In the upper left of the photo, you can see my blue jean water tote that I made the first part of June. It’s really came in handy.  I’m tickled pink with it. It the perfect size to carry 2 bottles of water & little stuff I may need it in. I wish I would’ve thought to make one years ago. It works great.

beansIMG_4733As for the beans, we put up a couple dozen quarts. We have enough to do through the winter. We don’t plan on picking any more beans. We figure it’d be stupid to let the plants stay and get completely infested with bean beetles, so my husband pulled up all the bean plants and tossed them away.

gardiOur garden has reached the jungle stage. It looks a mess because the plants are grown and the weeds are growing wild. This is what happens when folks don’t have time to use the tiller or pull weeds. You can click on the garden photo to open it bigger if you want too.

dahliaIMG_4466My dahlias are blooming real pretty.
I’ve had to stake the plants because the blooms make them too top heavy to stand.
IMG_4544If you look to the left of the dahlias you can see a volunteer cherry tomato plant. It already has several tomatoes on it. I can hardly wait for them ripen.

flwersIMG_4618A lot of the flowers in my husband’s flower bed are starting to get some size to them and are blooming well.
flwrs2IMG_4474You’ll notice that there’s sparse spots where the Gerber daisies are. The rabbits and squirrels have been hard on them.

walnut-IMG_4727On a final note, our walnut tree is loaded with walnuts. It looks like it’s going to be a bumper crop year. We don’t use the walnuts for anything, but it’s still a joy to watch them grow. We leave them for the squirrels to eat or store for the winter.  There’s been many times we’ve watched squirrels digging up walnuts in the yard. It’s also amazing how many walnut saplings we have to pull up out of the yard, garden & flower beds. We suspect that if we let our property grow wild a few years, it’d be a thriving forest in a very short time.

And so ends this garden update.

I hope your gardens and/or flowers are flourishing.
Wishing you a terrific Tuesday.
gardeningcouple
spgrnbgln