(a random assortment of recent thoughts and happenings. . .)

I've been missing these flowers from the farmers' market. I'm not really into roses and other "fancy" cut flowers; I really prefer something a little more scraggly and suggestive of wildflowers. We've been so busy we haven't made it to the market for several weeks and I'm sad that the local flower season will be over soon.

These onions are growing in the flower bed beside my driveway. . . does anyone know if all ornamental onions are also edible?

This baby robin flew into our porch screen door the other day. He was a little stumbly and shocked for a while and sort of wandering around along the side of our house (he recovered obviously), and his birdy mama was so concerned for him that she went and got a worm and fed it straight to him! Good mama!

Since the raspberries were done for the season I decided to go ahead and prune out the fruiting canes and trellis the primocanes. Look how much neater! Next year the new primocanes will come up behind these, and this year's primocanes will be fruiting floricanes, with easy access to the berries.

This guy. He hasn't made many appearances in this space! I promise I have some pictures coming in the next few days :)

We took down this bug-ridden crabapple tree in our backyard a couple of weeks ago. It was the right decision, since it was really pretty lousy looking and now our yard seems much more open. But of course it was only after we cut it down that I discovered that most edible apple trees are not self-pollinating and need another compatible tree nearby to swap pollen with in order to put on fruit (that tree in the corner is our edible apple tree). Rookie mistake. Chances are good that the crabapple tree was planted with the intention of pollinating the apple tree. We're crossing our fingers that the crabapple tree in our neighbor's yard is compatible and close enough, but we won't know until it's time for the tree to put on fruit next year.