Hello, heavenly Hive habitants! Welcome to another walkthrough of my wonderland!
Some soaking rains and mild temperatures have hastened the onslaught of spring, and I feel myself coming to life along with the world around me. It's a good thing, too, because I need that extra life to help guide all this abundance. One of my beautiful problems here at ArborVilla is water control. You can't really see it in the picture below, but this tiny, beautiful woodland stream splits right at the bottom of the picture, and about 1/3 of it is escaping under the large moss-covered rock. As this errant leg of water spreads down my hillside, it creates several perfect habitats for mosquitoes to breed and a wide mud slick down the middle of my 'vacant' lot. The waterlogged conditions affect several of my fruit trees, and all of my new rows of bramble berries, so this stream has to be cleared back out. This is the stream that feeds my frog ponds and waterfalls, so the more water I keep in it, the better it is for my 'water features'.
The stream is the runoff from this old cistern, which I think is just outside of my property line. Aside from the occasional hunter tracking a deer down this far, I'm the only person who has pushed through these woods in the last 20 years, and THE only person who can find this easily. Sometimes I use it as beer cooler, the water inside doesn't freeze in the winter, and has never gotten over 55°F in the hottest days of summer. Only twice in the last 15 years has it gotten low enough for the stream to stop running.
Western NY is abundant in fresh groundwater, and my little piece is no exception. The picture below is an old hand dug well that I'm very sure IS on my vacant lot. I believe that this well is what feeds the hose I water my gardens with, but I haven't confirmed it. It's likely that I never will... excavating that hose all the way back to this well would take months of hand digging, and I have better uses for all that time.
After reading that title, 'The Beauty of Spring!', some of you may be feeling like this is a bait-and-switch scheme after looking at those gloomy holes in the ground. I personally find a lot of beauty in the mix and chaos of the forest floor, but I realize not everyone shares my 'Addam's Family' aesthetic. We also have lots of flowers showing off in the rain, like these grape hyacinths. All hyacinths make me impatient for the day that we can send scents through the internet... these flowers smell AMAZING.
This, our only white hyacinth, isn't showing off much this year, but is still shining so bright that it was hard to get a decent photograph. I like the way this one gave it an almost supernatural glow.
All of our hyacinths started as cheap gift flowers from big-box stores like WalMart. It's taken them several years of struggling against adversity, but this year they're really putting on the kind of show we've been hoping for.
We've had these purple hyancinths the longest, and it looks like I'll be able to divide this one again next year. Don't tell the others, but these are my favorite of all the hyacinths. I could get lost all day just staring at the many subtle color shades. I have a picture that shows the colors better, but I like the way this one leaves it more to the imagination.
The daffodils are starting to take a parting bow as the days and nights both get warmer. After I get this post published, I'm going out to cut all the remaining daffodil flowers and get them into vases indoors. Cutting the flowers before they start to die off makes the bulbs healthier and more robust for next year's flowers. The flowers themselves also seem to last longer when we cut them and put them in water.
I've almost finished clearing the cattails from the upper pond, and it's actually starting to look like a pond again! The goldfish aren't very happy about all the exposure, but I think they'll settle back down after a week or so. They'll have to put up with it whether they like it or not, because we're happier now that we can see them again!
I've doubled the asparagus row in the garden this year, though it might be another year or two before we can start cutting from the new plants. We both love asparagus, and having to share these first lonely shoots can get, ah... tense. Hopefully in another couple years we'll have enough right from the start of the season that we won't fight over it like wolves 😂.
The lemon balm we planted years ago is now practically its own sovereign state. I don't mind, it's one of the main ingredients in my 'yard tea', and we use it in several other things as well. After reading some great blogs here on Hive about alternative pestos, I'm thinking we may try experiment with lemon balm in that form later this year.
Our 'Frankenmint' was one of the original inhabitants around this stump, along with some of the chives on the right in the picture below. These were the first things I planted on this property, nearly 15 years ago, when the small area around this stump was all the workable land I had here. Once upon a time, we tried growing 12 different herbs around this stump, but the mint and lemon balm overran everything but the chives and some echinacea.
This year I moved several of the Junebearing strawberries to the edge of the 'bean bed' garden, hoping we'll see better strawberry harvests this year. Some of them are just starting to develop flower buds, which you can almost see right at the center of this tiny transplant.
The sedum that grow around my stone steps are higher maintenance than I wanted them to be, but I feel like the work is worth it every time. The grasses, dandelions, and plantains grow right up through them relentlessly, and trying to weed them out basically means digging everything up and replanting it. The sedum all take it in stride though, and it's beautiful when it's finished. Even in this feral state, I find it pretty easy on the eyes.
Oh, there's so much more, but I can't be giving up everything at once! Give me a follow if you enjoy what you see, and want to know how you can build it for yourself! Nearly everything you see here has been, or will be described in better detail in another post.
I hope to see you back for more!