A gift!

Today I received a really sweet gift from Homer. He comes to The Merc on a daily basis to water the succulents that we sell and sometimes he drops a little something off at my desk. Today it was tuberoses for me to plant in my yard and a handful of peacock feathers. These feathers are not the usual bright blue and green, they are brown. Maybe they are the hidden feathers that we don't see because we get distracted by the gorgeous fan of colored feathers that they display.

That darn crab grass!

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the constant weeding that needs to happen when you have a garden. I am pretty meticulous in my housework and at my job and weeding is no exception. If I even walk out into the garden to throw away the compost I know that I can get sucked into an hour of weeding. We have two garden plots. We call them the "upper" and "lower" gardens. The upper garden was created from a space that used to be ground cover (vinca I thinka) and the lower garden was carved right out of the grass in the front yard. My frustration lies in the amount of crab grass that invades my lower garden. The space that I had carved out for one tomato plant and one pepper is completely covered in crab grass. What to do? Maybe I should just find another space for them and cover that patch with newspaper or cardboard. I guess I shouldn't be surprised when there is a hitch in my plans. That's the thing about gardening, nothing ever goes exactly as planned. It keeps you on your toes!

you say tomato...

My tomato and pepper plants are here! I ordered them from Seed Savers Exchange quite a few months ago. They arrived a few days ago in a cardboard box ready to be put in the ground. In hindsight, it probably would have been more sustainable for me to get my starter plants locally but I really love to support Seed Savers. Their plants are heirloom varieties, meaning that the seeds are saved from year to year to maintain the integrity of that particular variety. I ordered Orange Bell, Sweet Chocolate and Wenk's Yellow Hot peppers and Gold Medal, Velvet Red and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I hope they are productive so that I can share them with friends, can them, cook with them and eat them!

Awakenings

It’s been an interesting spring as far as the weather is concerned. It’s May and we have still been turning on the heat every now and then to take the chill out of the air inside. The garden is slowly taking shape. The arugula is harvest worthy, the potatoes and peas are on their way and the carrots, zinnias, poppies and cosmos that I planted from seed are about an inch tall. I haven’t even put my tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers or okra in the ground yet. It’s been going down into the 40s at night. Hopefully that means it will be a mild summer. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

That is a volunteer comfrey plant. It's used in herbal medicine for healing broken bones.

Arugula and lettuce on the left. Potatoes on the right.

Our gorgeous kitty, Bella, basking in the sun.

Clematis.

Echinacea.

Columbine.

Rose.

Fuschia.

Succulent succulents.

My sister and her husband came to Lawrence this past weekend and I decided to take them to one of my favorite places, Henry’s Plant Farm. Jozie, Brian and Homer are my go-to people for gardening advice, they sell gorgeous flower bouquets and succulents at The Merc and they also work at the Plant Farm. Whenever I go out there I love to go behind the scenes and look at the thousands of succulents that they have in their greenhouses. You can imagine that I really wanted to share that with Whitney and Matt. It’s hard not to be totally blown away by the many different species of plants they grow.

That's Homer!

We went to the lookout point north of town too! It was a beautiful day!

Sparks, Kansas. Here we come!

A few weeks ago I was reading my Country Living magazine (Judge all you want, it’s a really great mag) and there was an article about the top 10 best flea markets in America. Well, there just so happens to be one 1.5 hours from here and it was going on this weekend! For a combo anniversary birthday celebratory trip we set out on the back roads to Sparks, Kansas (population: 9). 75,000 people attend the flea marker over the course of 4 days, so you can imagine the fantastic people watching. We were excited about getting there at the end of the weekend because that’s when the best bargaining happens. It was a gorgeous day despite the huge dark cloud that blew in, down poured on us, hailed and then left as quickly as it came. We haggled our way through that place and set off back to Lawrence with a car full of loot.

The open road.

There was just so much stuff!

Me, with my first purchase of the day.

Our new (from the early 1900's) sewing machine bought purely for decoration.

3 fishing poles for $25! A steal!

Satchel from the 1930's and bamboo plant stand.

Some very cool, old shaving accoutrements and a brass soap dish.

My awesome peacock tray.

rootin' tootin' dandy days!

Goodness, the last two weeks have been off the charts! It all started two Fridays ago with Red Lefty’s final show, which has been my husband’s band for last 5 years. It’s a sad ordeal but the farewell was sweet. Lots of dancing in a hot and sweaty bar to the hoppin’ tunes of my favorite band.

On Sunday we drove out to nowhere land with our expert fisherman friend, Justin, to catch a few white bass. It was a windy, cloudy day but the fishing was great. I brought a very “Lowen” picnic that was probably much too fancy for the occasion but what the heck? I enjoyed it. Everyone caught some fish except for me but I had a really great time. I’m thinking that now that we have our fishing licenses we will be going out with our fishing poles quite often.

On Monday (my day off) I drove outside of town about 20 minutes to Henry’s Plant Farm. My friends, Jozie and Brian, from Earth Flowers, work out there and they were kind enough to help me pick out plants for our new perennial flower bed. It’s not quite finished so I’ll post more about that later.

This photo was taken by my awesome photographer friend, Brian Goodman.

Chris with his little fish.

Justin with his BIG fish. What a pro!

Brian and Jenna go fishin'.