2017 wrap-up

Oh, hi. Yeah, so I dropped off this blog after June. Lots of things just went south and I didn't feel like documenting the carnage. Here's the TL;DR version:

The only two tomato plants I picked up at the Spring Garden Fair got hit by Curly Top Virus, and croaked.

Everything I planted in the backyard east bed all died, except for the Philadelphus.

The apricot tree out front died, rotted out from the base — leaning precariously into the neighbors' drive, threatening to crush their pickup if it fell over. No saving it, so we had it taken out. The arborists didn't poison the stump, and I had hope the 30-year-old root system might throw up some suckers, but that never happened.




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Good news: we had the coyote fence rebuilt and extended. It's beautiful. Bad: the fence guys finished it up December 15, the day Cheyenne died.



Sigh.

weekend update

oooof. So sore. But that's what I get when I skip a weekend. Actually, last weekend Bram took on the front yard weeding, the side-and-back-yard weedwhacking, and hitting the patio bindweed with Roundup. Thanks a million for that, sweetie. 😘

This past Friday I went back to the last of the Waterwise wholesale-to-the-public sales and picked up a few more things; 3 Rozanne geranium for the front door bed; 3 pineleaf penstemon (Penstemon pinifolius) for the northeast bed outside our bedroom; and 3 Turkish speedwell (Veronica liwanensis) for groundcover around the back yard flagstones.

Front yard: Planted the new geraniums and the leadwort I picked up three (!!!!) weeks ago in the front door bed. Mulched with compost. Rejoiced at all the apricots on the ground. Turns out I needn't have worried about shaking them off.




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Back yard: Northeast bed (bedroom bed? what do I call this?): Saturday, dug up as much dirt as I could from around the sumac stump, using the shovel and the pick mattock I picked up this week (ran into Dorothea while I was there at Big Orange! 💕). Monday, turned the hose on the stump for a bit and excavated by hand with the little trowel, cutting roots as I went with the loppers and the pruning saw. Plan is to get a farm jack to pull the remaining stump out. Should also mix in some sand to improve the drainage. Crusher fines for mulch would also be nice, especially for the penstemon, they hate wet ground. Agh, I really need to get those plants in.






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Raised bed: Cut back daylilies — they look kind of hilarious/alien with just flower stalks left and no leaves, dug up a few Maximilian sunflowers to try to make more room for the tomatoes, sent rootstock to Mom! Dug in compost, planted tomatoes and basil (the thyme and Persian basil from NM Plant Co croaked). Mulched with straw (Bram picked up a new bale at the Feed Bin for me) and set up cages. Skipping the soaker hoses this year, instead will water by hand in raised bed (and bedroom bed). Dug up some arugula volunteers on Thursday for a co-worker. Chives and thyme are blooming.


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Yard: The arugula is out of hand and already starting to flower. I hacked off a trash bag-full and brought it in to the office on Friday, for the usual giveaway. I managed to get it all gone, but it was work. Note to self: don't bring pounds of arugula in before a long weekend, most everyone bugs out a day early to get a 4-day weekend.


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2017 Garden Fair | weekend update

So, apparently, there was construction going on at the Santa Fe County Fairgrounds that severely impacted the spaces where the Garden Fair is held. There was only one building open (usually there are two, plus various outdoor spaces), so there was only maybe one-quarter the amount of vendors/exhibitors as usual, plus only the main plant sale. The Farminista ladies were not there! No food trucks! Boo! Fortunately, there were tomatoes in the main plant sale. Unfortunately, even though I got there by 9:30 am, they had sold out of Sungolds! Gah! I panicked and grabbed two Robesons ($4 each). It was nutso, and really crowded, with everything crammed into a too-small space. Ran into the ever-fabulous Bev, Kathy, and Paul B.!


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To salve my disappointment, I engaged in some additional retail therapy on my way home. First, I stopped at Plants of the Southwest and got a Littleleaf Mockorange (Philadelphus microphyllus). Earlier this spring we had Coates Tree Service out to do some work, including removing the three-leaf sumac outside our bedroom window — it was seriously encroaching and causing problems. The mockorange will take its place.



I've been reading Nate Downey's PermaDesign blog, and back in April, he posted a piece about David Salman, the founder and former president of Santa Fe Greenhouses. (Even though the Santa Fe Greenhouses retail location has been closed for years, High Country Gardens, their mail-order branch, is still going.) Nate's blog post mentioned that Salman is still growing plants for his wholesale business, Waterwise Gardening. Which has public sales! Which I stopped at, after Plants of the Southwest! It was fairly busy, with one greenhouse full of mostly perennials, including a bunch I had on my list to check out as other plantings to go with the mockorange! Judging by the ID tags in some of the plants, Salman still raises plants for High Country Gardens. So these were the same ones I had been considering mail-ordering, for less money, and no shipping fees! Woohoo! I kinda went a little nuts:

• 3 Husker Red penstemon (Penstemon digitalis Husker Red)
• 1 Blue Fortune agastache
• 2 Sunset agastache (Agastache rupestris)
• 3 Serpentine columbine (Aquilegia eximia)
• 3 Leadwort (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides), for the front door bed
• 1 Rosemary

Plus a bag of Yum Yum Mix.


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The day's haul:



Then, at home, I started the cleanup in front yard, weeding the sidewalk bed and along the other side of the driveway. I also trimmed up the chamisa, deadheaded stuff, and trimmed back the yuccas that were encroaching the sidewalk. Then I took a rake and shook a bunch of apricots off the tree. I'm really worried with the amount of fruit that's set and still seems viable, even after the hard freeze we had the other weekend. Sigh. Two-and-a-half hours. Front yard itself is still in need of some serious weeding, but I was tired and the bin was full. Next weekend, I guess.





Also: Happy Birthday, Mom! 😘

dodged a bullet

Spring was warm early this year. Lots of fruit set on the apricot, then a hard frost. OMG we would have had SO MANY apricots. Now that Stacy (and Jim and Bernice) has (have) moved back to NYC, we have no one who will take mass quantities.

what’s blooming

Crab apple:





Iris:



Tulip:



Golden currant (Ribes aureum):



Sand cherry (Prunus pumila):



Sage Catmint:



Redbud:



Grape muscari:



Hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus coccineus):



Periwinkle:



Donkey tail spurge (Euphorbia myrsinites):



Arugula:

what’s blooming

Forsythia:



Apricot tree:



Peach tree:

forcing apricot branches

Pruned the apricot tree and brought in a few branches to force.

apricots, finally done

Okay, here's a rundown on all the apricot stuff:

• first apricots: June 30
• first driveway cleaning: July 1
• second driveway cleaning: July 10
• last apricots/driveway cleaning: August 12
• countless apricots to Stacy over the course of the summer
  processed mostly into 5+ gallons of super-concentrated apricot purée, currently in the Walter Burke Catering freezer
• five grocery bags picked in 20 minutes by Patrice: July 14
  estimated 30 pounds, processed into, according to Patrice:

  6 half pints of sugarless jam; 4 frozen pies to bake on a cold winter's day (pie pie me oh my); several pints of thick, delicious apricot syrup for dipping chocolate cookies and pouring over ice cream, or using to sweeten lesser fruit pies, or just swigging out a few tablespoonfuls when no one can see; bags and bags (4 gallon bags) of fresh apricots pitted, cleaned and quick frozen for future adventures; more jam with cherries added; bowls and handfuls for fresh eating and cereal; 4 more pints of sugarless jam with agave

• one grocery bag to Steven and Janet: July 16
• one grocery bag to Nicole and John: August 10
• 4 grocery bags for our own use
  processed into 1 apricot tart, some fruit leather, some refrigerator preserves, 4 gallons of frozen purée, 4 cups blanched frozen halves, 6.5 pints of canned preserves

Patrice wrote a sweet note thanking us:

The Meehans' neighborhood apricot tree. Sweet orange morsels ... Apricots are my food, my special fruit that is part of my identity. I am a California July baby and remember climbing the fence into an ownerless apricot orchard to pick apricots every summer. We kids cleaned 'em and cut 'em open and Mom laid them out around the swimming pool to dry. We had shelves full of dried apricots until the next season. In late July, the whole neighborhood smelled sweet with the overabundance of fruit on the ground. What's not to like? Round and orange with a ruby blush. Mmmmm — the fragrant, tasty essence of summer. I have a floor-to-ceiling chalk board in my kitchen and kept a count from the pits ... ha ha! It looked like an orange smooshy hurricane hit the kitchen that day. Considered hosing out the kitchen floor but thought better of it. Wish I had taken pictures. Thanks for sharing the abundance.

apricot preserves

Two grocery bags of apricots = 11 half pints of preserves





My eight quart stockpot was only big enough to fit half at a time. Woof!



I picked, cleaned and cooked down the apricots last Sunday. Then everything sat in the fridge until this weekend. Brought the preserves back to a boil in the stainless steel dutch oven (in 2 batches), then processed them in the big stockpot.

Since I don't have any real canning equipment, I improvised with foil at the bottom of the stockpot (instead of a rack) and rubber band-wrapped tongs (instead of a jar lifter). Ghetto fabulous!

apricot tree - fully loaded!

All the branches are weighed down.



Lots of lost ones under the tree in the rock mulch and on the driveway.





Two in an old bird's nest — not staged, I swear!