What is Happening with Spring in Northwest Arkansas??

I've waited and waited for the perfect day to FINALLY plant my darling baby tomatoes but I'm not sure that even today -- May 11th -- is the right day. I've heard it's going down to 35 tonight! What's with these spring temps? (Nevermind the floods, thunderstorms, windstorms and tornadoes in the region lately...) I feel a bit silly complaining about such minor inconveniences when the news around the state and region is so frequently dire, as in the last round of tornadoes yesterday in Missouri and other parts of Arkansas.

The pic above is from back in late March, when I was busy planting the broccoli plants that are, despite all aforementioned weather issues, now sporting beautiful sprigs of eating-size broccoli heads. This wheelbarrow is a farm family member. It was a gift from the artist Peg and the poet Genie many years ago in North Carolina. That's duct tape strengthening one handle. The tire is the new never-flat kind -- which are completely worth the expense, I will add. The old gray wheelbarrow is even more than she used to be! Thanks Peg and Genie!

Roadrunner Courts our Dachshunds...

If you've visited Larrapin Garden's blog, you've probably met Randy, Ricky and Rhonda, the three road runners that have visited our land at different times. Randy (a big male) hasn't been seen in a long time. Rhonda is kind of shy. Ricky, on the other hand, is kind of like an odd pet that lives in the yard and has a lizard/snake fetish.

We've told folks that Ricky has a huge crush on our weiner dogs, and regularly brings them courtship offering -- in various stages of deathly disarray -- of lizards or small snakes or large bugs. Or if pickings are slim, Ricky will settle for sticks, chunks of grass or cherry blossoms. Anyway, this is hard to believe till you see it. Since Ricky usually courts through the glass sliding doors, at first we thought he might just be seeing his reflection and be unaware of the two weenie dogs slathering on the other side. (Okay, only Buster the part jack-russell slathers, Blue is far to lazy to slather...)

But this video proves Ricky the Roadrunner has it bad for the dogs because he's flirting through a fence and can see them plainly. (And is perfectly aware they can't get to him...I know the inspiration for the roadrunner/coyote cartoon watching this bird!) So here it goes:

(NOTE: turn your volume way DOWN to eliminate the mowing going on during this video and the incessant yapping...I don't know enough about doing video to decrease it... It's 2 minutes long.)

Bees in the Comfrey Flowers

One thing I've learned from my baby-steps study of permaculture concepts is the idea of planting "guilds." That is, grouping plants that benefit each other by being in proximity. A classic example seems to be grouping a tree with smaller plants such as nutrient accumulators/mulch producers like comfrey, then some plants that attract beneficial insects etc. So last year I planted this comfrey at the base of the Prarie Fire Crabapple, a tree I treasure for the spring blooms, but mostly for it's bird-food value. (Permaculture is much more oriented toward people-feeding trees, but I'm getting to those this year...) It also has some Sedum (attracts beneficials) at its base.

And by golly, both the tree and the comfrey look remarkably happy! Comfrey is one of those great multi-functional plants that accumulates nutrients from deep in the soil, is self-mulching and weed suppressing and pollinators LOVE it. (And of course it's medicinal.) Just don't let comfrey loose in rich garden soil, or you'll soon have a comfrey farm...

The bumble bees are busy adoring every pink bloom on the comfrey. There are loads of bees this spring (bumblebees -- but I'm seeing very very few wild honeybees) and they are loving the comfrey!


Bees are hard to photograph. They are, after all, very busy.



And very beautiful in their yellow and black velvet coats.



And he's off to another flower!

So, after this experience, I'm putting a start of comfrey at the base of every new tree I plant. (Don't worry, not even comfrey can become invasive in our natural clay/gravel...) I'll let you know how it goes.

Like Clockwork, He Arrived April 15th

For the three Springtimes we've spent at Larrapin, the hummers have arrived promptly on tax day, April 15th. This year was no different and as usual we were scrambling to get the feeders up as he was zooming around the spot where it usually hangs... It took me a while longer though, to get a proper welcome-back photo.

New Visitors to Larrapin

These two lovelies are like flying jewels. They are fans of the
mutton suet we've located at the Fayetteville Farmers Market. It's
incredible and the birds LOVE it even birds that aren't usually found on suet feeders.

(And it's nice that it's a sustainable local product.)

This cute redhead is a big fan.

And this red-all-over lovely (summer tanager?) is also a fan. I
didn't know they would go for suet but *everybody* loves this suet.
This photo is foggy because of the extreme zoom. He was sitting out in
the golden locust and made quite a colorful sight.

Here he is, smaller, but better focus.



And here, gobbling mutton suet...




Here is the tanager's lovely wife, who also has a taste for this amazing suet!
Welcome to the new summer visitors!

The Beauty of a Clothesline, Part II

When Is a Clothesline a Work of Art?, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

I posted the pic above a few days ago, when the sun was shining enough to dry clothes in about an hour. Today it's raining and I want to add my promised addendum to the clothesline post. Thanks "Amanda" for your comment and agreement about the beauty of clothes hung out to dry -- and the silliness of communities that outlaw this simple way to save energy.

One group has gone even further to celebrate the clothesline:

Project Laundry List
Our Mission: Project Laundry List uses words, images, and advocacy to educate people about how simple lifestyle modifications, including air-drying one’s clothes, reduce our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources.

What fun! And why not get behind these simple things that can go a long way to reducing energy usage.

The main block to handing out clothes (as long as you don't live in a clotheslines-outlawed community) is lack of time. Then the question becomes: Do I want to have the kind of life where I don't even have time to stand out in my lovely back yard and hang up clothes while listening to the birds sing? That is the kind of question that has driven me to seek more simplicity and less consumerism. The less I buy and spend, the less I have to work outside the home, the more time I get to spend with the wind, the birds and my family. Now that's a good deal.

I'll end with this wonderfully poetic take on the beauty of clotheslines from poet Mendy Knott called "Instruments of Peace" from her blog A Creative Life. Here's a snippet:

"Looking out the window, hands in the kitchen sink
washing up the dishes gives a person time to think.
I see our colorful clothing fly,
this old Arkansas home’s prayer flags;
from t-shirts stitched with slogans to denims and dust rags.
The blessed sun shines down.
The breeze it blows and fills.
They sail and pull at pins
as if the billowing clothes
could keep this old world spinnin’
spinnin’ spinnin’ spinnin’ spinnin’
spinnin’ round."

(Read Mendy's whole poem here: Instruments of Peace)

First Harvest at Larrapin

First Harvest at Larrapin, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

While we've nibbled out of the Spinach bed already, tonight we had
these two batches of greens to harvest before the big thunderstorms
that are coming. That's spinach on the right and Ragged Jack/Russian
kale on the left. We love to saute it with a little olive oil and
garlic in a big iron skillet (or wok). It stays very green and is
delicious.

When Is a Clothesline a Work of Art?

When Is a Clothesline a Work of Art?, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

There's just everything right about a good clothesline: good for the
clothes, good for the environment and in my opinion they are often
lovely to look upon. More on clotheslines soon.

Spinach Fortress: Don't Laugh -- It worked!

Spinach Fortress: Don't Laugh -- It worked!, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

The spinach seemed to draw the bunnies as well as the guinea hens (see "Guineas Under House Arrest" below...) so out of desperation one day I put up this stick fence around the spinach and pea bed. You can't see the peas because the guineas had munched them to the ground when the rabbits weren't doing the same. It worked! With the guineas secure in their pen, the fence keeps the bunnies at bay. I think it's kind of cute, so I left it.

We've had several spinach salads out of this bed already. It's spring planted so it's just now getting going really well. Year before last I planted fall spinach and overwintered it -- now THAT's the way to have big delicious spinach really really early! I hope to remember to do it again this fall.

New Grosbeak Visitor

New Grosbeak Visitor, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

I mentioned that we've had lots more birds this year since we've put "backyard habitat" practices into place. This is a new visitor. Look at that cheeky posture and the rakish red scarf! Welcome to Larrapin Garden friend!

Cherry Blossoms Falling Beautifully

Cherry Blossoms Falling Beautifully, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

This was from a week or so ago - an ornamental cherry that drops its blossoms in sheets of pink. They are even lovely on the ground.

What was particularly funny (though impossible to photograph) was the sight of the young male roadrunner dashing about with a fat cherry blossom in his beak instead of his usual stick (he's building nests everywhere) or dead lizard!

Larrapin gets certified!

Larrapin gets certified!, originally uploaded by Leigh At Larrapin.

Guinea fowl problems notwithstanding, Larrapin got certified as Backyard Wildlife Habitat this Spring.

It's a fun program through the National Wildlife Federation that helps you evaluate your site for wildlife-friendly plants, practices and features such as food, shelter, nectar, water, etc. As of last year, we've focused on adding trees and shrubs that attract wildlife, maintaining consistent and varied bird feeding stations, sticking to organic practices, letting part (ok, most) of the lawn grow longer, providing water basins and bird baths around the place.... and so on. And WOW, has it paid off!

This year we've seen more birds and critters than ever. The birds have been amazing: summer tanagers, indigo buntings, grosbeaks, every woodpecker listed for our area, finches, robins, you name it. We've added about a half-dozen to our list of species sighted at Larrapin.

We're just getting started on this edible landscaping idea. (Larrapin Garden extends that theme to edible to many birds and critters in addition to ourselves...) It's amazing. I've combined my study of wildlife gardening with a new interest in permaculture principles and my head is just about to explode with new ideas and plans for Larrapin.

Guineas Under House Arrest

10 great iPhotos, originally uploaded by Leigh At Larrapin.

Before we got the guineas, I read up as to whether they would harm the garden and several references gave them good marks, compared to chickens, anyway. I should have thought carefully about that comparision!

The chickens, previously free range, are now pastured-poulty in the large pen built for emus by the previous owner. If allowed to roam they head directly (at a great rate of speed and with great determination) to the deep mulch I've carefully built in my garden and around the trees we've planted. They scratch like heck to get at all the lovely earthworms and buggies under that deep blanket, leaving nothing but scattered mulch and scratch holes. In the pen they went.

But oh, the guineas were supposed to be focused on bug-eating, particularly ticks, and only lightly muss the garden, if at all. Wrong. I should have entered "guineas are eating my garden" into the search engines as I did recently to find the scads of entries. Turns out they like new, small shoots (peas are their favorites, according to my recent eyewitness research) and their other favorites are RIPE TOMATOES.

I immediately knew the guineas were going in the pen. Not only do I kind of specialize in heirloom tomatoes in my garden, but my neighbor is the tomato king of our hilltop. This will never work. In fact, most of those entries online were complaints about neighbors' guineas and how to control them. (Like the homestead squirrel control ideas online, "eat them" comes up often...) I do not want to be the kind of neighbors we once had at another home, in fact I had a kind of spasm just thinking we might be like them. So it was time for a guinea rodeo in the chicken house come nightfall.

Guineas can fly very well, but the 6ft poultry pasture fence would keep them in if I clipped their wingfeathers. Which I did, after dark I grabbed them one by one with a crocheted throw (sorry) that my dog sleeps on. It was the perfect weight and texture to grab a chicken sized bird who nonetheless fights likes the dickens and will peck and claw and squawk at ear-splitting range during the process.... Wing feathers were trimmed without bloodshed, theirs or mine.

So I've bought the time, till the feathers grow out, of whether to keep them to let them out strategically in the evening (they don't go so far just before dusk - unlike their distant wanderings in the daylight) to nibble on bugs or just take them to the poultry auction when their feathers grow out... (Guineas fetch up to $7 each around here due to their tick and bug and grasshopper eating talents on farms and homesteads...for those who don't have unfenced gardens or good neighbors with unfenced gardens I guess...)

Unlike the chickens, who still do their job of laying eggs, breaking up tough oak leaves for mulching, and donating great fertilizer for heating up my compost pile even while they are in their pasture -- the guineas main job is out on the grounds and they aren't much use in the pen. Hmmm. Will have to ponder all this....

Next poultry experiment for garden-friendly bug control for 2009: DUCKS!

My bucket farm

My bucket farm.., originally uploaded by Leigh At Larrapin.

While this picture was about two weeks ago and a tremendous amount of greening and growing has taken place since then, we still had a late frost here at Larrapin two nights ago. You'd never know it from the sunny 70 degrees we had yesterday... It was very light, but it was the fourth or fifth time this month I had to haul out all the buckets on the premises and cover stuff in the garden. This bed is cabbage and broccoli, which probably would have been just fine, but they are so pretty I didn't want to take a chance. Some of my potatoes got zapped and are just now, slowly, regrowing. (I forgot to cover those, since my mind was on my pet plants...) The night before this picture was taken, I noticed my neighbor, a great gardener, had every bucket on his place in use, so our road could have been named Bucket Farm Drive...

Austin Trip: Natural Gardener Nursery

One of the great highlights of the trip to Austin was the visit to Natural Gardener Nursery. Wow! If I lived in Austin, I'd be there all the time, checking out the huge assortment of plants and taking in the creative loveliness of the place. Here's the compost brewing house:



Out back is a huge field of poppies. That water catch system gave me tank envy...



Then I ran across this interesting sign, but saw no one in the pasture....



Till I walked around back and met this charmer....



I had a pet donkey as a child and have had a weakness for those big ears ever since. At Natural Gardener, the pair of donkeys have a small pasture that is artfully sloped for rain catch and is dotted with little shade trees and the occasional flower. One of the pair had just finished a satisfying dust bath...



Now how could you resist a face like this?



Meanwhile, back in the display gardens, there were wonderful touches like this swing:



If I'd had a million bucks, I'd have hired a U-haul and carried home lots of colorful pots like these:



Alas, the visit went far too fast and it was time to go back. This wonderful arch leads the way back to parking lot. What a great place! Thanks Austin, for being that kind of gardening town!

I've been in Austin, Texas...

Wow, the Texas hill country -- and the bluebonnets -- was everything
I'd always heard! Pics and tales to come... Now here's one sure way
to discourage thieves from getting in your window!! I was in Austin
the same weekend as the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling, but I was
traveling with a group of (non-garden-blogging) friends so didn't get
to hang out with the SpringFlingers. But we did a lot of garden touring
regardless! Please stay tuned! L.

(While I was away, seemed to have lost my Blog-legs and it took me about six tries to get this photo and text up at the same time! Sometimes I wish Blogger would make it really possible to email photos to the blog so I wouldn't have to email photos via Flickr... But since Bloggers photo emailing never seems to work for me..I'm sure glad that Flickr makes it possible. Ok, enough tech whining... out to the garden to see how the baby kale, spinach and peas are faring!)

Wet Spring Garden Walk around Larrapin

I thought I'd take you along on the stroll we took today around the land. Ok, that makes it sound too tranquil. What really happened is it stopped pouring for a few hours and the sun came out yellow and bright. We grabbed galoshes and cameras and made a mad dash for the door!



Above is the view down the slope alongside the chicken paddock. I love it because the sun sets behind it and lights up the uncut grass and wildflowers under the trees. You can barely tell what it is, but the thin sticks in the front left is a clump of wild maples we brought home from my mother & father-in-law's place. It has been so happy once we planted it in its new home.



Out front, the row of redbuds are beginning to put on their show, always an amazing shade of pinkish purple.



The ornamental pear is blooming and covered with pollinators of all kinds -- bees, butterflies and little wasps (when it isn't raining anyway). It's not a Bradford Pear, but some kind of rangy early attempt at one I think. We've spared it -- despite my feelings about Bradfords -- because obviously the blooms are important to the pollinators. (And Mendy wouldn't think of letting me take it out, even though it partially shades the veggies, because she loves it...)



Meanwhile, the "Prairie Fire" crabapple is getting ready for her amazing show. I love this tree! It was the very first tree we planted at Larrapin.



And the curly willow is greening up there beside one of the bird baths. Spring is greening! Thank goodness.

Now, if you notice I didn't show the veggie garden, it's because it's not very pretty right now. I've got tarps and buckets and tools all over the place from last weeks' digging frenzy. I'll do photos once I get it cleaned up a bit! Thanks for joining me for a wet spring walk around Larrapin Garden.

In case you doubt it's been raining here...

1, originally uploaded by larrapin67.

This is one of the new pots I bought for dwarf figs on the patio. Obviously I haven't removed the plug from the drain hole and it was sitting underneath a place where the gutters overflow if it's raining hard. This pot is thigh-high on me and it filled with water just from the thunderstorm last night. The ground is muck, the grass is greening and the farm ponds in the area are very, very full. Unfortunately, all this rain is exactly what the folks downstream don't need at all right now. I was startled to read in the paper that nearly half the counties in Arkansas were declared disaster areas after the recent flooding (ours wasn't among that group). But this explains why out of state friends and even out of the country friends called last week to "make sure we were ok." It's a good feeling to have people checking on your well-being! My thoughts go out to those folks who were not so lucky.

Spring Down the Road - The Old Cabin

This is the wonderful falling-down cabin down the road from us. The flowering quince and tiny daffodils are still blooming, even as the walls tilt and the floors cave under. There is a cardinal guarding the quince, where the nest probably is hidden.

Spring Down the Road

This is the field around the cabin down the road -- I love the way the grass contrasts with the broom sage and the tree trunks. The old timers in NC told me that broom sage means the soil underneath is too acidic and the tests of the soil in my yard say the old timers are right!



This captures the way an overgrown field in the Ozarks hills looks in mid-March. I love it.