you guys probably won’t hear from me for a bit because i’m going on a trip ! if i find something there i’ll take a picture and post here :)
these are the lilies that bloomed this morning ! they’re huge ! also below are some other flowers in the garden :)
First look at the most recent edition of Hive No. 5 - a split made from a queen cell from Hive No. 1 on June 12th. 🎥 Thanks to One Queen Cell From Hive No. 1 - The Split From June 12th Worked https://youtu.be/cJSPRI_j-4c
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#colesfarmnc #beekeeping #beekeeper #honeybees #honey #bees #apiculture #savethebees #science #nature #gardening #farming #ncbeekeeping #localhoney #nc #queen #bee #photography #urbanbeekeeping #beesofinstagram #backyardbeekeeping #backyardbees #localbusiness #springishere #veteranowned #beekeeperlife #sharingiscaring
#markingqueens #howto #beekeepingtip (Jacksonville, North Carolina)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCgfb_tHnJ2/?igshid=15v9rys6l18sw
Yes, this bed is entirely made of junk, including this old box spring, and yes, we did paint it rainbow when a neighbor complained about our yard being “a bit much”
Hey friends! My dash has gotten pretty quiet and I need more people to follow! Like or reblog this post if you post about any of the following:
- Cottagecore
- Farmcore
- Gardening in general
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Honestly anything about farm to table cooking and lifestyle and whatnot.
Garden Time!!
Butternut squash plant is gettin big!
The carrots and sweet potatoes are also on their way and the three tomato plants (beefmaster, Bush Early Girl, and a mystery tomato from the farmers market) are doing swell!
Blackberry (maybe actually raspberry??? We dunno theyre red currently but might ripen black??) and grape vines are doing well and so are the trees (1 belle of georgia peach, a meyer lemon, and a eureka lemon).
The one remaining lettuce has gone to bolt so we’ll have seeds for next season soon!
I still need to plant the cucumber seeds and theres a lot of weeding to be done =a=’
Dad brought these cuttings today!! They’re his favorite kinds of plants (crotons and san francisco). I don’t really plant stem cuttings because I’m not as confident as my dad but I am really hoping they’ll grow roots these following weeks.
Green witchery on a foggy east coast day 🌱
Finally found some great herbs at the farmers market down the road. Lavendar, rosemary, thyme and basil!
Right now, as I’m writing this, Caleb took the kids to the car wash, and there are cicadas crescendoing outside out our bedroom window. Frankie’s on the end of our bed, and that makes me anxious because she’s so infested with fleas that when you scratch her, she’s crusty. I have an empty morning to myself, and no book that I’m in the midst of. It’s too hot already to run at 9:44am.
I keep on returning to is my Thursday afternoon with our best friend Chad.
Chad is someone who is always up for an adventure, and finds constant interest in the world. When you go on a walk with him, he’ll say, at some point, “Hold on, wait a second, stop.” And pull up some wonderful tree or plant that he has you smell, or taste, or crumble in your fingers. Something related to ginger, or anise, or whatever. I love walking around the world like this.
On Thursday, Chad came over with lunch for us from Chazitos, which is a rice and beans and pulled meat kind of place that also has a food truck during the pandemic. Chad’s dog, Ronnie, has been very sick, so we hadn’t seen him much the week before, because Chad was lying with him on the floor of his house, making sure Ronnie knew he was safe and loved.
Ronnie’s better, so we got to have Chad back. After lunch finished, I took Chad outside to show him what I had bought at the gardening store — two new cilantro plants because the ones that were here went we moved in went to seed, literally — the were old, and became coriander.
A knock out rose bush because I’m finding that I really enjoy the easy and meticulous process of pruning our other two knock out rose bushes.
Knock out roses seem to be what grow best here, and at the gardening store, which by the way, is called Hester Zipperer, that’s all they sell. (Zipperer is a well-known family name in Savannah.)
I also bought some black-eyed Susans to replace the Indian shots (also known as African arrowroots, or Canna lillies) that rotted after a week of rain—not only in our garden, but around the neighborhood.
The black-eyed Susans seemed to me to be a very basic choice, but they were also so very happy.
I showed Chad the planter where I planned to put the Susans and the rosehip, and before long, we were digging in the soil of them. Chad was praising its health, saying things like, “Oh yeah, there’s a lot of organic matter in here,” and, “Look at all of these earth worms.” In order to plant the knockout roses, I had to remove a dead rose bush, and something that he called “Monkey grass.”
One thing I will say about the north where I grew up, where people were very rich, and the South that is where I am now, which is a very small section of it, is that people don’t have as much money down here. (Remember: the people with the money get to write the narrative, so remember that when you read things that shit on the Southern states.) You can tell from the cars — Ford Fiestas, and other sorts of small, relatively inexpensive vehicles, as well as lots of pick-up trucks—as well as the public buildings, and the sidewalks, which are repaired only so that they don’t disintegrate entirely. I wrote, one time, on this blog, about walking in the mall in Brookfield Place in Battery Park City, and being awed by the amount of marble and chrome and gleam, noting that one day, someone will dig it up, and realize how rich New York was in the time that I lived there. Rich, of course, for the white overclass. I realize now that even Uber drivers drive very nice, expensive cars, in New York City.
Chad’s family is actually well-off in Savannah — his mom is a lawyer, and his sister is a doctor specializing in infectious diseases (hello COVID!) — but Chad himself has never been rich, and is very much of this place. Meaning that rather than throw out the monkey grass, which was perfectly alive and thriving, he carefully removed it to preserve the roots, and suggested that we plant it somewhere else.
Which is how we ended up in the alley behind our house, where the garbage trucks drive to pick up people’s trash, planting the monkey grass in intervals along our back fence so that it will grow as ground cover. Chad got a piece of white string, and made sure we did it in a straight line. It was 1:30pm in the afternoon, and it was blazing hot. Both Chad and I had long since sweat through our clothes, and we smelled.
But even still, the monkey grass was only the beginning of the work we did. I began tearing off some Virginia creeper, a species of grape that very much chokes anything it can get near, including the palm tree at the back of our property. Chad showed me how to cut the root of the vine, and then begin to pull it gently off its host, until it comes crashing to the ground. Some of the vines were 30 or 40 feet long. They suction to surfaces with little cups that satisfyingly pop when you pull them loose. At one point, we were both squealing with joy, walking almost to the front of our house with a vine that was longer than a freight train, and still, kept rustling the dead fronds of its host as we tried to unravel it down.
In the midst of all of this, Chad exclaimed, “Look, a spider village!” and sure enough, in the back corner of our fence, on the inside of our yard, was a huge network of spiderwebs. There were beetles everywhere, and worms. A spider crawled up my leg, and I brushed it off. Later, when I was going to bed, I realized that my shoulders were covered in mosquito bites.
I don’t know, I just felt happy. I hate working behind a desk, but I like working like this, with Chad. The day continued after that. We drove to the Fort where Caleb and I got married with the kids, and then we went to another gardening store to try to find some echinacea, and then to walk Chad’s dogs, Ronnie and Porkchop. All the way, we listened to the Moana soundtrack, and sang at the top of our lungs, and danced. Caleb, during it all, was working.
I think a lot about what if I miss what we left, and the truth is, I don’t. What I feel most uncomfortable with is my own self, which is familiar. I’ve always struggled to pass time. I’ve always struggled to feel content in the moment. I’ve always, even before I became a mother, found afternoons to be very difficult.
But I like gardening, which is a new thing, and spending days with our friend Chad. There’s no clever way to end this, so I’ll end it here.
Went to see the wonderful Garden at Duftpflanzen- und Kräutergärtnerei Syringa.
With all the Lavender I almost felt like I was visiting the Provence😍 A paradise for plant lovers🌸🌱
