Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Lavender Harvest 2013

To celebrate a decent harvest despite the cold wet spring, here is a rare photo of the blogger herself... So I prove to continue to be hopelessly, hopelessly behind on blogging. I have big plans for this weekend that I hope won't take me six weeks to post. For now, I review of this year's harvest. So, I have a little lavender... I have about 100 bundles drying and this is the first year the house has significantly smelled of lavender. I had to throw out a whole basket of grossos because I must have set it on and ant hill and there were like, 5 billion ants in the laundry room so had the chuck it all out and simple green the floor where the ants were. I didn't cut croxton's at all and left them for the bees. The mystery lavender also went to the bees so I have tucker's, provence (still small but making it throught the winter) munstead, hidcote, cynthia johnson, marge clark and niagara also hanging up. I am hoping to get some serious maintenance done and write about the plants that didn't make it and why and write about it soon so, Maxwell says "stay tuned!"

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Lavender Harvest Begins

The cold spring has made the lavender a little smaller this year, and I also need to fertilize the plants. I lost quite a few new plants to cold, wet root problems but will post more about that later. Here are the tucker's always first, even if only by a week this year.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Lavender Signs and a Kildeer Moves In

I have been so busy this spring, it's a bit unbelievable that these signs were painted two months ago! These are the bricks I got last year to use as signs for the different varieties of lavender. Since the ends are pointed, they will double as "arrow" signs. It took me a while to get the hang of painting the letters thin enough and I still had to use abbreviations as a lot of varities are two words like hidcote giant, Marge Clark, and Cynthia Johnson. Take a good look at these pictures from early spring before the weeds grew up. The lavender still had a lot of greening up to do because of the cool wet spring. I was still pretty optimisitc about some of the plants not greening up as quickly, especially many that were the new plants I put in last summer. But I got behind doing other things, and the rain encouraged weed and grass growth and just when I was getting ready to roll up my sleeves and tidy up, guess who moved in... After three years of wondering why Kildeer weren't making their nests in the gravel, Momma killdeer lays 4 eggs. I am hoping they will hatch this weekend. The Lavender is blooming and I don'w want to disturb her. My hope is that by Sunday June 9th I can cut the 4 varieties of lavender that is currently blooming and weed and tidy up. It has never been this overrun. It's a cosmetic issue mostly and even though Killdeer are a bird of least concern, they are one of my favorites, so here's hoping there is a workaround this weekend. Notice the lavender plant she is standing near, that is where her nest is and notice how the plant is brown. I have a lot of brown plants but won't be able to report out the extent of the damage until I can get in there...