The land – Page 14 – Into the Woods

Abelia

If I had an acre of abelia, it wouldn’t be enough. I think the bees and butterflies agree. Who knew that abelia is a relative of honeysuckle?

Would you like fries with that?

This little family has been eating off me all summer. That haven’t done any damage, so I like to see what they prefer to eat from month to month. Right now, it’s the grass they want.

First apple pie from the abbey’s orchard

I started the abbey’s small orchard seven years ago with small, bare-root trees, all of them old Southern heirloom varieties from Century Farm Orchards. Lots of grief and patience are involved in getting a new orchard to the productive stage. I’ve had a few apples in previous years, but this year was the first year I’ve had enough to make the orchard’s first apple pie. I took some portraits of the apples before I picked them and put them in the pie. The pie is totally from scratch and largely followed Irma Rombauer’s “Apple Pie I” recipe from the 1943 wartime edition of “Joy of Cooking.”

After the daisies: black-eyed Susans

A brief essay on day lilies

If you’ve seen one day lily, have you seen them all?

Not if you worked as hard as I did to get these started. They’re all individuals. I’d name them, like chickens, if I had time. They all are grandchildren of the 300 day lily sets that I planted here seven years ago. Their natural habitats are banks and ditches — places where you want to let nature run wild.

There’s something very sad about day lilies, though. They get only one day in the sun before they shrivel and die. And peak day lily season doesn’t last long.

Just because it’s June …

There will be blackberries.

I’ve sown a lot of red clover seed, but I learned that it’s just too big a plant to grow in the yard. Only white clover, it seems, happily co-exists with grass. But the red clover loves unmowed ditches and banks.

There will be day lilies — lots of them. The deer have not eaten them this year the way they did last year, during a dry spring. I’ve learned that it’s mainly drought that drives the deer into the yard to devastate what’s growing at the abbey. They still come for the clover, but that’s not a problem.

I planted my heirloom beans late, but the first ones are coming up now.

If the promised rains come through, the celery crop will be good.

What a year for daisies …

There are several wildflower patches scattered around the abbey’s sunny acre. This patch, right in front of the house, has been taken over largely by daisies. I’m not even sure how they came to be there. They could have arrived in a sack of mixed wildflower seeds, or they could have come naturally, just because they liked it there.

Blacksnakes, in flagrante delicto

I’m not going to actually post these photos directly to the blog, because I think many people will find them frightening or disgusting, especially those who have a phobia of snakes. So, instead, below are links that you can click on if you really want to see the photos.

While doing chicken chores this afternoon, the lower bodies of two blacksnakes were hanging down through the trap door in the chickens’ two-level chicken house. I ran and grabbed the camera, and the snakes were still at it when I came back. I am fairly snake phobic myself, but I’m becoming less so, as I accept the fact that snakes are an important part of the local ecology, and as I get used to seeing them. I’ve gotten pretty brave, as you can see just because I took these photos (with a 70mm lens). These X-rated photos shed a lot of light on snake anatomy and behavior.

Trigger alert! Do not view these photos if you have a phobia of snakes. These photos are rated X.

Photo 1

Photo 2