Memorial Weekend Garden Images

Red Cabbage - Ornamental and tasty.
You can't see much from this shot, unless you click on it. Front left we have lettuce, spinach, then peppers. Back left we have potatoes and tomatoes.
Our corn is coming up nicely.
Not so nice looking - our potato plants have been hit hard from the beginning. When they first came up the potato beetle's set in strong and I picked them off almost daily. Then a small black mite looking insect has done the most damage and they are too numerous to pick off. So to fight these guys we have used an organic spray and some neem oil.
We have stopped harvesting asparagus and we have not been able to control the weeds.
Our strawberries are starting to ripen up. The oldest plants have always produced small strawberries, but they seem even smaller this year and may need to be replaced for next year, but they are still very sweet and tasty. The plants we put in last year have not started producing much yet.
Thanks to Clay's co-worker, Dewey, we now have a new giant heap of horse manure mixed with pine shavings to use for compost. The pile to the left is all the sod that we have been digging up around the yard to fix our gutter runoff and from starting new flower beds.

Bonkers and Dave have an Encounter

Hike at Mayapple Glen

Mom and I went on a little walk behind Papaw Melvin's house today and decided to nickname it Mayapple Glen, because the Mayapples were thick as a blanket over much of the valley. We have had a lot of rain the past couple of days leaving everything green, green, green. I love the smell of a forest after a fresh rain. I was so happy to spot a couple Jack-In-The -Pulpit plants. The pulpit that surrounds jack is not the flower, it is a leaf bract.

We also spotted several Yellow Lady's Slipper plants. These plants have a very interesting pollination process. They require a specific fungi to be present in their roots in order to survive, and their bigger Pink counter parts are pretty rare.

Here is the bloom of the Mayapple. To find one of the blooms you need to spot a plant with two stems. When I was little I can remember calling these little plants Smurf homes. I guess it was the shape, because they are not a brightly colored toadstool, but it was still fun to imagine.

We also spotted several other flowers that I tried to ID when I got home. I think that we found:
Prairie Ragwort
Daisy Fleabane
Golden Star
Hoary Puccoon