Never would have dreamed!

We could grow carrots this big! These carrots are on a 2 x 6 railing to give you perspective on the size. The taste, well a lot better than store bought. You know those pre washed baby carrots that everyone buys these days, no taste at all when compared to freshly grown organic carrots. If you can't grown them, try buying some at your local farmers market, worth every penny trust me.

Our trick on these? We, OK Meg planted them in late fall and they were in the cold frame. We mixed lots of compost in the soil every year for the the past several years.  We also have spring planted carrots that are tiny right now, but growing every week. Just ate one of these so hard to resist.

 Here is the labyrinth bed of potatoes planted a few weeks ago. It starts on the lower left with a basil plant then potatoes go almost to the center. The after the potatoes pea greens in the center.

 Our larger garlic bed. You can see our onions on the left of the garlic, they are huge. The lettuce in the front is almost past prime at this point. The pepper plants on the lower left were grown from seed.

Meg you need to pick these Sugar Snap Peas! This is half on one of our three trellises of peas.

 Our latest blooming clematis, forgot the name of this one. Last year we had more blooms...

 Meg finally got some Comfrey. As you can see it is doing great in our garden. More on comfrey.

 Black Cohosh, Actaea racemosa Meg brought this home from an Women's Herbal Conference last year. Doing very well.

Self sown larkspur in the cold frame.

 In the past few years I have been taken in by spiderworts. I think this is the one I got from SweetBay. Just love it!

 Oh so beautiful.

 This one is the largest flowering one I have. It has been here for 10 years or so, my one plant in now 4 plants, not a fast spreader by any means.

This spiderwort is pale blue, the camera lost the blue in the petals. Saw an alba "white" spiderwort yesterday on a blog...

More on the 13 year cicadas, I found one casing on the deck earlier in the week and a confirmed one dead in a pan of water here in the yard this morning. We must be slightly out of the main brood. . I read a report of hundreds of thousands of them being seen and heard at Jordan Lake an hour from here.

The Pickle People

This past Saturday they held the Strawberry Festival at Meg's School. It is a fund raiser for the park behind the school. The last few years Meg's class had an obstacle course. She changed to a lower grade and this year her class sold pickles. The class had the learn about pickles and they created these pickle people for their booth to display. Thought I'd share some of them with you.

 Pretty good for second grade don't you think. The stands are made of recycled trim from a job I did recently.

Below in the left back side is one of the mascot costumes the kids were wearing at the festival.

As for gardening, we are just starting to pick sugar snap peas. In a few days we'll have lots of them. Yesterday I pulled a carrot an inch in diameter and 6 inches long. These are the carrots we overwintered in one of the cold frames. I'm really enjoying eating these fresh carrots.

I found one cicada casing on the post to our deck yesterday, no others seen or heard nearby. One of my customers says she loves the chorus they are making, I expect to work there next week and hear for myself.

 A recording of our frog concert tonight taken from the small landing on our deck stairs next to the pond. Not anywhere as loud as being here in person. Turn your sound all the way up to hear the frogs.

I'd rate tonight a 10 on the scale of 10 frog concert. The main chorus is Gray Treefrogs and Northern Cricket Frogs. And mixed in with them are several Bullfrogs and a few Green Frogs. The sounds outside are too loud for a normal person the handle. We love these choruses and the $%## peacocks cannot break through this sound barrier.