The kitchens garden is all about planting and growing. Trees, bushes, all of it. Wild fairy gardens. No Mow Lawns. Wilding fields. We are 17 years in and already this little property has become a kingdom of movement and sounds and rustlings in and around and under the trees. (When I arrived here there were three old elms around a little white cracker box house and two mulberries by the barn so the land has come a long way and it is thanking us).
Yet I am always surprised by I see a little wild creature living its whole life way down underneath the canopy that the trees are creating.
For example – These fat toads.
We have lots of water in our well so I left the swamp hose running under a stressed lilac yesterday and when I came back, I saw a toad lazily hopping from one bush under another to get closer to the water. He just sat there in the damp earth. Thinking whatever toads think.
Every time a big terracotta pot cracks or breaks I pop it into the garden to become a hiding place for toads.
I got my wish and a bumblebee spent a good part of the day in the glasshouse (sleeping mostly – bumblebees sleep around 8 hours in a 24 hour period and love to take catnaps in flowers). Which meant that I left the door open so he could get back out when he was ready. (I was tying up the tomatoes so it was nice to have the company of a sleeping bumblebee).
I also hand pollinated a few zuchinni as they are already flowering profusely.
He is sleeping on a potato plant leaf in the glasshouse. A potato, I hear you say; in the glasshouse? Well, I answer, it was sprouting in the kitchen so I just popped it a corner of soil in the glasshouse. I mean – why not right? We will see.
Bees and butterflies at work in the flowers.
And birds and of course the obligatory rooster. The lilacs are fairly humming!
The corridor paddock has become a parking spot for the tractor accessories. The yellow contraption is the hay mower. That is a curtain to make sure the hay lays into a row.
At least in here I don’t have to mow around them.
Ever so slowly this region is warming up. I am glad it is slow. The gardens are doing so much better with a slow rise in temperatures. However – no rain still. So I am watering. I need all my plants well established and well mulched but the time I go away to NZ at the end of June.
It is Memorial Day here.
A day for remembering for some and a cook out for others. Or both. As usual I have been wandering the gardens for greens and tasty weeds to make a monster green salad to take to Johns family lunch.
Have a lovely day!
Celi
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The Kitchen's Garden 
40 responses to “Plant the trees and they will come”
Fields of dreams.
I remember reading that (relative to physics) a bee should require the same amount of energy (sugar) as contained in a Mars Bar (Milky Way) in order to fly.
Wai looks like he has a new and colourful tail.
Yes ! Wai was very determined to ignore the peacock! Interesting quote for the bee and the sugar. I need to go and find the marbles to set up their drinking station!
You and Mother Nature have created a true paradise. Thank you!
It is stunning out here today. So beautiful. And now I am off out to pick my salad!
I have loved your Farm for years! Wish I still had toads here – thanks for sharing😊🎉😊
Wai looked as if he had stolen a peacock tail until I looked closer and noticed Mr. Flowers head peeping up behind Wai’s rear end! I could listen to that video all day and daydream on this very lazy Monday 🙂
Right? I thought that was too funny not to take a photo of! Poor Wai.
Bees, butterflies and flowers, how wonderful! I love Wai and the peacock feathers!
Bees, yes, but I was overcome by the amount of bird song! Goodness me!
Yes! We have so so many more birds now. Different varieties too!
I liked the hens most.
Thats because there were no big pigs.
It’s looking very nice and lush
I love toads but we don’t see them quite as often as frogs here in the PNW. Do yours pee on you when you pick them up? LOL! I too love Wai’s tail feathers. 🙂 It is really something to transform a barren property back to life isn’t it? We are 33 years in here on ours and the change is pretty dramatic. Of course most of it was undeveloped in the first place so we left it alone.
I’m cornfused..which is nothing new…but I thought your dad was a repairer or mechanic of boats and didn’t build them..or did he do both? My dad was also a builder of boats..mostly wooden canoes and small boats..so I spent quite a bit of my growing up years rowing on some fresh waterway in the north and Canada. He also made beautiful wooden paddles. He would portage the canoe in to wilderness lakes and rivers and if there was one other boat or canoe out there we would turn around and go back. He was Jeremiah Johnson in another life.
My dad was a builder of boats. Big steel trawlers and later smaller aluminum cray fish boats/- he dipped into designing and building sailing boats but returned to the fishing boats. He liked the people better. And of course with all his knowledge he did fix stuff in engine rooms. And damaged props – cracks in a manifold – stuff like that – he was very innovative – if he could not find a tool for a job he would make the tool too.
How lovely that your dad made wooden craft. And paddles. I bet they were beautiful.
Dad did make a wooden dinghy once.
Ah, ok, now I have it! Yes, the paddles are beautiful and we still have them..though unfortunately, not the canoes or boats…they all sailed away. 🙂 He too made his own tools if one could not be found..that generation made quite a few of their own things and repaired them instead of throwing then out and buying new. There wasn’t much money for that anyway. I can understand your dad wanting to be around fishing people instead of sailing people..:) My dad couldn’t be around people period.
What a lovely dream come true !
A work in progress!
I wish I could smell your lilacs! Is there any better spring scent?
There is none better! For sure.
I never knew bees took naps!! Good to know because they always seem to be busy!!
Roads are always a welcome sight here in New Mexico!!
Quite the transformation on your farm!!!!
Meant to say toads
Wai with a peacock tail. I love it and him! I’m just catching up on the podcasts. I have a day to myself and it will be spent listening to your voice and the noise is around you. We lived about 5 miles from the centre of London growing up and my dad built a yacht in the back yard. He had to get a crane to lift it over our back wall onto a trailerWhat excitement that caused in our very urban corner of the world.
How did she ride? There was a thing many years ago of people building their own yachts out in suburbia then floating away! Many of them were never finished. How exciting to see that crane lifting her out.
He and a brother-in-law took that boat out quite often. We lived in Scotland at the time and so my husband missed out. Father loved that boat
What a special memory though.
What a shame people didn’t have smartphones them. Unfortunately no photos.
What a shame people didn’t have smartphones then. Unfortunately no photos of the boat being lifted over the wall.
You took photographs with your mind!
I’m pretty sure that bee must have been a she, since it’s the girls who do all the work and who deserve their quick lie-downs. I think the boys lie around being decorative and waiting for the queen to notice them…
And there is only ONE Queen! As is right and proper!
We too have had our place for 17 years. The G.O. actually was here a couple of years earlier but was focused on fixing the house plus working away so the garden was basic. While we were living away in the city we kept planting bird & bee friendly trees. It’s only now after moving here fulltime 7 years ago I stop and think wow… because we can now see what we and time have accomplished. Never before have I lived anywhere long enough.
I remember you traveling to plant trees and prepare your property. And it is paying you back in spades! How wonderful. I love the pics of your gardens.