Hearts Full of Joy

one more from the garden

a favorite flower pic that i had forgotten
 
the bees loved the allium (flowering onions), and so did i!

flower magic

after much patience, coaxing, and some fertilizer, my flower bed is reaching for it's full potential, and we are blessed by their beauty.

my free flowers from the temple gardener, mixed with marigolds i planted earlier.

dahlia

another dahlia

dinner plate hibiscus - so excited that the dahlia's and hibiscus are perennials!

note: i will not be posting photos of the vegetable garden. it was not as successful as the flower garden, and is not photo-worthy.

more on mulberries....

i have a request for the mulberry jam recipe i used.
when i first decided to use our mulberries i searched the internet and found lots of amazing sites on cooking with mulberries, including lots of different jam recipes of varying difficulty and complexity. after reading through them all, i chose to just use the berry jam recipe in the pectin box. next time i will try it with the no sugar or low sugar recipe. i'm sure that it would work for freezer jam too....mmm, mmm. i've enjoyed my fresh strawberry freezer jam so much that it's almost gone.

great mulberry cooking sites i found:
http://www.pickyourown.org/mulberryjam.htm
http://www.allaboutstuff.com/Cooking/Multiple_Mulberry_Recipes.asp
i found the mulberry syrup recipe here, with lots of other amazing looking syrup recipes i want to try:
http://www.recipegoldmine.com/syrup/syrup.html

free flowers!

more blessings from the overflow of the temple gardens:

this is an extra blessing that i didn't anticipate that living near the temple would bring. tuesday i brought home and planted about $250 worth of free flowers - extras from the temple flower beds! i arrived on the scene of the flower give-away later than most, and i wasn't absolutely in love with what was left for me. but i do hate waste, and as i was the last one left to gather the left-overs, i brought home more than i initially planned on, and even brought home some that i didn't really like. but once i got them all planted, i loved everyone of them! some were a little scraggly and stressed, but i am giving them extra care in hopes that they will make a beautiful comeback. lots of zinnias and floss flowers, and some that i don't know what they are. i planted them among my marigolds, snapdragons, allysum, etc., and hope they are bunny-resistant. all of the beautiful salmon pink and ruby red double petunias i planted a month ago have been nibbled to ground, never to return. and just after getting all 170 new flowers planted and bringing brock to see the results, we found a baby bunny hiding in the zinnias!
i have also planted a japanese maple, two hydrangeas, six "dinner plate" hibiscus, and five dahlias in this front garden, plus shasta daisies and sedum - the last two free from a friend's garden! brock pulled out two shrubs to make room for the maple and hydrangeas. we also planted two more hydrangeas and miscellaneous flowers in the back yard. the hydrangeas are all the new ever-blooming variety in red, pink, and blue. i want to eventually get this front garden filled in with perennials, but for this year, $250 worth of free annuals will do!

usually i feel that my flower photos are lovelier than the real thing, but this time i couldn't take a photos that i felt did these new flowers justice. they are really more pretty than this photo woud lead you to believe.

the mulberry experiment

i abhor waste. i keep ridiculously small scraps of fabric, carefully saved in ziplock bags. i can't bear wasted food, or wasted anything. i suspect it was bred into me by my pioneer ancestors.
whatever the reason, i love to find uses for things that seem less than useful.

we work and work and work to get certain fruits and vegetables to grow, and then some are just given to us without effort. the second type tend to go unappreciated, and fall to the ground unnoticed. i so enjoyed (and am still enjoying the rewards of) my crab apple project last fall.

this spring/summer mulberries have been the unappreciated fruit that i felt determined to make into something yummy and useful.  first i made a batch of mulberry syrup - yummy! next, a batch of mulberry jam - very yummy too! my syrup turned out a little thick, and my jam is a little runny, so they are similar consistencies...but both are delish!

the down side of working with mulberries: removing the stems is somewhat labor intensive, and they have lots of seeds.
upside: they grow abundantly for free, and they taste really good.

i enjoyed my jam making enough that also i made some fresh freezer jam from strawberries that needed to be used - really, really good! my family is enjoying all three efforts, and that is satisfying....and good for the kids who got tired of gathering mulberries, but now feel a sense of accomplishment as they eat the mulberry jam and syrup.

berry good

savoring the handful of strawberries we get each day, and
discovering mulberries. two huge mulberry trees hang onto our property and drop hundreds of berries daily. we're finding that gathering them off the lawn is a nice evening family activity. this photos shows last night's gatherings. even little miss 2 years old can gather, but doesn't understand how to avoid stepping on the ungathered. i've googled and found lots of yummy recipes. should we enjoy them all fresh and raw, or make jams, mousses, muffins, cobblers, and more?
nothing tastes better then freshly home-grow, picked when ripe, pesticide free berries.

we're hoping for raspberries this summer, and blackberries and blueberries next summer.

tips from the temple gardener

remember this photo of tulips in front of the temple?

each spring after the tulips are done blooming at the temple, they dig them up and offer them to the community, those in the community who can get there fast enough to get them before they are gone. in the last week or so i have gathered hundreds of bulbs from three different beds in the temple grounds, planted over 150 of them in our yard (75 in back, 30 on the side, and over 100 more in front), and given at least a hundred away to five different friends. so hopefully what looked like this this year:

will look more like the top picture next year....i can hope can't i?

as i was gathering bulbs one day, the temple gardener stopped to talk with me and told me something about tulip bulbs that i hadn't known before. he is from england, and said this with the most charming british accent, so i know it must be true:
the big tulip bulbs that we buy and plant are grown for 5 years in holland or belgium, and on each of those five years, they cut the flowers off as soon as they bloom, then use the flowers to decorate the streets. if the seed head inside the flower doesn't get to develop, the bulb feels that it hasn't fulfilled its purpose, and tries even harder the next year, so the tulip gets bigger. if the seed head does develop, that bulb may not bloom again. it will probably make new, smaller bulbs, that will take years to get as big. so, to keep your tulips (and i'm going to assume daffodils, which develop their seed head behind the flower, and other bulbs) big and productive, pop off the flower and seed head as soon as the flower is a little past it's prime. but do leave the stem and leaves, of course, because they continue to feed the bulb as they die down. if you don't break off the flower and seed head the stem will feed that before the the bulb.

living out of doors

the weather has been so perfect lately (other than the thunderstorms and tornados last night), it is just like heaven to be outside. we are all outside every chance we get. brock has made big progress on the "fort" for the kids. the slide is attached, and the kids favorite aspect of it now is the sand at the bottom of the slide. of course. we could have saved a lot of time and money if we had known this would be the outcome. but it has entertained gracie for hours and hours.

our baby maple is thriving

we have two baby nashi (asian pears)

and two baby cherries

 

our first lilies are starting to bloom

the hostas we transplanted from our neighbors last fall are beautiful.

 

an in our garden we have planted: beans, popcorn, sweet corn, cucumbers, watermelon, peas, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, bulb onions, green onions, leeks, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, mini pumpkins, giant pumpkins, zucchini, crook neck squash, japanese kabocha squash, many varieties of tomatoes and peppers, cilantro, basil, japanese eggplant, melon, carrrots, beets, rhubarb, and asparagus. we are loving every minute of our yard and garden, and only hope we can keep the critters from eating our produce before we get a chance to.

we are also excited about our four different types of berries: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and black berries. we are close to getting strawberries, and should get raspberries this year too. two of our blueberries didn't make it through the winter, so stark brothers (we love to buy from them) sent replacements. one replacement blueberries turned out to be a pink knock-out rose that we get to keep for free - love it! we thought we were keeping our strawberries safe by putting them on second story deck. but the raccoons dig in them every night, and often uproot them. i have to check on them every morning. i have found yummy looking recipes for the mulberries that are growing in the woods behind our fence.

raspberries!

a late mother's day gift arrived yesterday: a food dehydrator to help us preserve the food we hope to grow - can't wait to try it out!

 

spring in nauvoo 2

our first tulip

our asian pear, "nashi" in japanese

our first strawberry buds

our gracie blossom
the red buds are starting to bloom, the crabapples aren't far behind, and the dogwoods are around the corner....much more to come

the easter bunnies

this is what the easter bunnies wore this year. mia & noah recycled and wore what i made them last year. i tend to do that with both halloween and easter - my built-in anscestral thrift...or laziness?. grace had outgrown last year's dress, it is now a shirt, and so i made her a new outfit with the 1838 pattern book i have been enjoying so much.

she is wearing the cap and pantaloons i stitched by hand. the dress was machine sewn, but also a complete joy to make.

oh, and mia & noah really are the true easter bunnies. mia was born on easter, and noah was due on easter, although he kept us holding our breaths and chose to come 6 days late. i found that to be a much harder wait with adoption than it had been with my own pregnancy. gracie, well she's just a bunny.

the rodenbergs joined us for easter dinner and an egg hunt!

gracie wearing last year's easter dress (by pure coincidence) as she helps brock plant a tree. we have planted seven more trees, 4 fruit which brings our orchard to a total of 12 trees (two each of apple, peach, pear, plum apricot, and cherry), a red bud, a dogwood, and a maple. i have planted 22 flowering plants: hollyhocks, peonies, columbine, lillies, and dahlias, 25 strawberries, two grapes, and grass seed in some bald spots. our lettuce has finally come up, and maybe our first pea, and onion bulbs have now been planted. it's so interesting learning the quirks of a new climate. we are in love with not having to water our lawn, garden, and landscaping, and so enjoy the wildlife that regularly visit: deer, cottontails, squirrels, cardinals, etc. but with every up comes a down, and we are fast learning to battle the moles that are tearing up our ENTIRE yard and flower beds, and the raccoons who dig up our grass looking for grubs, while trying to keep our trees, flowers, and garden safe from the deer and rabbits. we can tell you which repellents work the best. we planted a new baby grape yesterday that had leaved out. this morning it was nibbled to a 1/2 inch nub.

 

 

spring is coming slowly, but surely.