My Half Acre of Paradise

Hey, hey, my friends! My nectarines are ripe now! Been sampling some over the past several days, and it now looks like harvest time has come! Come and get ‘em! We don’t can them, so we really do like to share with friends. We’ll eat a big bowl full, make a cobbler or something, and that’s about it. I’m inviting friends to come over on Thursday evening this week to pick your own. Let me know if you’re coming.

Also, I just wanted to show how enormous those Hibiscus moscheutos flowers really are. Here’s a photo with my hand in it to give some perspective:

Early Saturday morning, before dawn, our Lacebark Elm (Ulmus parvifolia) suffered a major break from some heavy wind. We’ve had wind like this many times, but there was a weak crotch where two major scaffold branches were growing in too deep of a V-shape. When branches grow with narrow crotch angles, they end up with “included bark” which means a line of bark is sandwiched betwen the branches as they grow thicker and thicker. This line prevents the two branches from being knitted together, and it creates a major weakness that someday can turn into this kind of break. It’s heartbreaking to have this happen to a tree we’ve loved so much. It will survive, but I’m not sure if the remaining branch is strong enough where the break is to continue supporting all the growth on that side of the tree. We might end up with another break and another major section of the tree missing.

On a brighter note, check out these beautiful Hibiscus moscheutos blooms. These plants are in large pots on my deck, and they make a great accent there.

My nectarines are almost ripe! I actually picked one yesterday and ate it today, but it was still just a bit green. They should all be ripe in a week or so. Tasted good, even though it wasn’t completely ripe! I’ll also throw in a shot of our second veggie garden on the side of our basement walkout. Those zucchini plants sure are getting huge! And finally, here’s a closeup of some Caryopteris shrub blooms. It’s nice having some things that bloom late in the season like these. They add new life to the garden at the end of summer.

This is one of my Hibscus moscheutos plants in large pots on my deck. The first two blooms opened up today. I love the purity of the white contrasted with the deep, rich red in the center and blended with the soft lemon color of the stamen. Such beauty!

All the Hibiscus shrubs have burst into bloom this week. I love the one above — I think it’s Hibiscus syriacus ‘Aphrodite.’ I also have some double-flowered ones — they’re quite frilly and don’t really look like Hibscuses at all. Oh, and one more of the Aphrodite shrub, too:

And I finally got my ‘Pink Simplicity’ rose hedge blooming well this week. I’ve written before about how some rose experts advised me to give them much more water and fertilize often with a high-nitrogen fertilizer. Well, I neglected to give them the extra care this spring, and so the tiny flower buds mostly fell off in June. Just like in the past. So, about three-and-a-half weeks ago, I trimmed the hedge down a few feet with a power trimmer (thanks neighbor!), and then all this new growth came up and produced flowerbuds. I’ll have to remember that timing of about 3 1/2 weeks if my daughters ever have a wedding reception in our backyard! Hopefully, we could trim them like that again and expect a full bloom 3-4 weeks later!

Here are some other shots from this evening, including my cute son, McKay, some Granny Smith apples that are developing well, and assorted flowers:

Hey, I should mention that middle photo in the last row is an annual called Angelonia (whenever I say the name, I start singing in my mind a blues song called “Angelina” by Keb’ Mo’ — I know, the name is slightly different, but it still happens!). I haven’t grown Angelonia before, but I got the seeds from Park’s last winter and tried it out. I like it so far. I think they’ll get quite a bit bigger by the end of the season.

This is the upper part of my backyard today, experimenting with a stitched-together panoramic shot.

I also took some other photos of things blooming or looking good in my garden. Too many pictures to comment on right now (it’s late at night!), so I’ll just add them all as a gallery below. What do you think? Do you have a favorite photo in this batch? Post a comment below; if you have questions about any particular photo, I’ll answer them in the comments.

First, meet my little garden buddy, McKay. He’s our cute, smart, hilarious two-year old. He’s fun to have along in the garden, although I often need to clean up the messes he makes, like today, when I swept the sidewalk off after he shoveled dirt all over it from a nearby flowerbed. But no problem, really. I mean, who could get mad at a face like this???

All right, on to the cherries. I don’t know why, but one of my cherry trees is ripe before the other this year, and it’s about 10 days early. We usually see these ripen around the beginning of July, sometimes right at the Fourth of July, which is nice and festive. These are ‘Lapins’ cherries, which is French for rabbit. It signifies how fruitful they are, and believe me, they’ve clearly been fruitful this year! Many of the branches are bending over sharply under the weight of all the fruit. Probably another reason for the ‘Lapins’ name is that these cherries are fairly unique in being self-fruitful — you don’t have to plant a different variety nearby for pollenization like with most cherries (finicky things!).

Every year, when I pick the cherries, I spot check for worms (western fruit fly larvae) by cutting a bunch open. This is the best year yet — I cut open six or seven and saw no signs of worms at all, so as far as I’m concerned, they’re all good, and I’m just going to eat them! I did spray them with Malathion, but I only had to do it twice, since it’s been such a cool, wet June and I think the fruit flies haven’t been very active.

My crocuses are such tiny things, and the clumps are few and far between, but I like how they are the first heralds of spring. I have them next to the walkway to my front door so they’ll get our attention as we walk to or from the house. At this time of year, I always think of planting more of them, and then I forget later, when they are dormant. I should remember next fall to get a bunch more bulbs.

While I was shooting these photos, I was happy to also see the first bees of spring! I like how you can see the pollen on their legs in these closeups.

On another note, yesterday I hosted about 30 people for a fruit tree pruning demonstration by Tom Hill with the Utah County USU Extension. He was great - very informative. We watched some videos in the house, had a few cookies (thanks to my wife!), and then went outside for some discussion and a few live examples on my nectarine and apple trees. Thanks to Tom and to all who came. I meant to take some photos to post here, but I got caught up in the learning and forgot to do it. Now, I have to get out there in the coming week and finish the pruning…

I walked out the front door a few days ago in the evening, and the setting sun was making the tiny crabapples on my tree glow and sparkle. I ran back in to get the camera!

This is a Prairiefire crabapple. Sometimes I’ve called in Prairie Fire, but I think the proper name is one word. These fruit are “persistent,” meaning they stay on the tree well into the winter. The birds eat some of them. There are even some left in the spring, when the robins return.  These are a nice small ornamental tree. They’ve been in the ground for seven years, but they’re still only 10′ tall or so, with a spread of about 15′. They have great flowers in the spring, too. Click here to see some photos from spring 2007.

A few more shots from the other day:

Now these are some *cool* flowers! Don’t you think? This is one of the Hibiscus moscheutos plants I have in large pots on my backyard deck. This one was much later to flower than the other this year, but it’s great to see multiple flowers opening up at once. My hunch is that they would flower sooner in the summer, but they get half-day shade on my covered deck, which may have slowed down the flower development.

The guy who sent these seeds to me (from a trade on GardenWeb.com) said their parent was ‘Blue River II,’ but it turns out that the seed had some cross fertilization from other Hibiscus plants.  ‘Blue River II’ has pure white flowers. But I like these! I think they’re very cool flowers. Nice and tropical-looking.

I decided this year to leave the nectarines on the tree longer, because many of them were a little too tart last year. They are really getting good now! I’ve harvested a few small batches of them in the past week, and there are many more still on the tree. Birds are getting to the them, and some fell off in the wind yesterday, so I need to get out there and pick the rest of them, I think. Perhaps there are still some hard ones that I’ll leave on the tree a little longer, but I think they should all be ready now. The ones in the photo above were picked on Thursday, August 28th.

This is a full two weeks later than I usually pick these, which I think is a combination of late ripening from our cold spring (the blossoms were a little later than usual) and my waiting a little longer to be sure they’re ripe. I hope I haven’t waited too long, though!