Brambleberries in the Rain

This year I grew onions in the garden and there are all but two left that I finally pulled up just this week. We managed to eat up all the rest rather quickly. They were so good on tomato sandwiches! I now know that for this house, I need to grow lots more onions next year.

 We do cook with onions a lot in my house. They are such a versatile ingredient that adds so much to one’s cooking. Leave out onions and you are leaving out a lot of flavor. As tasty as they can be I have yet another reason for loving this simple crop.

Briefly on this blog I have mentioned my love affair with knitting but I have failed to mention yet another passion of fiber I have. This passion happens to combine my love of gardening with my love of knitting very well making it a power packed craft for me. What is this craft? Well, for a few years now I have been using herbs and other various plants from my garden to dye my yarn that I use in my knitting. It has been an incredibly addicting thing for me to do. All I want to do now is fill my garden up with plants that I can dye with.

That brings me back to the humble little onion. Not only is this one handy veggie crop to grow for eating BUT it can also be used for dyeing. The skins from yellow onions make an amazing dye and the colors you achieve from them are very beautiful. The picture below shows yarn that I dyed with onion skins just recently.

Every time I pull out these skeins of yarn I am amazed that I can achieve this range of color just by using simple onion skins. So, the next time an onion starts to bring tears to your eyes as you cut it up keep in mind just how useful they really are!

For those that may be interested in how I go about dyeing yarn you can visit my other blog to read more (the blog that sadly never gets updated anymore). Here I posted more detailed instructions for using onion skins as a dye.

Tags: Knitting, Natural Dyes, Onions

The blackberry growing wild in our backyard has just about dropped all of its leaves for the year. When it does you can really see why it is called a bramble. Just look at that tangle of thorny canes!

It never ceases to amaze me though at how the birds love to hide out in this thorny maze. Lately there have been a ton of birds paying visit to our bush and I have been unsuccessfully attempting to get their pictures. I am either too noisy or they are too quick for me to capture much more than a blur. My camera does not take very nice pictures at the distance I need to be in order to not scare them away. The below picture is about the best I have been able to get.

There are three types of birds that are frequenting our garden the most at the moment. They are:

the Black-capped Chickadee

 the Oregon Junco

 and the Spotted Towhee

 Here soon I might make up some suet for them as I did this last year and we really enjoyed watching them feast on it- that is until a crow started to hog it all!

All of the gorgeous images of the birds in this post are courtesy of Flickr. Please click on the images to view their source.

Someday I will have a camera that can capture those kinds of images!

Tags: Birds, Blackberries

We have been having gloriously beautiful sunny weather this weekend. Yesterday I was too busy to get out in the garden but today I made sure I went out there and enjoyed it while I could (the rain is suppose to return on Tuesday).

While wandering around the garden I glanced over at the very first bed that my husband and I put in back when we moved into this house nearly three years ago (the bed that was meant for veggies but was soon filled with herbs). My heart sank as I realized I was looking down at a bed full of Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta). I knew with one quick glance what was occupying that garden bed. I know this little weed all too well from my days spent working at a nursery. This little weed would run amuck in the nursery pots if we did not constantly take the time to weed it out.

(In the below picture the smaller plants are the Hairy Bittercress while the larger leaved plants are yet more borage that has decided to germinate. Borage really likes me I am afraid.)

I do not know how this intruder managed to sneak its way into my garden bed so well. Perhaps it was secretly hiding out in and amongst the cosmos during their glory days when all I noticed was their pretty blooms held high up, far from the ground where this weed likes to lurk.

I guess this edible weed has enjoyed the rain we have been enduring and I am sure me yanking up the spent cosmos remains only helped its germination along. Being that it is edible I might make the best of it and allow some of them to grow bigger for our salads. This however is one weed that you DO NOT want to let go to seed. It has explosive seedpods that send seed flying up to 10 feet away. It is quite good at making a nuisance of itself. I plan to be on guard with this weed and hope to prevent it from finding my garden a nice place to take up residency.

I did a couple searches online concerning this weed and found this picture on Wikipedia. It’s a good picture to use for identifying Hairy Bittercress. It can be clicked on to enlarge for better viewing.

I also found this blog post at Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook that has a cute little story to read concerning this weed that I thought I would pass along.

At least when it comes to edible weeds you get an extra dose of enjoyment (or is it revenge?) when you eat them!

Tags: Weeds

I noticed this week that some of my hens and chicks (Sempervivum) have changed color for the fall just like all the trees around us have. During the spring and summer they are a much brighter color but now their tones seem to be a little bit muted. It is much more noticeable when I compare pictures of them taken during mid-summer and now. The pot they are growing in contains two types and the smaller one of the two shows the biggest change in color. I have this type growing all over the garden in pots and various containers. I remember last fall/winter they changed color like this and I thought they were dying! Their pretty tips had turned from red to purple. When spring arrived with warmer temperatures the red tips returned. So, obviously this is just what they do this time of year. I love finding all the subtle changes that the seasons bring to the garden.

This picture was taken in July. Note the red tips on the variety on the right.

This picture is of the same pot of hens and chicks as the first picture. This pic was taken just this week.  See what I mean by the color changes? Only a gardener could find such amusement out this as I have.

Tags: Seasons

Yesterday the rain clouds magically parted in the afternoon and the sun came out long enough for me to take a nice stroll through the garden with my camera in hand. There really is not a whole lot in bloom right now but I was able to take a few pictures for today which happens to be Bloomin’ Tuesday.

This first picture is of some Borage that is growing wild all around my compost piles. It is quite pretty as the flowers are both blue and pink. Some type of mutation I suppose but all the borage growing over there is blooming like this. I have seen blue borage flowers, pink borage flowers, and white borage flowers but never have I seen any both blue and pink. I never would have even noticed them if it wasn’t for this little quest to find flowers in bloom!

The next picture isn’t exactly a flower but it does look nice. This large rock is sitting along the back end of our yard and almost overnight the moss has “bloomed” all over it. In the right hand corner you can see yet another wild blackberry creeping up on the rock. Sigh, yanking up the wild blackberry never ends!

This final picture is actually of my neighbor’s Japanese maple. I saw it yesterday and thought I had better get its picture while I still can because as you can see it is dropping its pretty yellow leaves. This maple is so beautiful this time of year. It is a Coral Bark Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Sango Kaku’) and once it drops all of its leaves you are left with its beautiful red limbs. It really looks nice when everything else is so dark and dreary. In a few more weeks I will post another picture of it once it starts to show its bark.

That’s all I have to share for today’s Bloomin’ Tuesday. Be sure to visit Jean’s blog and check out all of the other Blooming Tuesday posts!

Tags: Autumn, Herbs