I have a black thumb. But thankfully, my husband does not. He is an expert gardener so our garden always looks beautiful. My job is simply to do something with the abundance of things we grow.
Flowers
Starting in the spring, we have all sorts of flowers blooming in our garden beds. We start with daffodils and tulips. Then come the lilacs. My favorite, the peonies, are up next, followed by lilies, roses, hydrangeas. and dahlias.
A few years ago, some friends and I took a flower arranging course and it was honestly such a great learning experience. I put these skills to use all summer long. Here are a few arrangements from earlier this year.
Fruit
We have an orchard in our backyard. When we first moved into our house, my husband decided he wanted to plant some fruit trees. He researched like crazy and found varieties that are meant to work well in our zone.
Here’s what we have today:
Apricots: these are fickle. Some years we have them coming out our ears. Other years (like this year), the late frost kills all the blooms and we get none.
Peaches: similar to the apricots, these can be fickle, although we almost always get some peaches each year. Last year we had a bumper crop, as you can see in the picture below.
Cherries: we always get cherries, but we have to fight the birds for them! We started off growing sweet cherries, but recently, my husband planted sour cherry trees, too. Growing up, my grandparents had a sour cherry tree in their backyard and I have fond memories of my grandma’s homemade sour cherry jam.
To keep the birds away from the fruit, we cover the trees in nets. It’s a pain to put them on the trees, but it’s worth it when we’re gorging ourselves on cherries.
Mulberries: years ago, we stayed at a rental house in Australia that had a mulberry tree in the backyard. They were delicious! I had never tasted one before, nor did I know anyone who grew them. My husband did some research and worked out that mulberries help keep birds away from other fruit trees, so he planted one in hopes of protecting our cherries. It worked! But now, we have so many mulberries that we get to eat a few ourselves.
Raspberries: these are my daughter’s favorite! We have a few vines left – the others got a disease and we had to pull them out. But it’s fun to go out and pick raspberries or eat them straight from the vine when they are ripe.
Asian Pears: I discovered these at our farmer’s market years ago and I absolutely love them! We only ever get a few, but it’s still a nice treat to have them growing out back.
Figs: we only ever get a few figs each year, but our tree is growing bigger and bigger so I think one of these years, we will get a bumper crop and I’ll have figs (and fig jam!) coming out my ears.
Sometimes handling the fruit can be a challenge. I’ve taken PTO days to “handle the cherries” and have delivered peaches to neighbors more than once. Most of the time, I make jam when we have a big crop. But other times, I’ll make pies, muffins, cakes, and smoothies with them. Most of these fruits also freeze well, so I’ll either make pie filling or simply slice them up and freeze them for use over the winter.
So far this year, we’ve picked a handful of cherries – just enough to eat. Same with the mulberries. The late cold snap killed the apricots, but we’re hopeful that we’ll get some sweet peaches, Asian pears, raspberries, and figs later this summer. Stop back to see what we’re harvesting!