The season continues to ramp up here at the farm but today we are getting much needed rain so I had a moment to sit down and catch up with what is going on here! The peonies have really grown in the past few weeks and the corals decided just yesterday to unfurl some of their petals. They are spectacular. A few stems will be added to the flower cart soon!

In The Field

The weeding of the peonies continues to be a weekly chore but it also gives me an up close view of each plant and how it’s doing. So far, for the most part, the plants look great! Did you know that peonies don’t really come into their own until about year three? Flower farmers wait to cut stems for selling until then so that the peonies can develop strong, healthy tubers and get settled. In fact, one of our new additions, Lemon Chiffon, doesn’t event take her final form, a double flowered peony, until year three or so. She’s a beautiful butter yellow peony when mature but looking at her now, in her first year, you wouldn’t know it (photo below). Peonies really follow the old adage, “first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap.”

In Bloom

I’ve really enjoyed the spring flowers, particularly seeing how they interact with each other, color wise. The alliums, on their tall, tall stems have added a bit of whimsy and magic. The lilacs bloomed beautifully this year and the ones I brought inside made the house smell amazing! Unfortunately, their season seemed to be particularly short and fleeting this year.

Last year, I was gifted, by a generous gardener, a pink Lily of the Valley and I was thrilled to see it come up! I’m so hopeful it will spread prolifically as our white variety has.

The snowball viburnum have been strong this year and we brought many stems in, along with selling lots at the flower cart. My favorite thing about snowball viburnum is how you can literally just stick a bunch of stems in a vase and they look amazing and extravagent! It’s also fun to use them in the early, green, stage as well as their final look of white!

In the Garden

The garden is almost fully planted for the summer season. This year, for the first time ever, I’m having a problem with something digging in the garden. A squirrel? Birds? I can’t figure it out but it goes for newly planted seeds and baby seedlings. So frustrating! We’ve had our first harvests of lettuces and are continuing to get loads of asparagus! Also, I planted out my leeks and am super hopeful they take, I’ve been nurturing them since January!

Celebrating

Of course, we celebrated Mother’s Day this past weekend. It was the first Mother’s Day where neither of our children were home so that was a bit of a bummer. However, my Mom and sister came over and we cooked pizza in the pizza oven and had a lovely evening.

In the Kitchen

As mentioned, we have enjoyed lots of asparagus and in all different forms… pizza, roasted, tarted and puréed in soup!

I really love cooking and baking with things from the garden and I especially love it when I can combine edible flowers with a fruit or vegetable I’ve grown. Therefore, I was particularly excited to make a Rhubarb and Lilac Pavlova, from the cookbook Rooted Kitchen by Ashley Rodriguez ). Ya’ll I’m obsessed with this dessert. In fact, I made it again for Mother’s Day! The jam is so tasty, it makes extra so I’ve used it in my yogurt and on toast.

All Creatures, Great and Small (or winged as the case may be)

And finally, we added another hive to the farm. It was a bit of an accident, as we were absolutely sure the hive did not survive and then SURPRISE! So now we have two and are actually thrilled about that! Maybe we will have honey to sell!