This summer we have contended with a number of periods of extremely hot weather. We have been fortunate to receive some breaks of cool days and significant rain that have kept the gardens and lawns from absolutely baking but still, I complain when the hot days are here! This week we have had several still, sunny days in the upper 80s-low 90s and it absolutely saps my energy and kills any creative thoughts that might flit through my brain. Fortunately, Fred, one of the incredible, talented, furniture painters from inside, has recently sent me wonderful pictures of butterflies in the gardens. I often see Fred roaming the grounds on his breaks or during his lunch camera in hand;  I am lucky enough to have him send the pictures so that I can feature them in my blog.

Our gardens are incredibly lively! We have beautiful butterflies that savor the nectars of the Monarda, Verbena, Salvia, Echinacea, and Ageratums. We have so many nectar producing plants; the flowers are always abuzz! There have been times that I have been working in the Long Border among the Monarda only to feel like I am in the center of a WWII dog fight as the hummingbirds fight and dive for ALL of the sweetness. The buzzing and the scolding are very entertaining. We have had great success with honey bees pollinating our pumpkins and squashes in the new Pumpkin Patch. Next season we are planning to have some hives on property to help increase bee count.

 

Our Bus Stop Garden with its bold Rudbeckia and Buddleia inadvertently became a butterfly garden. I originally designed it to house the brightest colors on campus. It is there that I placed the goldy Black-eyed Susans, the orangey daylilies, the bright red crocosmias .I used the dark purple of annual and perennial salvias and butterfly bush to set it all off. It became a haven for the butterflies that could find refuge in the nearby meadow. Now it is all a flutter!

When I first began the blog, Fred provided most of the photos; of late, he has been so busy decorating the wonderful creations that he found himself less able to provide the shots I needed to bring the gardens to the blog. I grabbed a point and shoot camera and hoped for the best. So, inspired by Fred’s latest email, I am dedicating this blog to his marvelous photography. As you will see, in this case, the flora takes second place to the fauna. His shots are so exquisite that I doubt many of us have seen the beauty he has captured. You can see more of Fred’s fantastic shots here 

Sometimes the things that make me shake my head are also the very things that make being the gardener here at MacKenzie-Childs so darn much fun. Each year we pull out the stops and decorate for the Fall and our big Columbus Day weekend celebration using pumpkins, gourds, corn shocks, mums, and squash that I purchase from our terrific local farm stand, Morgan’s Half Acre . Last year the creative director said “what fun it would be to have a pumpkin patch of our own”. I agreed but, as the resident agriculturist here, felt it necessary to point out that pumpkin fields are not the most aesthetically pleasing gardens from September on; it is hard to control weeds and the vines look kind of shabby after they have set fruit. My experience with pumpkin patches in the fall is that often they can be quite muddy at harvest time. At any rate, I promised to plant pumpkins this year and set about trying to figure out how to create a story book style garden.

MacKenzie-Childs is situated on 66 acres of shallow clay soil over shale on a bluff over looking Cayuga Lake; we certainly have the acreage. We do not, however, have the farm equipment necessary to plow, fit, and plant one of our vacant fields.  Additionally, plowing can bring up long dormant weed seeds and create a huge a huge weeding challenge. Plowing would also create potential for considerable mud if the weather on the celebration weekend was rainy. I decided to create long raised beds using topsoil and compost we had trucked in. Tommy and his brother, Ryan, were given the task of forming two long beds approximately 3 feet across by 200 feet long with enough space between them for two passes of the lawn mower. Tommy was training to enter the Air Force at the end of the summer so he did not mind moving all that soil with shovels and the bobcat; Ryan may have had another opinion.

 

We planted about twenty different kinds of pumpkins and squash in early June. We also planted groupings of broom corn, Indian corn, fall blooming mums, and kale for vertical interest and pre-planted decorations. Up until about three weeks ago we were able to keep the grass strips between the rows mowed and the beds themselves weed free. Then, it seemed like over night, we could not even see the raised beds for the huge, beautiful plants covering them. Last week we were able to water the bed by setting up sprinklers so that both rows were watered. We would water each area for 2 hours then move the sprinklers to the next area. In that fashion we were able to thoroughly water the patch once a week. This week I will have to dive into the vines to find my sprinklers! The vines of the two rows have completely grown together to form one big garden. It looks wonderful!

I had a lot of fun choosing what to grow and now that the plants have started setting fruit, it is like a treasure hunt looking for the pumpkins and fruit in various stages of maturity. I love the variety of the leaf shapes and the vines shown by the different plants. I selected an assortment of sizes, shapes, and colors that would fill my decorating needs as well as supply pumpkins for the Columbus Sale Weekend customers to pick their own. I resisted the temptation to choose the really huge pumpkins- I thought they would take up too much room and would not supply very many per vine. We planted a lot of ‘Baby Pam’ and ‘Racer’ two heavy bearing varieties that should yield nice five pound pumpkins perfect for painting and just the right size for small children to carry on their own. I have a soft spot for “interesting” shaped heirloom pumpkins and squash; anything that promises to be a delicious filling for pies or ravioli is sure to make my list- especially if it has a great shape as well.

Now, in mid-August, I cannot wait for the cooling days of September to knock back the vines and show me the treasure trove of pumpkins and squash hidden in the grass! I hope Linus would agree that it is, indeed, a very sincere pumpkin patch.

In my gardening life before I started caring for the Estate at MacKenzie-Childs, I designed gardens primarily for individuals. My business was small, I specialized in classic English style gardens, and I had most of my business within a 15 square mile radius. Most often I was asked to design, install, and maintain flower gardens for individuals who wanted beautiful gardens like they see in the magazines but had neither the knowledge nor the time required to bring that about. Occasionally, the home owner would want me to create and install the garden but would feel up to the task of maintenance. These walk away jobs were, for me, the scariest. A successful garden is a living thing that evolves; plants do not always behave as planned, conditions change; my best gardens are always tweaked so when I had to plant and hope for the best, I never really felt like it was my best.  I would cringe when, during the initial interview, the homeowner would ask for a low, or no, maintenance garden and then consistently be drawn to the higher maintenance plants. Almost all gardens require more maintenance than the uninitiated are aware; just as Fishing is not called Catching, Gardening is not called Planting.

Now that I am able to concentrate on the gardens here everyday, I rarely, if ever, take a plant’s maintenance needs into consideration when I make my plant selections. It is now early August, my staff and I are very busy going through the beds deadheading and cutting back after the bloom- your- heads-off crazy days of June and July. We are in the gardens every day but it still seems there comes a point in August when many plants just need cutting back so they can reboot and make themselves presentable for the long, beautiful autumn.

 

I began the week in the Production Gardens pulling bolted spinach and escarole and cutting back cilantro to see if it will last a little longer-trying to get it to coordinate with the tomatoes and peppers for some fresh salsa. I cut out the broccoli crowns that have gone on to flower knowing that that will encourage side shoot development. We should have our first ripe tomatoes later this week (I was late getting them planted) and the eggplant bed is loaded with promising little eggplants. I cut out the growing tips from the basil bed and took it home to make about ten cups of pesto base. When I checked this morning the plants look like they never got trimmed. As I work at my desk at the end of the day I often see studio employees coming to the Production Garden as they leave work to harvest a little here and there- I like that. I am hoping to re-seed spinach and beets in my blank spaces next week.

The rest of the week has been devoted to cutting back perennials in the borders. Most of the hemerocallis have bloomed and need to have their flower stalks and some forlorn leaves trimmed out. The newer hybrids seem to do a better job of staying fresh looking after blooming; older daylilies benefit from having most of their leaves removed- they send up new leaves that look fresh in the fall. We cut the salvias back again. I try to “manage” the salvias for longest bloom; I cut the back half(the part away from the front of the border) before they even bloom in May that way when the first bloom is through, I can cut them away, the part that I cut in May will then be ready to bloom. I have found it an effective way to have Salvias like ‘Cardonna’ and ‘Evaline’ blooming a solid two months in the summer. By now they are just tired- if I cut them back now, I usually have blooms in late September through November. In the White Garden the Chrysanthemums ‘Highland Dream’, ‘Alaska’, and ‘Becky’ have bloomed, been deadheaded back to secondary buds, and are ready to be cut back to the crown; I kind of love doing that, it is such a relief to just cut them down. The same is true of Monarda ‘Raspberry Wine’ in the Long Border and some of the Phlox paniculata. Cutting them back creates a fairly large hole but I have some dahlias in the greenhouse that can be counted on to fill the space. I would like to say I planned it that way but in reality we have been so flat out I never did get them placed in the borders!

All of the window boxes have gotten extra water and fertilizer in the past ten days. They were suffering from mid-summer doldrums. I need to give the petunias in the Thanksgiving Square boxes a hard cutting back to rejuvenate them. The boxes on the south wall of the restaurant pout at me whenever I look out of my office window- they call to me and my scissors. I have always marveled at the resiliency of annuals, genetically all they really want to do is set seed so if you keep cutting off the seed heads they will just keep flowering.

One bed that has received less of our attention this year is the Grass Border. I am so happy with it! We planted it with the intent of having one garden that would not need much attention to look at its best. Because it was just planted it this spring, we anticipated that we would need to devote time to keeping it weeded and watered this summer but fully expect to pretty much ignore it next year.   It has performed beyond my expectations, everything has grown in beautifully and I am so pleased with the plants I chose to compliment the grasses. Going forward I feel very happy that the plants in the Grass Border will call to me with deadheading , staking , and cutting back needs far less than many of the plants in our other gardens. Right now the grasses are just starting to flower, some are definitely still thin and leggy but some have filled out nicely.To compliment the garsses, I chose Sedum ‘Matrona’ both because I have it in another garden and love it and because Margaret Roach raves about it in her excellent blog, A Way to Garden. The colors of the leaves pick up the rosy tones of its neighbor Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’. Perovskia atriplicifolia had yet to find a place in the other gardens because I knew it would not appreciate my close planting style, it likes its own space; the Grass Border is the perfect place for it. Finally, I am very pleased with our decision to use Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’ as a marker for the narcissi clumps. Like Salvia farinacia, S. guaranitica does not really come into its own until mid to late summer.  I have a few holes that I can get more plants to fill in next spring, at this point I am unsure if I will choose a grass or add more sedum.

In all, the Grass Border has been such a success as a low demands garden that I am assessing some of the other areas on the property that could use sprucing up but are fairly low traffic areas. We certainly do not have the staff and the time to add more garden areas but maybe we could kill all the weeds this fall and plant grasses in the spring…

 

I have been neglectful of the blog lately. The last time we had anything that resembled inclement weather (so that I could calmly work at my desk) was over a month ago. We have had a spate of very hot days in which sometimes it felt that all we did was drag hoses around watering, only to follow the next day weeding because watering effectively loosened the concrete that we call soil to make it possible to pull the weeds that germinated because we had watered the week before..sigh.  We were also very busy getting the grounds in top shape for the barn sale. We were making paths, weeding everywhere, and trying to get everything planted before over ten thousand people descended on our lawns, gardens, and walkways. In the middle of all this we also did another big pond planting and added bullfrog tadpoles to the pond. Many of the new projects we embarked on this year have made much progress so this is a little catch-up blog.

Firstly, the grass border has grown in beautifully. If you remember, last fall we made the decision to dig up the flower bed bordering the Chicken Palace yard. It was 160 x 8 feet of mostly roadside plants- the orange daylily common to road ditches, New York Asters, Tansy, and some more conventional, cultivated perennials. It was also the home of many weeds that we would diligently dig out, only to have more return in a few weeks. I estimated that we would spend about a week’s worth of work each year to yield maybe, 2 weeks maximum pleasure- when it was tidy and blooming. I determined that of all the perennials we have that tall grasses are the least maintenance. Over the winter I read some design books by Ohm and Van Sweden, two early proponents of ornamental grasses and made my selections from our favorite plant propagator. We had a lot of plants in the greenhouse this spring so we took the lazy man’s approach to the grasses. Since most of them came rooted in 2 ½ inch pots, rather than potting them up into gallon nursery containers, we held them in their propagation trays and planted them out as early as we dared. I was a little nervous doing this because there was talk about a June date for the barn sale; I knew the border would not look like much then. For many reasons, I was relieved when the mid-July date was picked. As I chose the grasses, I decided to deviate from my initial plan of only grasses to add perovskia and sedum- both plants I really like with grasses. I almost added rudbeckia but its potential invasiveness and need for deadheading deterred me. We did plant Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’ as a marker for our narcissi clumps. It is a fantastic mixer with grasses.

The pond planting is starting to fill out. This is all a new experience so I am not sure how soon it will look like the abundant designs of the pond books. In early July we ordered and planted more marginals and water lilies since our first planting appeared to be doing well. I found a wonderful nursery in Texas (of all places!) and ordered a passel of plants (one always orders passels of things from Texas).  They arrived neatly packed and in remarkably good condition considering the record heat they were traveling through. Corinne and I, again, donned out spiffy wets suits and ventured forth. I tried to act as water snake look out because Corinne would definitely be in the trees if she saw one;  we all tried to act like we knew what we were doing. At the same time that I was looking for plants, I came across bull frog tadpoles offered by a pond plant supplier. There had been requests from important people for more frogs, please. So we got 200 and released them- I tried to find some for pictures but the pond is big and they are elusive.

That segways nicely to- an animal update: The sheep are quite at home. In mid-June we weaned the lambs and sent the moms back  to rejoin their flock. Aiden, Annick, and Libby are now totally in charge of the sheep yard. They have really grown, so much so that a woman asked me last week where the baby lambs were- lambs, like puppies, do not stay small forever. The sheep seem to enjoy hanging out in the breezeway on hot days and now recognize the sound of our cars when we arrive in the morning- always greeting us with bleats for grain. The goslings are huge already. They still have their fluffy, yellow- green down but are nearly half the size of their parents. It will be interesting to see if any are white. We had five hatch but only three made it through the first weekend (sad days for Corinne). The chickens that arrived early June have been allowed to free range. They mostly hang out in their yard but periodically the hop the fence and wander the grounds close by. The rooster is magnificent! My project this fall will be getting him to be able to be picked up easily. He is slightly used to handling- I just need to work on it more- he is very fast and it is hard to catch him!

There is much more going on- you must stop in to see us!

Wow! What an exciting day it was today at MacKenzie-Childs! We had four goslings hatch from the clutch of eggs the very patient goose has been sitting on for, I think, over a month. It was quite unexpected because the first nest this season – which had 11 eggs in it- yielded nothing and I thought she had been nesting longer than the gestation period. So, when I went in to feed sheep, imagine my surprise to find her off the nest and four very adorable chartreuse goslings toddling around in the straw. I ran to get my camera to document the wonderful birth (s).  I really want to get this posted and so am going to mainly do pictures.

 

There is one egg left- I wonder if it will hatch!  

We are especially lucky here at MacKenzie-Childs to have a nearly bottomless pond that supplies the water for our lawn and garden irrigation system. The pond, located at the site of a natural spring, dates back early times of the company. About ten years ago it was enlarged and became an integral part of the watering system. The pond serves as a reservoir for water pumped 900 feet up from Cayuga Lake. During the growing season our system pumps out of the pond for our non-potable water needs. Pond overflow is accomplished by a constructed stream bed whose path has formed the foundation for our White Garden. The stream returns water to the lake through the woodland gully (I have hopes for a future garden there!) and under the road to the shore.

Since we have had the pond, we have had issues with floating mats of algae in the summer. They are aesthetically unappealing and sometimes even smell bad.  Our algae load is inevitable for a few reasons. We have several mature weeping willows around the pond. These willows, while lovely and romantic, drop a lot of debris into the pond, contributing to the nutrient load in the water as the leaves and branches decay. The water in Cayuga Lake is nutrient rich; those nutrients are concentrated in the much smaller volume of the pond. And, the lawn and rose garden adjacent to the pond contribute soil nutrients after large rain events. The algae has lots of food for growth; hot days are ideal for mass growth.

Because we drain directly to the lake, we cannot use light inhibiting dyes that are often used in ponds (that slightly unnatural blue water look) and absolutely cannot use any chemicals that would kill the algae; bad for the lake ecosystem and bad for the lawns and gardens we water. Various control methods have been employed. We have grass eating carp- meh- our problem is algae, not grass. We have pond skimmers, and even a kayak- to chase down the mats in the middle- my helpers LOVE it when I tell them we need to de-scum the pond!

Last year we consulted with a pond expert who has helped us develop a three pronged approach. He advised us to remove the plant material as much as possible (pond skimming is not going away), add microbial products that accelerate decomposition and digest algae, and lastly, planting some pond plants that will compete for nutrients.

We implemented the first two options last year; resulting in good, but not quite good enough results.  So, I spent the winter leaning everything I could about water gardening. I read books, websites, and picked peoples brains. We ordered plants and wetsuits for me and Corinne. Two weeks ago we did not quite dive in, but we waded in, protected by wets suits and waders in, of course, 90 degree heat to place the pond plants.

I have started modestly because I learned long ago the difference between book knowledge and experiential knowledge; I want to see how my initial foray does before I spend a lot of money on plants. This is a new garden area for me- exciting, but I so dislike messing up! After researching ideas, I decided to start simple. I chose Louisiana Irises and Siberian Irises as marginals; the books say they can be under 3 to 6 inches of water during the growing season, as long as the level drops down during the winter months. I also planted some Thalia dealbata and Peltandra undulata in the shallows. We moved some canna saved from last year’s garden into the shallows since they are supposed to do well in water. The most exciting plants we placed were Nymphaea sp., hardy water lilies. We had big pots with two to three rhizomes in each pot. Corinne and I could walk the pots out to the location we wanted them, floating the pot on the surface. When we were in position, we would say “1, 2, 3, sink” and try to make them go straight down. The leaves would then float to the surface. As yet, it does not look like much. I am hoping it will take off soon. I am already formulating plans for the additional plants I want to space around the edge.  

Yesterday when I went out to gather some pictures for the blog, I was very please to see how much more clear the pond had become in just two weeks. I am not sure what to expect, but I feel that I will be much more informed this fall and will be better able to expand the plantings next spring. Be sure to visit and watch it evolve!

 

I am so proud of the new rose garden here at MacKenzie-Childs! If you have been following the blog, I have mentioned it occasionally and have talked about my great hopes for its success. This year it is more spectacular than I had hoped it would be!

Years ago, I attended a lecture about antique roses given by one of the area’s marvelous amateur gardeners, Linda VanBuskirk. Until I listened to her talk I thought of roses in terms of the ‘Blaze’ rambler and hybrid tea roses my grandmother fussed over when I was growing up. The flowers were lovely but the bushes were not much to look at and there was little fragrance to speak of. Additionally, she spent her summers following a strict regime that included insecticides and fungicide dusts. For me, they were like the plastic covered couch of the plant world. I was more intrigued by the old rugosa roses my great-grandmother had planted when she settled on the farm. Those roses were singles with a heady perfume and predictably bloomed around Father’s Day. When the blooms were done, beautiful scarlet hips adorned the bushes until the birds ate the fruits. These bushes flourished in the hedgerow with no attention and no problems. Linda’s library lecture years later awaked a fascination with old roses that, until two years ago, I had fed by reading and small plantings. Here, at Mackenzie-Childs, I have the opportunity to allow it to blossom into a full grown obsession!

In 2008, inspired by the gorgeous garden book ‘The Greater Perfection: The Story of the Gardens at Les Quatre Vents’ by Francis H Cabot. I set out to create a rose garden that would feature antique and old-style roses. This garden would be a show stopper when in bloom and quietly fade into the background out of season. I chose roses for their fragrance, form in flower and in the landscape, decorative hips, and sometimes reblooming abilities. I made my selections from the ancient albas, noted for their superb scent, ease of growing, and quiet affinity with other plants, gallicas, damasks, bourbons, all wonderful blousy blooms, and a number of the New English roses from breeder Davis Austin. We planted almost 100 roses along the north bank of the pond.

 2008 was a hot, dry summer and we lost a discouraging number of bushes. We ordered replacement bushes in spring 2009, adjusted our planting techniques, crossed our fingers, and waited. We had a lovely, cool, rainy summer- not much fun for vacationers- but terrific for establishing roses!

Now- they are spectacular! I spent all day on one of the 85 plus degree days last week weeding because the strong fragrance so made up for the heat! They look wonderful- and- because some of the most fantastic blooms are on the David Austin English roses, I can expect blooms all summer. So enjoy the pictures and be sure to visit!

In some ways this is one of my favorite points in the garden year. We are at the end of our spring bulb display and at the beginning of the tremendous, over-the-top summer garden season. This is the time that I imagine the garden collectively drawing in a deep breath that will be let out in a fragrant, multi-colored explosion of flowers and foliage. Despite early heat that brought the bulbs out fast and furious, a recent spate of cool and rainy days have not so much slowed the forward progress of the emerging perennials, as kept the earlier than usual blooms hanging on much longer than expected. So we are ahead but, at the same time, about where I would expect for a “normal” year. Some of the tulip blooms have been hanging on for over two weeks. In the Bus Stop Garden the Flaming Parrot Tulips garnered much attention on the April 30^th garden event- they are still wonderful!

Nearby in the Shop Garden Narcissi triandrus ‘Petrel’ and the excellent Tulip Bleu Aimable are holding forth.

Corinne and I dig all the tulips up each year so that we can plant fresh bulbs in the fall. This accomplishes a number of things. Most tulips perform best the first year with smaller blooms and uglier (messier) foliage in subsequent years. Because the bulbs are a BIG part of our garden, we want to ensure the best possible show; we do not leave it up to chance. I am proud how abundant the gardens are each spring; I don’t want to risk a less than spectacular show due to bulb senescence or vole predation.  It would be very complicated to keep track of the bulb groups to try to match the colors. Instead, with the exception of the species tulips, we dig the tulips as soon as they are done blooming and offer them to the employees. This gives me the opportunity to change the color mix every year. This year I decided the put the peony tulips and parrot tulips in the Farmhouse Border and the Courtly Check Courtyard. I think of these areas as town or city gardens as opposed to the more country style of the Long Border. Salmon Parrot tulip was very popular and garnered many questions. Two week into bloom the colors remind me of the paint strokes of the white on the Courtly Check pattern.

The Long Border has given way to the final blooms of Tulip Bleu Aimable, Best Purple, Cum Laude and Elegant Lady. The purples are blending in with the wonderful Allium ‘Purple Sensation’. They also act as a perfect foil for the Bird Song Spigot and Mrs Powers Gate that adorn the Long Border.

I love this time because the gardens show so much promise. We have started staking the plants that past experience tells us are bound to flop. I prefer to use bamboo and twine. More fastidious gardeners than I frequently rant  against the green dyed bamboo stakes- I find the dye fades after one season so if I have trouble finding un-dyed poles in the size I need, I am unafraid of the green ones! This time of year I spend days staking; I find a kind of Zen-like pleasure in creating the spider web structures.

We have had a lovely number of cool, rainy days that make the gardens sparkle with lushness. I walked around with my camera Friday morning, after a good rainThursdaynight, and tried to capture some of the wonderful spring vignettes taking place in our gardens. The pictures feature both spring ephemerals like Dicentra spectabilis(Bleeding Heart- we have both pink and white cultivars) and season long workhorses like Nepeta, Hosta, Tiarella, Achemilla, and Hakonechloa.

Finally, one of my all time favorites- Achemilla mollis- Lady’s Mantle; when my children were little, I would show them the quicksilver droplets of water held in the folds of the leaves and explain that Faeries wash their faces in the magic silver water. You know they do.

This week we are featuring a guest blog by Kara Mapestone of Mapleton Farms, the small Shetland farm where we purchased our new! flock. She wrote such a beautiful piece on her private blog, that we asked and received her permission to post it. If you want more information about her flock and Shetland Sheep in general please visit her public blog http://mapletonsheepforsale.blogspot.com. At  this site you get a less personal look at her sheep and farm but she does such a wonderful job with photos and posts that it is stil heads above many. So enjoy her words and pictures. We are sooo enjoying the sheep.

Mapleton Farms goes to Mackenzie-Childs

The two ewes that singled this year, Cotton Candy and Violet, are on a PR mission. They accompanied their lambs and yearling Libby to Mackenzie-Childs. Violet and Cotton Candy will come home at weaning, and the lambs and Libby will stay. They left yesterday, so today I decided to drive the hour to see how they were settling in.

To get all the info on MacKenzie-Childs and their beautiful products go to www.mackenzie-childs.com but here is a little photo gallery I took of their grounds and buildings:

The sheep’s new home…not bad hun? Love the gate…one of their products:

Mariann is the gardener and their new shepherd and they were all very quick to make friends:

I was so happy to see how comfortable and relaxed they seem in their new setting.

Libby was not too sure about her geese neighbors!

Violet and her son Aidan.

The girls at the gate.

Going in for the night. I love this little outbuilding…I think I need one like it! It is even beautiful on the inside!

That lamb is not going to let that yearling push her out of the grain…no way!

Cotton Candy and her daughter Annick admiring the view:

It was hard to say good-bye but heartwarming to see them in such a beautiful place and know they will be so well cared for. I am really proud they will be representing Mapleton Farm. Violet’s son was a favorite around here and I even thought of keeping him as a ram, but he is related to just about everyone here. Life at MacKenzie-Childs with his sweet personality, woolly poll and cheeks, solid conformation, and beautiful fleece, as a pampered wether is a pretty good alternative for a ram lamb. I guess it is good I like the combinations of all the lines here the best; it must mean I am heading in the right direction in my breeding goals. Libby and Cotton Candy’s ewe lamb are the perfect PR girls and think are good representatives of the breed. A great little starter flock for them.
Here are a few more photos I took on our way out:

Classic MacKenzie-Childs hand painted pots in the greenhouse.

I didn’t have time to go in the store or on a farmhouse tour but I will be sure to make time for it next visit. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. If you look really careful you can see the Highland Cattle on the right of this photo.

It will be odd not having our flock matriarch here to keep everyone in line. It will be wonderful to welcome her and Violet home in June. Be good girls (and boy) and represent us well! My many thanks Mariann!

As I drove to work this past week I heard a report on NPR by Christopher Joyce about early spring and how it affects the plants and pollinators (bees). Recent springs have been climatically arriving about 7 days earlier than past decades.

This results in earlier snow melt, potentially earlier and longer summer droughts, missed pollination opportunities for bees, and compressed flowering periods. For our gardens at Mackenzie-Childs, it means my carefully planned 6 week bulb extravaganza is moving in fast motion.

I have planned for our gardens to have a rhythm and this spring I feel like my 2/4 time has been changed to 4/4. I make careful selections of narcissi and tulips to provide an interesting progression of color. The early blooming narcissi lead the show; theses tend to be the brighter yellow and orange and yellow varieties so the mid-April borders have a very bright yellow look.

I do not invest in a lot of early tulips because I like to give the daffs a chance to shine before the attention grabbing colors of the tulips take over. I throw in a few hundred Apricot Beauty, Beauty Queen and Purple Prince Single early tulips but prefer to delay the wash of bright colors for the Triumph, Darwin, and Lily tulips that usually bloom in late April or early May. This year, in most of the gardens, everything is coming almost at once.

The Impression series tulips that I love and can count on for Mother’s Day are all in full color. Salmon Parrot has been engendering inquiries regarding what they are. I am a bit relived to see that one of my favorites, Tulip Blue Amiable, is not showing any color yet- It is a fantastic bluey purple that, sadly, often signals the end of spring bulb season.

The Narcissi that bloom to compliment the later blooming tulips tend to be the white with different colored cup varieties. Combined with the predominantly salmon, pink, and purple tulips they give the borders a very confectiony feel. The pastel yellow Carmargne, Cream Perfection, and Crème Upstar tulips are beginning to show color. I usually depend on them to pop the darker colors of the late tulips but they are ahead of their dark compatriots this year so they do not have quite the pow-effect; I still love their creamy hues.
I have relegated the bright reds, strong yellows, and vibrant orange tulips to the back border we call the Bus Stop Garden.

There I have planted 4 varieties of red tulips to encourage long bloom period. They are all out at once this year- I have no idea which is which at this point. I no longer label the tulips when I plant them. We use zinc labels, the only ones I can tolerate, and we marked every group the first year. Disregarding the time it takes to neatly write each name, Corinne and I were positively twitchy by the end of the winter when all our formerly straight and even labels were tossed and twisted by the snows and frosts of winter.

Raking out the winter debris was a pain because the rakes would catch and it looked a little like a mini cemetery. Now we just make a photo album of the varieties we plant so that, if I cannot remember a specific variety, we can refer to the book. Sometimes I carry it with me in the gardens as I do spring chores in case a visitor wants to know a specific plant name, I can refer to it if my memory fails.
The warm weather in early April pushed things along but the cool weather over the last few days has helped preserve the blooms; I was very concerned that we would have blooms for only a day. Things are very ahead of schedule (lilacs already!) but they are lasting well.

We have other signs of spring abounding. The geese are again sitting on eggs. I did a quick count and came up with nine earlier this week. Two springs ago we had one hatchling; a combination of the American Buff and Tuffed Roman geese; I called it a Tufted Buff. Last year they sat on eggs for a while but none hatched.
[caption id="attachment_550" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Goose down lines nest in the bushes in front of the Chicken Palace"][/caption] The sheep have settled in superbly. They are quite the attraction and seem unfazed by the geese next door. Annick and Aidan, the lambs, are huge hits. They will be featured with their older moms and cousin, Cotton Candy, Violet, and Libby in the garden tour this weekend- be sure to drop by!