A monarch butterfly on Ageratum 'Blue Horizon'

I do love my annuals. My very first garden- likely 35-40 years ago (GASP! Who is that old!)- was created entirely with annuals. My mother gave me a little rectangular garden; it couldn’t have been more than 12 ft x 3 ft, that was backed with the wire fence that divided our property from our neighbors. In that garden I planted cosmos, marigolds, gladiolas, the gaudy cocks comb and feather type salvias, and morning glory on the fence. The plants were all in lines (like soldiers) and strictly ordered by height. It was bright and exuberant and I was incredibly proud of it.

As I grew and became more knowledgeable, I gravitated towards perennials. I even had a youthful distain of the annuals whose dependability had lured me into gardening. When I started my greenhouse business ( a job that dovetailed nicely with staying home with my growing family and life on our dairy farm) I found the best entrée was to grow annuals- bedding plants as they were known. I read as much as I could get my hands on, subscribed to trade magazines, and worked with the local gentleman who wanted to get out of the growing business and go to Florida. I chaffed at growing just petunias, impatiens, and marigolds. I expanded my selection to include perennials and started to grow more unusual annuals. A pivotal resource in my library came with the purchase of Annuals for Connoisseurs  by Wayne Winterowd. Emphasizing annuals that were the antithesis of neat little mounds of begonias; this book supplied me with lists of annuals to grow and incorporate into my perennial gardens to help them through the August slump.

Nicotiana alata has seeded ittself freely, Winterowd introduced me to this plant

Here at MacKenzie-Childs I depend on the annuals to kick the gardens up a notch after the big perennials stars, like phlox, hemerocallis, lilies, and Monarda, have exhausted themselves in July and early August. Most of the annuals I choose are what I call slow starters. We typically plant them in the holes left by the tulips we dig out every spring. At planting I clip them back to encourage branching; if they have any blooms when we put them in the ground, I remove those as well; I want to encourage root growth.  Right about the middle of August I start getting questions asking what this plant or that flower is called.

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly on Verbena bonariensis flower

Depending on the garden, we use the annuals in various ways. In the Courtly Check Courtyard and the part of the White Garden under the willows, our two shady gardens, we plant impatiens, bright coleus, strobilanthes, and begonias. Because our shade gardens depend on foliage plants for the bulk of their structure, the annuals provide continuous color.

A favorite coleus this year

For a couple of years now we have depended on various members of the annual salvia family to act as Narcissus location markers- we plant them throughout the gardens where their blues and purple colors meld perfectly with the rest of the plants.

Salvia farinacea 'Victoria' an excellent bulb marker!

Because my glass greenhouse is more beautiful than efficient, I order most of my plants as started plugs or liners. In doing that, I am able to delay delivery of my first plants until around St Patrick’s Day; we seldom get really bitter cold after that time and if my furnace goes out, have less risk of losing all my plants. In part, I order some different annuals each year- It keeps me out of a rut and introduces me and my visitors to new plants.

Some of my favorites are the nicotiana sylvestris, nicotiana langsdorffii, and verbena bonariensis   in the Long Border. These are prolific self sowers, I planted them the first year I gardened here and have been editing their locations since. The Grass Border sports a row of Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’ to the delight of hummingbirds, my honey bees, and many butterflies. Not all of the annuals are flowering. I have quite fallen under the spell of interesting coleus, tropical colcasia, and strobilanthes dyerianus.

Strobilanthes dyerianus always gets questions

Salvia 'Black and Blue'

Next year, try some new annuals- they will liven up your garden. I have been so happy with the dependable and glorious color they have given my gardens while I wait for the cool autumn temperature to turn my sedums to pink, my asters and mums to bloom, my delphiniums to have another go, and my leaves to mustard, russet , and red.  What are some of your favorite ways to bridge the gap from summer to fall flowers?

Simon as a week old gosling

I have much catching up to do. It has been a busy and frenetic summer and I have been very bad about keeping up with my blogging duties.  My abject apologies- we have been having so much fun, I hope you will enjoy reading about our summer.

One of the things that has kept us busy on the farm has been the addition of our handsome spokes-goose Simon. The geese in our goose yard are, as geese will be, very territorial and very protective of their young. This all leads to some consternation on the geese’s parts and some challenges on our parts when they have goslings and we want to try to tame them. When Simon rather serendipitously ended up on the wrong side of the fence the day after he hatched and required human intervention to get him back with his mother (she was oblivious to his absence); I made the decision that we could adopt Simon. Since I had received our original geese in the mail a day after they hatched, I knew this was a very doable thing. Simon started as a fluting, chartreuse handful; just two months later, he is nearly indistinguishable from a full grown goose.

Of course Simon drinks from a bowlderole!

Simon, we call him a him but we really don’t know, has become a star attraction for visitors to MacKenzie-Childs. Since he has been cared for by Corinne, me, and the summer helpers who were mainly women, Simon relates to and follows women most readily- he honks at men’s voices. He calls a greeting when he hears us arrive in the morning and follows us about on our daily tasks. He likes to help us weed- he is especially good at grasses- but suffers from the lack of a strong work ethic. He is easily distracted by the next piece of grass. Corinne and Sarah, one of my summer helpers, took him on daily trips to the small pool in the White Garden stream. There he dives and does summersaults while entertaining the masses.

Simon is much larger now

Since Simon thinks he is a person, we will house him with us in the barn and greenhouse. When we take him to the goose yard to visit with the other geese through the fence, he only acts mildly interested then happily follows us when walk away. Rainy days are a challenge- he hangs around my office incessantly nibbling on everything. He eventually settles down at my feet and makes little cooing noises when he sleeps. It has been a fun experience thus far- we will keep you updated as time goes on. Corinne is already talking about the MacKenzie-Childs scarf I should knit for him.

Yesterday we harvested our first honey crop here at MacKenzie-Childs. Kirk and I have been tending the bees all spring and summer hoping we were doing the right things. Our local bee club is full of helpful members willing to share experiences, offer advice, and give supervision to hands-on hive work at the monthly meeting. Unfortunately, our schedules have kept us from attending many meetings. I am so grateful to have Kirk helping me; even though at times, we have felt like the blind leading the blind, it has been helpful to have a fellow enthusiast to work the hives with.

We have been checking the hives every other week and enjoying watching the colonies grow. I grew up nervous around bees; when I get stung I usually swell up and itch a lot. My family was quite surprised when I announced I was taking up beekeeping. The bee suit and netting make me feel impervious. I have found it fascinating to observe the hive up close behind the protection of the veil and cover-alls.

We had concerns when one of the hives swarmed in early July. Swarming can occur for a number of reasons; one of the reasons can be over crowding in the hive. In anticipation of swarming the workers will create a new queen.  The old queen and half of the colony will then leave the hive and search for a new home. Our West hive swarmed the day before the barn sale- a time that was incredibly busy. The swarm colony collected in a nearby cedar tree prior to departing the property. Kirk suited up and attempted to retrieve the swarm- a rather heady experience for a new bee keeper. He was successful in transferring the swarm to a small hive box but they were not pleased enough with their new, temporary, home to stay and swarmed again later in the day.

The July swarn in a cedar tree

Despite the loss of the swarm, we still had two hives; the East Hive, a full strength colony and the West hive, still viable albeit with reduced numbers. We monitored them for the last month and decided last week it was time to collect our first crop of honey.  After talking to other beekeepers, we decided we would harvest the summer honey before the fall nectar flow. Late last week Kirk installed an escape board on the East hive just below a honey super with ten capped frames of honey. The escape board provides a way to get the bees to leave the combs so that honey frames can be removed from the hive without needing to brush many bees off. We uncapped and spun out the ten frames this past Monday. After extracting the full frames we decided we would collect more honey later in the week. We suited back up, installed escape boards in both hives below the top honey supers, and put the now empty of honey super back in the hive column to provide drawn comb for the bees to fill with fall honey. We plan to harvest the rest of the summer honey Wednesday. Enjoy the photo gallery of our first harvest.

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Kirk and I begin harvesting the East Hive

Molly and The Bruce

It has been a very busy couple of weeks since I last posted; there is much to catch you up on. We have had tulip season come and go, a few new babies, summer temperatures hit us hard, and now have briefly retreated, and suddenly, everything needs mowing, weeding, planting.

The mix of Blooms in the Courtly Check Courtyard

Narcissus Manley

Salmon Parrot Tulip

A Thousand Muscari

Reds and striped Parrot Tulips in the Bus Stop Garden

The Long Border is pink and white before it goes purple

The abundant rainfall and cooler than normal temperatures we had this spring combined to create one of the best spring bulb seasons I have ever experienced. Everything bloomed late; the early flowers hung around so long they were still effective when the later narcissi and tulips bloomed. My carefully planned progression of bloom was totally blown but when the mid/late April tulips finally bloomed with the May tulips the effect was spectacular. I went with some new varieties this year that were fantastic. We had quite a few yellow tinted parrot and peony flowered tulips that were absolutely gorgeous. I am totally in love with Double Narcissus ‘Manley’. The blooms are amazing and, especially important in such a heavy headed flower, the stems are very thick and strong. The only down side of the spring bulbs season was that in the end, when my favorite blue/purple tulip Blue Amiable and almost black Queen of the Night bloomed, we got so much rain under warm conditions that the blooms showed edema, a condition that marred the blooms’ perfection and reduced longevity. Ah well, niggling complaints.

Bri is so soft!

The lambs are growing tremendously fast and are the definition of growing by leaps and bounds as we watch their antics and races. They are like a group of unruly teenagers as the prowl the sheep yard sneaking up on the peafowl and staring down the geese. They take every opportunity they can to beg attention from passersby.

Goslings!

The geese have had up to four nests of eggs going through the spring. So far they have hatched out three goslings. The downy chartreuse goslings mature very quickly into yellowish juveniles and will be nearly indistinguishable from the adults by the end of the summer. They retain their sweetly fluting voices longer than their baby feathers. It is lovely to hear their calls among the adult honks.

The peafowl are half free, About 6 weeks ago the hen was inadvertently released when being fed. Because the peacock is still in the corn crib she just stays beside him. We have tried to catch her but have, thus far, been unsuccessful.

Feeding The Bruce with a giant baby bottle

I have saved the biggest news for last. Molly finally had her calf, a red bull, on May 22. We are very excited and have named him Robert The Bruce, we shall call him The Bruce (yes, I did love the movie Bravheart). If you remember your Scottish history, The Bruce is the title given to the head of the chiefs of the clans. Our Bruce will rule over the little kingdom of MacKenzie-Childs, it is his destiny. His mother, Molly, rules the pasture as boss cow- her ranking will translate down to him. The Bruce gave us a worrisome time his first week. Molly is fairly old to be still having calves and is experiencing the discouraging effects of gravity on her mammary system. Her udder is very low slung. The Bruce, as is often the case with bulls, was not very smart. To be kind, it may be that since bulls are often larger at birth they have larger heads and experience more brain swelling which may make them slower and less vigorous at birth; whatever the cause, ask any farmer, bulls are stupid. So it appeared that The Bruce was just not getting that he needed to go really low to latch on to mum. Molly, in the meantime was coming into her milk and so, her udder was hard, exacerbating the situation. Corinne and I intervened and began bottle feeding The Bruce, at the same time, directing him to Molly’s udder at every feeding. We wanted to keep him as part of the fold so we did not remove him from the pasture. This meant that every feeding we would have to search for The Bruce because Highland cattle like to hide their calves so they can go off and graze. Some days we would have to comb the field life-guard-search-like until one of us would find him hidden in the tall grass. Yesterday seems to have been a turning point for The Bruce. After I fed him his afternoon bottle he immediately turned to Molly, went down on his knees, and connected to her teat all by himself. This morning when I drove in, I could see him following Molly closely looking as a cow/calf pair should. Through all this Molly has been very patient; she has let me milk her (you try milking a beef cow someday!), has stood by patiently while I tried pushing The Bruce’s head lower, lower , and she would look meaningfully at the location she had last left The Bruce when Corinne and I despaired of ever finding him. So welcome The Bruce!

Inspecting the frame to see if the bees are building comb

Lastly, my daughter, Marissa, from LA, visited over the weekend for her brother’s college graduation and came to work with me to take pictures. She is heading back to graduate school for science writing in the fall and has bought a fantastic camera for pictures for her blog. She suited up and took some pictures of the bees as well as The Bruce. Enjoy.

Nuala and Caolainn watch the goings on

The Beehives through the Boxwood hedge

Business has been booming but that is not why we have hired over 30,000 new workers. We have become beekeepers! With our beautiful Odd Fellows honey pot , our new Flower Basket Garden Gate , and Flower Basket Garden Wall Art it seemed like a natural turn for us to take on the farm. I have always admired the axis created by the lines of the Production Garden plots, Herb Squares, Boxwood Sweeps. Four years ago, when I first came, we further emphasized that line by topping the pillars in the garden to create an arbor on which we planted hops. I wanted a significant something to anchor the line. I chose this as the location for our two bee hives.

This winter we decided to add honeybees to our farm livestock list. Initially we had hoped to rent hives from a local honey producer but a combination of colony loss after a rough winter and high competition from farmers needing bees for crop pollination lead us to contemplate working our own hives. I have always been a bit fascinated with honey production and reveled in the opportunity to get all science-y. One of my co-workers, Kirk, shared my interest and offered to work with me learning about beekeeping and caring for the hive. He decided to get a hive as well; we are housing both at MacKenzie-Childs.

A frame full of honey and bees- I am looking for the Queen

I am fortunate that Kirk is part of the incredible Special Projects team and has fantastic building skills. I ordered the necessary items and Special Projects put the hives together, even upgrading (ivory paint, cedar bottoms, and a fancy copper top) the hives in keeping with the farm aesthetic.

This morning, because it was finally sunny, I suited up and transfered the bees from the Nuc (package we bought them in) to the Hives

Sunday afternoon I got the call from the local bee club http://flbeeclub.com/ we have joined to learn beekeeping; the bees would be ready for pick-up Monday night (it is necessary to transport bees at night when all the bees are in the hive, asleep). I drove 45 minutes away to pick up two boxes smaller than a tool box, filled with about 30,000 bees each and a queen.

Crab Apple Blossums will appeal to the bees

We have another cool, rainy week predicted by the weather service so the bees have not gotten out much yet. We should be a good home for them. We have many “bee plants” that will yield plentiful nectar and pollen to feed the bees and, in turn, allow them to make some lovely honey for us. The bees will help us by pollinating our pumpkins and gourds ensuring nicely shaped fruit this fall. The process will be fascinating to learn and experience- I will keep you posted!

Using my smoker tool to calm the bees before transfer

Pumpkin Blossum from last summer- maybe this year our bees will visit it

At this point I am half done, I have transferred one Nuc, set up the sugar water feeder and am moving on to the next hive

I am so fortunate that here at MacKenzie-Childs I am both surrounded by beauty and blessed with very talented photographers as co-workers. Over the past year most of my blog images have come been provided by me. They were not bad, but nothing to get all excited about. Lately, I have been lucky to have two very skilled photographers taking plant and animal pictures for the blog. Hoping you all have a happy Mother’s Day or share a Mother’s Day with someone; enjoy the pictures of our gardens and the mothers here at MacKenzie-Childs.

Our Mother Goose

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And a few more of Caolainn and Nuala.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Delicious variations of Tulip Mix Melony Day

Spring rain continue to fall on our gardens. The bulbs are enjoying the cool weather and starting to really burst into bloom.

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Narcissus Tahiti

Caolainn hides in the tall grass at the verge of the pasture

 Sunday afternoon Nuala, one of our two pregnant Scottish Cattle gave birth to a baby girl- a heifer in cow parlance. This is the first calf we have had born at MacKenzie-Childs in a very long time; we could not be more pleased! Nuala is a white Highland and her new daughter, who we have named Caolainn (pronounced Kay- lin) is also white. Nuala is the daughter of our other pregnant cow Molly, who is red. The sire of Caolainn (and Molly’s in-utero calf) is a red Highland bull who has white color genes in his background so I was not surprised to get a white calf. Mother and calf are doing wonderfully- enjoy the pictures provided by our staff photographer, Katie- taken this morning.

Nuala stands gaurd

Caolainn is an ancient Celtic name meaning slender, fair, white, and pure

Nuala and Caolainn with the "Maiden Aunties"

Nuala is reponsible for Caolinn's fluffy white hair

Nuala will act as a sheild as Caolainn walks through the pasture

We will post more pictures later in the week- Maybe Molly will have calved by then!

Caolainn and Nuala together

Cool temperatures and relentless rains have delayed our usual progression of blooms here at MacKenzie-Childs. That said, it really has been almost perfect bulb weather.  Until this week, it was not too wet, and although the temperatures hovering a little above 40 were disagreeable to us humans trying to work, the plants were quite content to slowly and steadily emerge from winter dormancy without the stress of unnaturally warm temperatures like we had last year.

Regardless of the weather, we have scheduled our annual sale and hosted garden tour event for this coming weekend. Despite the cool weather the gardens are starting to burst into color. We have many Narcissi blooming- quite a few that are usually missed because they bloom before May- and the beginnings of the tulip show. For you local and not so local garden lovers, I hope to see you in the gardens Friday and Saturday. For those of you who cannot attend-here are photos of what is in bloom.

And of course, we need an update  on the lambs. It is remarkable how they have grown in just a week.

Brothaigh gets air!

Brothaigh and Breta always hang together