On this particular day, there was a light breeze, and a beautiful blue sky with cottony white clouds. Come along with us, and I will show you around.
In the corner of our pasture, we have an ancient apple tree. I like to think that it's the last survivor of the orchard that I know was here in the 1890s. (We have a copy of an advertisement from when our house was sold at auction at that time, and it specifically mentions an orchard.) The tree bloomed better this year than it has in a while.
As I was looking at the apple tree, Ruby was distracted by something ... it was a pile of some sort of small animal poop. Fortunately, I noticed what she was doing before she rolled in it. (Remember last year when I found the bear poop?)
The ramblers on the back fence of the Rose Field are really big now ... too big, to be honest. This year's early spring cut into my window of opportunity to prune these before they leafed out. On the bright side ... there will be a whole lot more flowers on them like this ... I can't wait!
That's "Peggy Martin" in the foreground, and 'Erinnerung an Brod' farther down the fence.
This is my view from the back of our property toward Hartwood Winery's vineyard. (There's something on my lens in these photos, and I didn't notice it until I was processing the photos for this post.)
The grape vines are all pruned and ready to grow and produce the grapes that will be this year's wine. It was an early spring here, too, and the winery's crew of two raced to finish pruning as the vines broke bud and began to grow.
Here is the view of our barn from the vineyard. The neighbors have the BEST view.
My back neighbors have a horse farm ... which is still for sale, if you or someone you know know wants a great horse operation. As I stood at their fence talking to these two guys, I heard a low growl beside me.
It was Ruby ... hackles up, tail at attention, growling under her breath. It's the first time I have heard her growl at anything! I guess she doesn't care for horses.
While we are back here, let's head toward the barn. See that little yellow building on the left?
It has the worst of the damage from last year's earthquake ... which, fortunately, isn't really all that bad. I can fix it.
The two new gardens by the barn are still empty. The Labyrinth is still staked out, awaiting paths and edging and plants.
The Miniature Garden is in the same condition ... but with the underlayment on the paths in place.
The English Garden is doing great! These roses were planted a year and a half ago, and most of them are thriving. A few are struggling, and I plan to replace them as soon as I can with others that I already have on hand. That's what I was doing when I found the cannonball earlier this week ... right where the arrow is.
The weeds you see have already been shot with herbicide and they're beginning to look a little sickly.
The bottle trees at the entrance to the English Garden didn't stand up to the winds this winter. They're still firmly anchored in the ground, it's the metal 'trunk' that bent over like that. Fortunately, none of the bottles broke. I need to run next door, get some empty wine case boxes, and store the bottles until I can straighten and reinforce the trees.
The figs I planted on the south side of the barn are looking really good. This bed is an experiment ... planted with eight different varieties to see which does best without irrigation or winter protection. These two are thriving, but I don't know which ones they are because the tags are lost.
At this point, it was getting late and it was time to turn for home and give the dogs their dinner. I don't think I've shown you this view of the back of our house before. The green building is our detached garage ... the dormer is a storage attic. The little white building to the left will eventually be a studio/workshop/I-would-love-to-put-an-antique-shop-in-there-one-day. It's a dream to work toward.
As I predicted, the cool weather of the past few days has pretty much stopped the progression of bloom in the garden. This is a good thing, because I don't want everything to be TOO early, and I'm definitely not at the point where I can open the nursery and garden to visitors quite yet. It's getting close, though.
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I remembered that I have a photo of a 'view from space' of our property that I used in a post in 2010 (which was about burning the brush pile, which is why the brush pile is noted on the photo). With a couple of modifications to highlight landmarks mentioned in this post, this should help you get your bearings. Pretend the red property lines are straight. :)
