New Strawberries

My new varieties of strawberries arrived this weekend in 3" pots - these are variations of Alpine strawberries, smaller than usual berry but the taste and fragrance is superior. I will be cleaning out my regular berries in a week or so and transplanting Cabot to another bed (and shipping few to those who asked in summer). But for now, I've planted these beauties in the small garden and hope next spring to have some interesting deserts.

From top left corner: Yellow Wonder; Pineberry; Purple Wonder and White Pine.

Flowers for next year

Ah, the joy of fall gardening catalogs that start arriving every day now. Of course I had to look through them and order some goodies for next year, including some new flowers. JUNG Seeds catalog was my pick for this time. I have to be very picky with my selections not only for colors, but I have to pick flower that deer and groundhogs won't eat as soon as I plant them. So selection was to pick a lot of bearded iris and daffodils for outside, sunflowers for borders inside the garden and few smaller things like asters, rudbeckia and angelonia for mixing into the current border of the large garden.

I haven't quite started to pick seeds for veggies, but i do know what I want to update. While many of the seeds are saved from current plants, I do want to update some that did not do well. That's for later.

Maine scenery and lobster fishing

Few things we did in Maine other than just lay back and enjoy gorgeous sunsets at the beach, was to go fishing (I caught tiny yellow perch and released the bugger back to the lake), and took a lobster boat trip - we got to see how locals prep and set cages for lobsters, and then "harvest" them afterwards. It's fascinating to know that lobsters migrate with the cold and fishermen follow them. And not every lobster gets picked - they must be certain size etc. I took a short video of the explanation of these details. By the way, my lobster was released back to the wild as I no longer eat them, but my hubby had his fresh cooked right on the boat. 

And here are some beautiful scenery that we saw while we were on the boat tour. It's much better in person. Lots of birds migrating, seals on rocks and in the bay going after fish, bald eagle nest, lovely lighthouse views and of course gorgeous shore views with high cliffs.

 

Gardening in Maine

As I mentioned earlier today, we spent a week in Main in Winter Harbor. Our host had a small garden in the yard, and it's very lovely with the view right into the bay. I thought that it was wonderful that she was able to do such a good job with it given cool winds and much cooler temperatures of this summer.

Later on I will post some very lovely pictures of the surrounding areas and wild plants that I found while we were there, but for now you can browse through some pictures of other gardens and planted flowers in that local area.

Harvest September 15

I've been out on vacation for almost two weeks and we spent out time in Maine - I'll do a series of posts on that later, but for now a quick catch up on my harvests that my sister was picking while we were gone. Beans are still producing, but slowed down. I'll leave the rest of the yellow runners to go to seed.

 

In the community, few melons were picked, including Crenshaw (i found it to be too sweet), few remaining zucchini's before I ripped all vines out, Cherry tomatoes and the last of the cucumbers. On the vine we still have couple of watermelons ripening, and few small butternut squash - all large ones walked away with someone else.