Because of the deer and other critters in our neighborhood, I grow my cucumbers in a cage. Pictured are the cucumber vines and climbing nasturtium. Nasturtium have yellow and orange edible flowers (and edible round leaves) that you can use to dress up your salads.
Growing cucumbers is not as simple as stick a few seeds in the ground and watch them grow. One needs provide good soil with proper nutrients, enough water, and a way for the plant to climb up. In addition it is a good idea to plant cucumber companions in the general vicinity of your cucumber plants. In order to learn what to plant and what not to plant, I did this art illustration. I already had nasturtium and radish in my cage. This year I sprinkled several zinnia seeds and moved the marigolds into the cage. I also removed some mint that was growing directly outside the cage. Dill is one of my favorite herbs, so I made a special effort to keep the dill going strong by adding compost around the base of each dill plant every few weeks.
Marigolds are easy to grow. They are a good beginner plant. For some unknown reason, few of the marigold seeds that I saved from last year germinated. I was able to buy several marigold seedlings for a low price early in the spring at our local farmers market. Those are flourishing.
Painting flowers is harder than it looks. I first painted the marigold with watercolor. I didn’t think the orange was strong enough. I switched to gouache and applied thick, small strokes. I am happy with the result.
Radishes are easy to grow. You stick the seeds in the ground, and a week later you have round little leaves poking out of the ground. Make sure to plant in loose, rich soil, and in a month you will be pulling radishes. Sometimes I eat radishes raw. Sometimes I ferment them in a little jar with sea salt and filtered water. You can also steam the radishes if you like them sweet.
Radishes are easy to paint. Make sure you have a nice, thick red paint and a good brush. Paint a few layers, leaving one side a bit on the white side to show form.
A friend gave me these large black cloth bags for planting. I am experimenting with a little container garden. Pictured are marigold and cucumber seedlings. I put in some celery seeds. Hopefully, sometime this fall we will get some celery.
Zinnia come in a variety of colors. If you have full sun, a plot of land with decent, loose soil, and determination, you can sprinkle zinnia seeds in May or early June and receive the reward of flowers in the summer.
Have you ever eaten a nasturtium flower? What would you do with a radish? Have you eaten a cucumber that is not from a supermarket?
Someone asked me: why are you posting yarrow? Is it your favorite flower? No, I responded. My favorite flower, at least for this year, is cosmos.
So why am I posting about yarrow? I realized I am posting in order to learn yarrow’s health benefits. Here are a few:
Improve digestion
Accelerate wound healing
Alleviate colds or the flu with yarrow tea
Reduce inflammation
You can learn more about the healing properties of white yarrow (yarrow millefolium) elsewhere.
Yarrow comes in a variety of colors. In my backyard I have big yellow yarrow flowers that are currently in bloom in July. In the front of my house I have white yarrow. Yarrows are perennials. The Latin name is Achillea.
Pictured is achillea millefolium (white yarrow), coreopsis, and lamb’s ear flowers. I painted the illustration with watercolor, gouache, and collage for the bright pink lamb’s ear flowers.
This was going to be a post about rudbeckia or black-eyed susan. However, a deer ate my beautiful yellow flower that miraculously blossomed in front of my house. So I looked for inspiration elsewhere.
Borage is growing in my plant cage. I had the cage built because the deer ate most of my edible plants. This year I am concentrating on growing cucumbers. A good companion to cucumber plants is borage. I originally put three borage seedlings that I bought at the Highland Park Farmers Market in my backyard. However, despite my deer fence in the backyard, something nibbled at the borage. So off it went into the cage.
Borage is grown as an annual in New Jersey. It is native to the Mediterranean. Some special notes about borage: you can eat the flowers and the leaves. I have seen the flowers described as cornflower blue or as smoky blue. To me the blue is slightly on the purple side.
I sketched several pages about borage in my sketchbook.
Borage is a quick growing annual with hairy leaves and cornflower-blue star-shaped flowers.
Days to Germination: 5 days at 70° F
Source: The New Seed-Starters Handbook by Nancy Bubel
I was fiddling in my garden, and I saw the top of something purplish red. Behold! It was my first radish, in my new garden structure built by my friend Yosef Schmidt. I was so excited that I took a photo. It felt like the first “fruit” of my new garden: the other produce so far has been greens.
It turns out that there is a challenge called #studyfromlifechallenge on Instagram. You are supposed to paint from real life based on a weekly theme. So this week the theme was pink. When a painter looks at that radish, it is not just one shade of color. So I started my watercolor with opera pink. I later added some alizarin crimson and a tiny bit of cobalt blue.
Below is a photo of the garden structure when it was first built. It is 7 feet tall, and I commissioned Yosef to build it because the deer kept eating my plants. And we used to have a groundhog that lived on our garage that would eat all sorts of goodies in my garden. It has a door in the back, and a row for a human to walk into the structure and examine the three garden beds that are in a U shape.
So far, I have grown micro greens, french chervil, parsley, lettuce, and now radishes! Pea plants are growing, but no peas yet. Hopefully, basil, tomato, cucumber, and beans in the summer.
Every year in early May there is a wonderful plant sale at Rutgers Gardens. I went with a friend on Friday and met another friend there. I bought: snapdragons, petunias, Rutgers tomato plants (I’ve been growing those for the past few years – not too big, not too small, and they are developed at Rutgers!), two kinds of rosemary and some broccoli plants. Here’s to praying that the broccoli plants do not get eaten by a ground hog or by deer. A friend sent a link to wolf urine packs – should I try those? Another idea was sticking garlic near them. We shall see. One friend bought swiss chard and eggplant; another friend purchased a variety of cilantro. All the plants at the sale are top quality. Last year I bought a hydrangea plant – the leaves got eaten by a deer before it flowered, but happily this year despite being only sticks in the winter it is now full of green leaves again.
Here is one of the snapdragon plants now in front of my house. I got a mix of yellow and magenta/pink snapdragons.
My petunias are now planted in a sunny corner of my yard, at the edge of the sidewalk and the driveway.
This tulip is growing in front of my porch. No, I did not get at the Rutgers Plant Sale, nor did I plant it last fall. The tulips that are growing on my block seem to be the ones that survived being eaten up by deer.
Finally, my strawberry plants (which I planted about ten years ago?) have those white flowers. Next step: juicy red strawberries! No more hunting for half decent organic strawberries in the store. For two weeks, we get a marvelous treat. Must make sure to pick them – last year we were too busy and neglected to pick the last bunch (they turned to mush on the plant).
Good news! I got my watercolor paints out again today (they’ve been away in the closet far too long). I did a quick painting of my garden using an exercise from One Watercolor a Day. Soon enough, I will have a watercolor that I will post on this blog. Stay tuned!
It was a very difficult week for the Jewish people – some say Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar came early this year. This is not a political blog; I could send you elsewhere to read some important posts, such as this one or this one. And here’s one that is quite thorough on a recent topic.
I will just mention the word nechama – comfort. What do you do or say or post when you need comfort? I’m posting flowers from my garden. Above are the columbines of spring – now gone, except for the seeds. You can sprinkle the seeds from the spring columbines in a different place in your yard, and if conditions are right, you get more columbines!
I grow these Mexican poppies instead of grass on my front lawn. Unfortunately, they are only in bloom for a short time in the spring. I have to be careful not to pull them up when the flowers are done – it is easy to mistake them later for weeds. Some of the poppies’ leaves are now turning a brilliant red.
Rudbeckia or black-eyed susan: one of my favorite flowers! These I grow all over my yard, front and back. They seem to be happy here.
Finally, here are some bright summer lilies. My neighbor was admiring these, and I told her I grew them by mistake! I probably pulled a lily in a different spot by accident and threw it by the fence. It took hold right behind a pink rose bush. I think the two look a bit silly together, but whatever.
Do you have favorite flowers? Do flowers bring you comfort?
I participate in an online Facebook group called One Watercolor a Day, based on the book by Veronica Lawlor. There are many exercises in the book, and every few weeks I do an exercise and share it in the group. Recently, I’ve been sharing the watercolor exercises on this Sketching Out blog as well. The most recent exercise was Do a Study of Nature, and it was fun to sit outside and paint:
This particular painting is a sage leaves watercolor: I took a look at my sage plant that has come back year after year and did a little painting study. I once tried to plant more sage in the back of my yard, and those sage plants unfortunately died. This sage plant, however, that is close to my kitchen back door, has managed to re-emerge after many a winter. Happy that today was such a nice day, so I had an excuse to sit outside and paint in between cleaning my house for Passover.
I find sketching from nature a great way to learn – you really need to observe to come up with a little watercolor painting quickly. I did two others before I decided to limit my color palette and limit my subject to the sage leaves.
It has been a while since I’ve participated in a Nature Notes, one of my favorite online memes run by my friend Michelle over at Rambling Woods. Here is a cardinal shot I had in my stash but never got a chance to share until now:
Do you cook with sage? Do you have it in your yard? Have you ever painted outside?
Peace and Friendship Garden
We visited my eldest son this past weekend at University of Maryland. Because most of the events were at the Hillel, we walked back and forth numerous times between the Hillel and the hotel. On the way to the Hillel we saw this garden, and on Friday afternoon I had my camera with me so I took this photo. I was impressed by the “natural” looking sculpture that was part of the garden, and I love seeing well-cared for perennials. You can learn more about this Peace and Friendship garden. The sculpture is by Chinese artist Han Meilin and named The Peace Tree.
Here is the pond in Holmdel Park in New Jersey (photographed two weeks ago). Nearby is a lovely arboretum (I was too tired to take my big camera, but there was some great hawthorn trees with berries and some interesting evergreens). I photographed the pond with my Samsung Galaxy 4. There was a London plane tree on the other side of the pond – its “fruit” or nuts look like tennis balls.
Here’s a pig at Longstreet Farm (part of Holmdel Park in New Jersey). We also saw pigs at University of Maryland – there is a little farm on the campus for those studying animal science and also horses for the equestrian club. Both sets of pigs seemed to like to eat dirt. Explain that one to me. My daughter named the Longstreet Farm pig “Piggles.”
When I was in Beit Shemesh, Israel, I saw some beautiful trees with purple blooms. I saw them again in Naharia, a northern beach town in the Galil. The jacaranda blooms above are in Naharia. Then I visited Ma’alot, and I was pleasantly surprised by yet more jacaranda blooms.
According to this Flowers in Israel post, jacaranda trees are originally from South America. Looks like the Hebrew name is סיגלון.
Derivation of the botanical name: Jacaranda, a Brazilian vernacular name. acutifolia, with pointed leaves. mimosifolia, with leaves like genus Mimosa.
The Blue Jacaranda has been cultivated in almost every part of the world where there is no risk of frost; established trees can however tolerate brief spells of temperatures down to around −7°C (20°F). In the USA, 30 miles east of Los Angeles where winter temps can dip to 10 degrees F (-12 C) for short several-hour periods, the mature tree survives with little or no visible damage.
This jacaranda tree (above and below) was photographed in Ma’alot, Israel. Ma’alot is about twenty minutes inland from Nahariya, Israel.
The name may be Blue Jacaranda, but I think those blooms are purple. How about you? Do you think this is some botanist’s desire to see blue in nature?
I’ve wanted to grow echinacea flowers in my yard for a while. This season I’ve got a large one growing in my front yard. Years ago, I grew some in the back, but that area has become too shady. Supposedly, they reseed easily, so I shouldn’t deadhead too much. We shall see.
I couldn’t decide which photo to post, so here are two echinacea photos.
