Iris and Lettuce and Apples and Blueberries

Before my morning asparagus picking (better than 2 pounds  a day right now), I walked through the garden to see how everything else is coming along.  The lettuce and spinach looks great and if the heat doesn't get it I'll be picking a few leaves this weekend. 

With the recent frosts I've noticed the roses have no buds and I see no fruit on the plum tree. But this morning I found the first ever apple on one of my apple trees and amazingly my one surviving blueberry bush is covered with green blueberries!!! This is so incredibly exciting and inspires me to go buy a couple more blueberry bushes.  I got this one from Marvin at Marvin's Organic Gardens. My garden club visited his store about three years ago and he presented a talk on organic gardening. When the talk was finished he gave us each (20 some ladies) a plant. I got the blueberry.

Marvin is a great source for all kinds of plants. He's also a very good citizen who donates thousands of dollars worth of plants to various good causes.  His prices are in line with the good mail order companies and you don't have to pay shipping!!!

Luminous blue iris  when you see it in person.

My thrifty soul likes to forage for plants whenever possible.  My brother gave me some red raspberry plants from his garden last fall.  The variety is easy to grow and has huge delicious berries in late summer.

I've always admired a huge stand of these blue iris in a friends yard and when I noticed she was digging them up to divide I asked if I could have a few. She gave me a good start of them and this is the result.  Blue color doesn't photograph true so you can't tell how luminous the blue color is from the picture, but trust me, these are a really beautiful flower in the garden.

The carmera washes out the color. In the background is a butterfly bush that stayed green all winter and poking into the picture at the bottom left corner are hollyhocks budding out. I grew these from seed last summer and this will be thier first year to bloom. They already have some disease on them which is a hollyhock problem. Time to go see Marvin and find out what to do about that!