View into the Orchard Garden from the vineyard.
The Orchard Garden is a small garden sheltered by the block barn on its west side. This garden contains several fruit trees. Two apple trees, a peach, and a plum tree. A diseased apricot tree was removed last Winter.
The Red Rome Beauty apples will get much bigger and turn ripe and red in the Fall.
This garden is part of the south front garden which contains a small vineyard, lawn, and garden beds, and a large elm tree. A fence and wrought iron gates close the Orchard Garden off from the chickens...
...or so I thought!
Sugar Baby, a small white Leghorn, has figured out that she can fly up onto the gate and then hop down into the garden. Naughty, naughty Sugar Baby!
Fortunately, the other Girls are heavier breeds of chickens that cannot hoist themselves up onto the gate and go over into the garden.
Rhubarb grows along the side of the block barn. Just last week I groomed the rhubarb removing drooping, spent leaves, leaving enough in place so it can photosynthesize. I also spread a new layer of bark chips from elms groomed last Winter. The elm chips keep down weeds and give a nice, tidy appearance to the areas between three raised beds.
The two whiskey barrel planters in the garden were refurbished with new potting soil and plantings of flowers for a bright look. Dahlias, vinca, miniature zinnias, and lobelia.
One of two four-by-four foot raised beds contains Grandpa Ott morning glories that reseed themselves year after year and climb the bamboo tepee. The morning glories are just starting to bloom.
The other four-by four bed is a perpetual dill bed. Although, dill is an annual, it reseeds itself each year and has done so for the past five years. The dill is the gift that keeps on giving! Both the "weed" (ferny leaves), and the seed for pickling.
Between the two four-by-four beds is another that is four- by-eight feet. This bed contains a three-year old peach tree, a couple chrysanthemums, a couple sunken pots of spearmint, and a volunteer cucumber from a seed dropped last year.
The four-by-eight bed was cleaned out last week of seedy radishes, arugula, and spent snow peas. It now awaits the planting of some bergenia that I picked up at the nursery. I'm hoping to transplant some creeping sedum among the bergenia in the next few days. My plan is to make this bed into a perennial flower garden, keeping the peach tree and spearmint. I'll let the cucumber produce and remove it this Fall.
A newly repaired and painted wind chime adds its deep-toned melodies to the Orchard Garden.
In many of my garden photos, a hose lies ready for convenient use.
In the corner of the garden is a wrought iron plant hanger which is used to hold hoses. The bucket contains various sprinklers and nozzles.
A pot of pansies sits on top of the remains of the trunk of the apricot tree. A small, circular "Ode to Spring" garden now rings the trunk containing Tete a Tete daffodils (now dormant), violas, and snap dragons. A wee garden within a garden!
The Orchard Garden is a pleasant, private spot to sit, dream, and journal among flowers and fruit trees.
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