Spring on the Calendar Means Nothing in NH

winter snow spring
Winter is not Gone Yet
Winter is not gone yet here in New Hampshire. Spring on the calendar means nothing really. On the first day of Spring it snowed and was very cold. My outdoor thermometer broke a long time ago, so I don’t keep track of the temps, but this week it will be close to 50 and that is the warmest it’s been in many months here. It will come with rain, so we’ll still be stuck indoors, but to open my cupboards and have them not feel like a refrigerator will be a nice change.

In your neck of the woods, it may feel like time to get the gardens cleaned up and the seeds started. All this still seems a long way off to me. And that’s fine. Because of the ice dams that were created with the non-stop February snow storms, I have damage to get fixed inside my house. I need a new roof, but can’t afford that, so I’ll do what I can. Home fixes and improvements are what I have on my mind after surviving the bad winter we just had. I try to ignore all the clean up that will be needed once this icy snow melts. It will not all be gone for a long while. What you see in the picture of my backyard (above) has gone down to about half. I had to have the roof shoveled in February, and that made big piles of snow all around the house.

So I have no hydrangea news to report. The only hydrangea flowers I’ve seen are the ones on the paper I make for the BlueHyd store. I’m hoping the ones in the yard will look fine once the snow goes away. At least the sun is stronger and having bright days is a wonderful gift!

Now It’s Time to Rest

empty lawn chairs
Time to Rest

This past year has been one of the worst ever for me. That is mostly due to lack of finances and unexpected big bills. After a busy season, now it’s time to rest. My fingers are crossed for a restful and productive (business-wise) winter.

All summer I worked in the yard, planting and digging and enjoying the crops. My tomatoes were a huge disappointment, but everything else did quite well. I kept very busy working online all morning, and working in the yard for a few hours in the afternoon. We had a wonderful summer, and beautiful fall here in the northeast so the weather was usually cooperative.

We were graced with a spectacularly warm and sunny day just this week – in mid November! It was in the 60’s and I was raking leaves in a t-shirt! I didn’t work online that day, but spent all of it outdoors. I didn’t want to miss a moment of it. Even though my back was telling me I had done enough, I still had gutters to clean out and mulching to do, so I pushed myself more than I should have.

I dug up some parsley and mint to bring inside for the winter because they both still looked so darn good. I used the blower and rake and wheelbarrow to remove the masses of leaves that were everywhere, even though I had raked numerous times already. I paid for it with lots of aches the next day, but I was satisfied with my efforts.
Bring on the snow!

I took pictures on that bizarre summer-like day and will be using them as soon as I get the chance to load them to the photo library. My single blue hydrangea flower is beginning to dry out.  It never turned purple like last year.   All the limelight blooms are gone by, but they would make a nice dried bouquet for indoors, if I didn’t have a cat that would “play” with them.  I will trim up those plants soon so the snow won’t break the stems.

I’m ready for that rest.

The Year The Tomatoes Died

tomato blight
Tomato Blight Disease

I hate to even write about this, but it’s the unfortunate story of tomato death. This depressed me so badly that at one time over the summer I decided I would never grow tomatoes again. But of course I will. I don’t give up that easily!

I don’t plant many tomato plants because I don’t have the space. I don’t eat that many tomatoes either, but I do look forward to picking my fresh, garden crop by August. I look forward to it all summer long, from the time the little tomato seedlings are put into the ground. At one time I counted 30 tomatoes on one plant, and I had 6 plants, so I expected a nice crop.

green tomatoes on the vine
When They Looked Good

It wasn’t meant to be. In the past I’ve never had a problem with my tomatoes growing nice and big and ripe. The “Celebrity” variety is my favorite, so I grow them.  I water them when it’s dry and I rotate my planting space. I give them fertilizer and watch for bugs and tomato worms. Everything was fine. Until it wasn’t. Suddenly, it seemed like overnight, I noticed that the leaves were looking funny. They were brown and wilting. They were curling up and dying near the bottom of the plants. I had managed to pick and eat a few of the early ripe fruits, but the others ended up looking like my first picture, above.  With brown spots and weird looking markings and colors, they were inedible.

red, ripe garden tomatoes
Garden Tomatoes

There is always next year. It seems so far away.

Pinky Winky Blooming Timeline

All season I have been photographing my beautiful Pinky Winky hydrangea shrub. Now I am ready to share my pictures, in a blooming timeline, to show the progression of the flower color from spring (summer) through fall.

The bush is lopsided because the deer decided that the buds would be a tasty treat (darn deer), but at least they left me some flowering stems.

So here you have the white to pink progression, with a surprise late white flower showing in my last photo. After all the blooms had turned totally dark pink, a lone white bloom appeared. It looks so pretty against the rest of the bush, that I made a hydrangea poster from the image to sell in my BlueHyd store.

If you are unfamiliar with this variety, the flowers begin as all white, then gradually become pink from the bottom up. As time goes on the pink darkens to a beautiful shade, which can be seen in my last image here.

budding hydrangea shrub
The Buds in July
white flowers hydrangea
White Flowers – side branches were chewed by Deer!
white flowers with pink
Some Pink Beginning to Show
pink hydrangea paniculata
Most flowers are pink by late summer
hydrangea flowers white pink
Sept: All flowers are dark pink except for one new white bloom

I don’t have the exact dates listed, these photos were taken from the end of July through September. The hydrangeas don’t really start to grow flowers in my area (southwestern New Hampshire) until summer. The pinky winky is a fun one to watch as it changes throughout the season. This bush also attracts a lot of bees. So along with being a beautiful ornamental for the yard, I am helping to feed the wildlife – deer and bees! I don’t mind the bees, but those deer have plenty to eat without ruining my hydrangeas.

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Hydrangea Trees and The End of Summer

hydrangea treeI’ve been enjoying the big hydrangea trees that I see blooming in my neighborhood. How lovely it would be to have a big tree with these lovely blooms! For one thing, hydrangea flowers last a long time, so the tree would look beautiful all summer and into fall.

None of my hydrangea shrubs are very large yet, and this year the blue one did not bloom well. I have only one blue flower, which is disappointing. But the only hydrangea in my yard that will become a small tree is the Pinky Winky.

Certain hydrangeas can be trimmed to become trees. The Limelight can be purchased as a tree, so obviously you could trim it to become one.

My Limelight bushes had long stems and I was experimenting with ways to get them to grow more compactly, but then I moved away.   I planted a Limelight hydrangea on each side of my front steps, and they really needed to be in a place with more space to grow.  Their long lanky stems may have been caused from lack of sun, although they did get sun, but not all day.

flowering limelight hydrangea
Limelight Hydrangea – August 20th, 2014

One of my favorite hydrangeas is the Pee Gee (Paniculata grandiflora – PG). I bought one but it died (photo below), due to my poor choice of planting location. I never had a chance to get another one while I lived in New Hampshire and now in Florida, they won’t survive.

The Pee Gee has beautiful white flowers and can be trained into a tree by choosing one main stem, or possibly two, and removing the others. This is the basic way to train a shrub into a tree. Spring is the best time to do this, as the shrub will be ready to take off and grow. Pee Gee’s bloom on new wood, so all new growth in Spring has the potential to produce flowers. For that reason, never trim late in the season when flower heads could be removed.

The website The Spruce has more information about the Pee Gee and how to care for it and turn it into a tree.

white flowers pee gee
Beautiful White Flowers of the Pee Gee Hydrangea

Chicken on the Grill: Food on the 4th of July

grilling chicken Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans. Here in New Hampshire it’s a dark and rainy day and we won’t be doing any grilling. But a few days ago, before the heat wave hit, we grilled up some huge chicken breasts to use for our “no cooking” meals. It’s always difficult to find food to feed the family on muggy hot days. I could easily eat a salad, or have cheese and crackers (with wine of course), but my kids want more.
So I headed to Roys’s Market in Peterborough where the chicken pieces were humongous and bought six pieces.   I marinated them in my special, homemade marinade, and my older son grilled them for us.  It’s been enough for the 4 of us to eat for 3 days. I’ve made chicken salad sandwiches, quesedillas, and enchiladas. Today we will finish up the enchiladas and maybe get some clams and seafood from Kimballs. Not cooking in the heat is top priority for me.  We may drag out the ice cream maker and cook up some of that!
So happy 4th to everyone, whether you are grilling, eating out or whatever. Be safe on this American holiday and enjoy the fireworks if it’s not raining where you are.