OPEN HOUSE TODAY...SATURDAY

Come and visit....looks like a nice day.

Stanley's Pond and Guss's Apple Tree

This old tree only blooms every other year. It is always a surprise when it does. Sometimes I think it even skips two years.

It's a special tree here at the farm and we love it with the new pond. Stanley would approve.

Don't Forget the Open House Next Weekend!!!!

Blackrock Farm

293 Goose Rocks Road

Kennebunkport, Maine 04046

207 967-5783

We are one mile inland from the Clock Farm and Route 9.

www.blackrockfarm.net

Spring Celebration Open House

Saturday, May 22, 2010

10-4

Offering classic and innovative landscape design, installation, and maintenance.

Specializing in select annuals and perennials, trees and shrubs, terra cotta pots and garden ornaments.

We invite you to visit our display gardens, stone walls and sculpture, organic vegetable garden and greenhouses.

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Penny's True Garden Poem

My dear friend,Penny Marshall, has written this poem and I know this to be true. Especially at a nursery where tags are so important. My poodles take the tags as well. Gilly is a poodle too. I thought that I would share this with you. Thank you, Penny.

By the way, the picture is NOT of Penny's rather well groomed poodle, Gilly, but of my old Augustus who loved to steal the tags right out of the pots. I have many mystery hostas and daylilies and shrubs, thanks to Augustus.


Penny's Silly but True Poem


As a gardener I’m s’posed to know

The place and name of all I grow

But greed o’ertakes me when I shop

And planting tires me, so I drop

Onto the bed, my wine at hand

And fail to map out as I planned

The earthy home of each new treasure -

(Despite the pains I took to measure

How far they sat from last year’s wonder

Or how many inches of soil they’re under.)



But once they’re labeled I needn’t worry

Or, so I think, till I see Gilly scurry

Happily by me, bent metal in jaw –

Oh, drat that dog, she’s a garden outlaw

Removing my guideposts one by one

(Ears swinging, tail wagging, she’s having fun!)

But I’m left to wonder till end of the season

What I planted where and was there a reason?

Creature comfort

At least the rhubarb didn't get hurt.


Rabbit Hill Primitives sent me a comment about the frost and so of course I snooped about and found her web site and spent a lovely 5 minutes or so watching the utube Creature Comforts video on gardening that she has on her blog. She also makes really wonderful cloth primitive 'things'. I didn't know about the Creature comfort videos. You all might have seen them a hundred times.
It was fun.....check it out. And thank you, Jenn. I love hearing from other gardeners.

http://rabbithillprimitives.blogspot.com/2010/05/creature-comforts-garden.html

It made me laugh.

The late spring frost

Ain't fittin, ain't fittin, just ain't fittin!!!

I have been growing here at Blackrock for around thirty years. That's a pretty long time I think.
I have NEVER seen damage like the frost on Monday night did to our plants.
It did not just do damage to the things that we have gotten in at the farm to sell but to trees and perennials that are in the ground!
We knew enough to cover all the new stuff. Plants that might have come from a warmer climate, like our beautiful Japanese Maples, we covered with huge pieces of plastic. The few perennials that we got in that we weren't sure of, we covered. But the things that had been out all winter we did not. How could we? No way that we can cover the whole farm!
We covered all the topiary that was too big to carry back into the already stuffed greenhouses. But plants that had been outside all winter and things that were in the gardens we left alone.

And so....the two Cladestris (yellow wood) that I carefully planted to create shade where the old Elm that we had to take down because of Dutch Elm disease was, had just leafed out. Their leaves are totally shriveled and gone. All the Magnolias that had sent out there new leaves are a mess. The ferns and hostas that were coming up in the gardens are wilted and brown.
Ferns....dead? These are ferns that had been in the garden for years.
I really can't tell you if they will come back. I have never cut back a fern in spring.
The only thing that I can say if that we will learn from this. I think that it is just that the plants had not hardened off yet in a natural way. No frosts for over a month and they all just came out and never got strong. It will be interesting to see what flushes out again and what can't quite manage. We will feed gently with compost and prune and hope for the best.
I knew that I was nervous about this spring. Easter with it's hot weather and dry winds held a bit of fear for me. I like it when things are normal. I don't like an early spring, or a really open winter with no snow or a rainy, rainy, summer. I am more content when it is 5 degrees in February like it should be and April is rainy and cold and May has it's cold nights and warm days.
I don't like to be tricked.
Apparently, neither do the plants.