I hate shopping for school supplies. I hate picking out all the notebooks. I hate it, I do, I do.
For the past few years, I’ve taken my sons. They hate it, too. This year, I left my eldest home, and my middle son was traveling on a bus home from camp (he’s now back), so I took my daughter. She didn’t seem to mind it that much, though when I asked if she wanted to look at skirts, she clearly just wanted to get out of the store.
Since we were close to my favorite plant nursery, Livingston Park Nursery on How Lane near Livingston Avenue in North Brunswick, we rewarded ourselves by going plant shopping. And taking photographs.
One of the reasons my daughter is happy is I bought her that purple costume she is wearing, a belated birthday present. Among my plant purchases were two of those little evergreen bushes behind her. Hopefully, we’ll have something green in our backyard in the dead of winter.
This is how the nursery looks:
I could have held unto this one until next Tuesday, so I could post it for Ruby Tuesday, a fun photography meme in which you post a photo that has red, but I like it too much to wait:
Finally, one good purpose for going to nurseries is that you find out the names of the plants that you already own. I don’t think I will forget Andromeda now:
On the other hand, I’ve already forgotten the name of the tall purple perennial I planted in my backyard. Is it loosestrife? lobelia? salvia? penstemmon? If it lives through September, I’ll take a photo of it and post it with a “please identify”.
How do you deal with school-supply season?
Song of Songs, 2:1 —
אֲנִי חֲבַצֶּלֶת הַשָּׁרוֹן, שׁוֹשַׁנַּת הָעֲמָקִים
"I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys."
Even though this is almost definitely NOT the flower referred to by Song of Songs, it is a beautiful flower to have growing in one’s backyard. Mine grew “by accident”, a cast-off from one of my neighbors’ plants. It grows like a weed. I just have to trim what’s growing around the little flowering tree.
This is my first submission to Today’s Flowers, which appear every Monday.
A while back when I planted my nasturtium seeds, I posted a watercolor of nasturtium, because I had no pictures of one. Now my garden is full of these pretty orange or yellow edible flowers, so I spent some time Friday afternoon photographing one in particular. The shooting mode of this chosen photo is called “Aperture Priority.” Setting a lower aperture value blurs a bit the background behind the subject.
Black-eyed susans are the common name for these yellow petaled beauties that grace my front and back yards. My neighbors two doors down and across the street have lots of echinacea, purple cone flowers, and my goal is to have the yellow and purple flowers interspersed in my yard, instead of so much of the yellow.
All my Project Black posts
An early rudbeckia and my garden last year
What’s Project Black? Visit Anna’s photo blog.
Gardening in Israel is different this year. This is the year of shmitta, the seventh year of a cycle, in which the land of Israel is supposed to lie fallow.
When I arrived at my cousin’s house in the Galil, I noticed that some of the plants were similar to those in my own garden: snapdragons, dianthus and white alyssum. The tops of the plants, however, were browned. In my own garden, I just reach down and pluck off the top browns of the plants. This is called deadheading, and it helps to rejuvenate the plant so new flowers will grow. In the shmitta year, however, religious Jews in Israel do not do deadheading. There are few tasks that they are allowed to perform in their gardens; mostly just watering the plants is allowed. They are not even allowed to apply mulch to the sides of the plants; this must be done in the year before shmitta.
I wondered aloud to my cousin if gardeners suddenly do a lot of gardening the week after Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, when shmitta is over and the new year begins. She reminded me that only religious Jews in Israel keep shmitta, so many of the gardens are kept up, despite the laws. She then told me about a friend who lived in a mixed neighborhood in Jerusalem whose neighbors got irritated with him because he was not tending his garden. He then put up a sign saying: “Shmitta Observed Here”, so it would be obvious that his garden was not in that state due to lazy neglect.
We are going on vacation. And so is this blog. When I will get a chance to post again is a mystery to me (as well as to you). Maybe next week? Stay tuned.
In the photo is one of the first rudbeckia (black-eyed susan) of the season. I have many of them growing in the front of my house. Rudbeckia are native to New Jersey.
Underneath my yellow rudbeckia flower is a geranium plant with purple flowers. The little orange “dot” in the upper left of the picture is one of my first marigolds of the season.
Or this could be titled:
Stealing ideas from your blogger friends
First, Haveil Havalim #169 is up, in two parts, on a new (new to me, anyway) site: Part I and Part II. Jill’s blog is called Writes Like She Talks.
This brings me to the title of this post: Why blog?
And the subtitle: I stole this from Mother in Israel. (good topic, mom)
I do not talk like I write. I have always felt stifled in my talk, and therefore one of my goals with blogging is to say what I need to say in print. And hopefully in “real life” I can feel more comfortable expressing my ideas verbally.
Initially, I was hoping to connect with others locally, in the Highland Park area. What I have found is that many of those who read blogs are bloggers themselves. It has been a joy to connect with others around the world, in Israel, in France, in Seattle, in Virginia, in Chicago, in England, in (wherever it is you presently live). As Baila described me on her blog, she used the expression: “jack-of-all-trades”. The unfortunate conclusion to that expression is “master of none”, but I do try! So as many topics as I have introduced on this blog, I am sure there are more that I will explore in the future. And I LOVE comments. Please share your thoughts!
When Ilana-Davita linked to the latest HH, she included a lovely rose. It inspired me to post the little marigold on top of this post, that I found early this morning peeking under from under a geranium plant. This one probably was a self-seeder from last year’s marigolds. Unfortunately, the camera focused on the geranium leaves instead of the marigold, but I don’t have the patience (or time) to take the photo again. You get the idea. And thank you, Ilana-Davita, for letting me steal another good presentation notion.
NOTE: This blog will be going on vacation soon. Hopefully, I’ll write a little post about being away that should appear early Thursday morning.
And I’m stealing Mom in Israel’s conclusion, too:
Okay, that’s enough about me and my blog. Tell me about yours.
Can you buy produce from local farmers easily? What do farmers grow in your area?
Every Friday in the summer (June to November) we have a farmers’ market in Highland Park. It is fun to go and see fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. This Friday I bought some mixed lettuce greens and two cucumbers. I ate one of the cucumbers as soon as I got home.
Regarding the recent tomatoes and salmonella fiasco, Yardsnacker theorizes that workers not washing hands is too blame. His theory makes a lot of sense to me. I trust the local farmers much more than what is in our supermarkets. However, I do not think that everyone growing their own tomatoes is the solution. Many people live in apartments. Growing any vegetables takes time, energy and knowledge. Tomatoes require lots of sun. That said, if you do want to try vegetable gardening, tomatoes are among the easiest to grow. I always put plenty of compost in my soil before planting my tomatoes. Composting is free, if you know how to make compost out of your vegetable scraps and garden waste.
If you needed to decorate your house for just two days with some kind of flower theme, how would you do it? If you wanted to involve your children in the project, how could you make it fun?
Here’s some quick ideas:
- Buy some beautiful (but expensive) flowers at the florist.
- Go to the supermarket and buy some OK flowers.
- Do tissue paper flowers (do you use pipe cleaners and twist around the middle and trim the tissue paper?).
- Draw pictures of flowers and plants and hang those up.
- Go pillaging through your garden and find something or another that might possibly last for two days.
Ideas welcome.
The holiday of Shavuot is coming, and it is customary to decorate one’s house with flowers. The origin of the custom may be a tradition of vegetation sprouting up around the mountain of Sinai when the Torah was given, or it may be connected to the agricultural roots of this holiday, which is also called Hag HaKatzir, the holiday of the harvest. Whether you celebrate this holiday or not, I am sure you can come up with at least one idea of how we could floralize our house.
After a busy Sunday (see the parade) and a Monday of work, here’s a simple post.
A snapdragon from my front yard.
