Thoughts from Alison that might at least entertain you!

Some Actual Grass Growing!

Before - one-step-all-in-one grass seed stuff in which I had no confidence: 

After - some grass is growing!  Still patchy and certainly not lush, but it's kind of working:

Springtime Bunny at Prune Ridge

Things are beginning to hint at green, and the bunnies are on the move! 

And now I'm off to plow into some collage ideas.  We shall see what happens!

The Visitor

Well this is the first time I've seen a red-winged blackbird stopping by our little Prune Ridge feeding ground!  I heard him before I saw him this morning.  This is my first sighting of the new season.  I know now that they'll be everywhere within a couple of weeks.  Yay, spring!

Harvesting in Honor of the Harvest Moon

And so I've harvested the last of this year's amazing bell peppers at Prune Ridge.  They're pretty lovely looking, right?  We even have one from the supposedly "yellow bell pepper" plant that almost got all the way to yellow.  Oh, did I mention that these are rather small even though I left them on the plants for many, many weeks?

See display #2, which we shall call "Lovely Prune Ridge Peppers In Perspective."  That's right, 5 gorgeous peppers - together, all smaller than the blade of a butter knife.  I should mention that we do not have giant-sized utensils at

Prune Ridge.  This is your average butter knife.  Oh well, at least they tried to become peppers.

I decided it was time to harvest the peppers this weekend as the air is changing a bit towards fall-like.  The leaves are just beginning to turn in southeast Michigan, and a week from today brings the Harvest Moon!  According to the Farmer's Almanac, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox each year.  In 3 years out of 4, the Harvest Moon is in late September.  This year is the exception, with the Harvest Moon falling on October 4th.  The Harvest Moon gets its name (in the traditions that call it that - there are many different names for every moon of the year!) because it is a late-rising moon, and farmers are able to continuie harvesting late into the night during this crucial end to the growing season by the light of the moon.

A favorite book of mine (a children's book of course) is Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back, A Native American Year of Moons by Joseph Bruchac and Jonathan London.  Bruchac is an amazing collector, teller, and author of tales including an astonishing number of tales collected from countless Native American traditions.  I don't know from this particular collection which moon lines up with the Harvest Moon, but I have always loved his telling of the "Moon of Falling Leaves" from the Cherokee tradition.  I'll leave you with that one here, and encourage you to check out the book if you can:

Long ago, the trees were told they must stay awake seven days and nights, but only the cedar, the pine and the spruce stayed awake until that seventh night.  The reward they were given was to always be green, while all the other trees must shed their leaves.  So, each autumn, the leaves of the sleeping trees fall.  They cover the floor of our woodlands with colors as bright as the flowers that come with the spring.  The leaves return the strength of one more year's growth to the earth.  This journey the leaves are taking is part of that great circle which holds us all close to the earth.

Happy Harvest, Happy Fall, and Happy Season of Change, Friends!

More on Hens and Chicks

I forgot to mention my favorite factoid about our Hens and Chicks plants.  I noticed (in classic "Alison Fashion") AFTER I had planted the garden, that the planting instructions for Hens and Chicks say the plants prefer an arid climate, with well-drained and dry soil.  Of all the plants I randomly chose for our front gardens only three (these two and the pink straw flower planted next to them) preferred dry soil.  I also randomly chose to position them in the only part of the garden that floods dramatically every time it rains.  So you might wonder, as I do, why these three plants seem to be the most thriving of the whole garden.

Huh?

Does anyone out there know much about this plant?  I know it as Hens and Chicks.  I have two planted in our little front garden.  The first picture is one - and what I have always known Hens and Chicks to look like.  The second picture is the other plant - and it's out of control!  It's tall, with all these off-shoot branches, and it's going to bloom what look like clusters of pink flowers any day.  These two plants are next to each other, and I can't fathom why the one is growing/flowering in the way it is, while the other is just growing, spreading, and staying low.  What's going on?!?