Green Frog Sunday

American Bullfrog

Rana catesbeiana

I nearly stepped on this big guy last night while walking in the yard. (He was about 10-12 inches long if you stretched his legs out.) I see toads all the time - two of them live in the gardens - but this is only the second time in my life I've seen a frog. Romie says it's a bullfrog, and we've been hearing one every night for quite awhile now. Our neighbors have a pond, so it's a familiar summer sound and I love hearing it.

The way to tell a bullfrog from a green frog is that the green frog has ridges that go all the way down its back from its eyes. The bullfrog doesn't have these. And you can tell male from female by looking at their eardrums. The female's eardrums are the size of its eyes. The male's are smaller. Since our bullfrog's eardrums are even bigger than its eyes, I think it must be a female.

The American Bullfrog is the largest frog in North America. It's a nocturnal amphibian that comes out of hibernation in April and stays active until October. The average lifepan of a bullfrog is seven to nine years.

Join

2007 Peony Festival

In the 1930s, Van Wert, Ohio became known as The Peony Capitol of the World, due to the large number of commercial peony farms in the area. Each year, a festival was held, with a major parade and the crowning of Queen Jubilee, so named for the 'Jubilee' peony that was grown in the Van Wert area.

During World War II, the festival was discontinued, but was resurrected in 1955 and held annually on the first weekend of June until it was once again discontinued in 1960. While peonies are no longer produced commercially in Van Wert, the festival was begun again in 1992.

Today, I met my girlfriend Jane in Fountain Park to partake of a couple of this year's festival activities. We walked up Jefferson Street to tour three gardens that were opened to the public for their annual Home Garden and Landscaping Tour.


We started with the gardens of Dave and Janice Kirchenbauer, which I have toured previously. I'm not sure how old their home is, but the original owners planted a Chinese Tree Peony, the first in Van Wert County, in 1917. The peony still grows there today! Their gardens are young, but very pretty, and I especially liked the shade garden.





The second home on the tour was that of Jeff and Diane Hood.





The first floor of their 1901 home was open for visitation as well, and it had much of the original beautiful wood trimmings.

The gardens surrounding the home were some of the most manicured I've ever seen. While I could never accomplish this in my own gardens, just seeing these gave me a sense that all was right with the world. I'll bet the insides of their drawers and cupboards are just as neat. There's something calming about seeing such neatness and order like that.







Third to be visited was the home of Deb Lehman. I attended high school with Deb at Wayne Trace in the early '70s and had not seen her in many, many years.


She lives in a brick house that I've always admired and she's cultivated the grounds in a way that's very complimentary to the style of the house. We chatted for some time and she mentioned that she'd like to come see my gardens, so maybe I'll see her again this summer.


Jane and I then walked back to Fountain Park, where Artrageous! was being held.


This is a high quality art fair and I could have spent a month's worth of pay with very little effort. Watercolors, pottery, jewelry, and unique garden decor items were all tempting me. I did succumb to a pair of dragonfly earrings, as well as a set of raku refrigerator magnets and a pottery bowl with a small wooden spreader that I'll use for dips or a cheese ball.

Jane needed to leave, so we parted with a hug and I headed out to the Extension Office at the fairgrounds, where the flower show was being held at 1:00. It was just a little after 12:00 and the judging was still taking place, so I wasn't able to see much. Mom is an accredited judge and she was doing her thing. I glanced around a bit, but didn't stay long, as I didn't want to disturb the judging.


There were two other homes on the garden tour, but they were located in northern Van Wert County, so I went to those on my way home. I first stopped at Lincoln Ridge Farms, which are owned by Jeff and Cathy Thomas.


This is also home to Lincoln Candle Company and I bought their peony-scented one called "Van Wert Peony Festival." I've given one of these to several out-of-town guests as a memento of their visit here. The candle company and the farms are so named because they're located just off of historic Lincoln Highway, the first highway to cross the entire United States.

While the candle barn and the surrounding area are charming, what I really enjoyed was the Serenity Garden. Cathy took me on a personal tour of this peaceful woodland treasure that she and Jeff have created as a little hideaway. Cathy likes to see things growing in a natural type setting and this accomplishes that in a wonderful way. If I lived here, I'd spend lots of time in this garden, as Jeff and Cathy do.


Before I left for the final stop on the garden tour, I picked out a Bloody Dock (Rumex sanguineus) plant to take with me. Every time I ever see this plant in a garden center, I contemplate purchasing it and never do. To prevent this from happening again, today I bought it. Now I don't have to worry about that anymore!



A few miles away was the home of Tom and Leann Gordon. In their back yard is seven acres of an abandoned stone quarry.

This makes a beautiful pond/lake setting for them, as it's wooded all around. There is a woodland trail leading to a restful lookout over the water with a bench for sitting. Today, there was a nice breeze blowing there, which felt great, considering the temperature was in the low 90s.

They have several small gardens around the property, each named for their grandchildren. An absolutely gorgeous waterfall is named Bailey Falls because it was constructed for and used during the baptism of their granddaughter, Bailey. Tom has large bins where he grows things like strawberries, onions, and gourds which he hopes to use to make Purple Martin houses.


I ran into my cousin Vickie and her daughter as I was leaving for home. I haven't seen her in a long time and we had a nice chat. I continued out the driveway and around the south end of the pond, where I stopped to take a picture of the stunning Red Hot Poker (Kniphofia uvaria) plants in full bloom. I hope mine look like that someday!




Once I got home, we had to get ready to go to Adam's brother's graduation party over near Defiance. We went to Lowe's to pick up a few things and of course, I had to go through the garden center. I found an absolutely gorgeous variegated lacecap hydrangea that was screaming "Buy me!" so I did. I also got a Purple Bell Vine (Rhodochiton atrosanguineum) that I'd seen a couple of weeks ago. It's Jodi's fault that I bought that one, since she mentioned it in her blog that it was one of her favorite vines shortly after I saw it the first time.

So that was my wonderful day, and it had a pretty good end to it, too. WE GOT RAIN.

Spinach & Strawberries!

On the strawberry:

"Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did."

~ Dr William Butler, 17th century English writer

On this last day of the month, it's a day of firsts. First rose, as I said before, and this morning I got to take the first cutting of spinach. At the other end of the vegetable garden lies the strawberry bed and it's just beginning to bless us with its scrumptiously sweet fruit.

If I had to pick one single fruit that's my favorite, it would probably be the strawberry, but I like peaches and nectarines, too. And melons of all kinds. We're growing 'Savor Charentais' canteloupe and 'Quetzali' watermelon.

Charentais 'Savor' is an heirloom French melon that you'll rarely find in the produce section of your grocery store, because its skin is so tender that it's difficult to transport without damaging it. Romie doesn't like cantaloupe all that well, but he admitted that this one was good when he tried it last year. I saved the seed so we could grow it again this year. I learned the hard way though, that you want to harvest this melon before it gets too ripe, because its flavor changes drastically if you don't. *ick*

We only managed a couple of ripe watermelons last year, but they were some of the best we've ever tasted! 'Quetzali' measures 12% on the Brix scale, which is used to measure sweetness and that's very sweet. It has minimal seeds, too. I saved some of those from one of last year's melons, and we've got them growing again this year.

I purchased 50 very tiny 'Honeoye' strawberry plants last year from The Greenhouse Effect and to be honest, I wondered if those puny little things were going to produce berries ever, but we actually had a fair amount of them that first year! I'd always heard that you're supposed to pick off the blooms the first year you plant them so you'll get stronger plants and better berries the following years. Apparently, that's a myth and nothing is gained by doing it. We didn't pick ours off and from the looks of the berries coming on right now, I can't imagine we could have done anything to increase our yield. They're LOADED.

I couldn't tell you how many plants we have now, but we no longer have two neat rows. We have a section. This year, we put cement blocks on the sides to help contain the runners that they put out. If we didn't do this, I would imagine that they'd take over the entire garden within two years. I read that after three years, you want to take the plantlets that grow on the new runners and start over with those, because by this time, the mother plants will have declined to the point where they no longer produce a good amount of berries, nor will they taste as good. This is only our second year with them, so we won't have to worry about this until after the 2008 harvest.

Our spinach is 'Springer' and though we've grown spinach at various times through the years, last year was our first for growing this variety. We liked the taste and texture of it a lot better than any other kind, so we grew it again this year. It is slow to bolt (go to seed), and while most spinach grows better in cool weather, you can grow this one in the heat of summer, too. Its leaves are thicker than most, so that might be why it does better in warm weather than other varieties.

We will always have spinach in our garden, because we both love it so much. I prefer it over lettuce for salads and it's very high in iron which is good for me, since I'm always anemic. Bad for Romie, though, because his iron levels are always too high. I doubt that will stop him from eating it, though.

Since both the strawberries and the spinach are ripe for harvesting at the same time, I'd like to try this salad:

SPINACH, STRAWBERRY, & PECAN SALAD
1 lb. fresh spinach, washed & dried 1 pt. strawberries, washed & halved 1/2 c. pecan halves, toasted DRESSING: 1/3 c. raspberry vinegar 1 tsp. dry mustard 1 tsp. salt 1/2 c. sugar 1 c. vegetable or olive oil 1 1/2 tbsp. poppy seeds Combine dressing ingredients except the poppy seeds in a blender. Add the poppy seeds by hand. Toss dressing with spinach, strawberries and pecans.

* Adapted from Cooks.com

When I was a kid, my next-door neighbor Kelly and I used to walk down the railroad a block from our houses and pick the wild strawberries that grew along the tracks. We even made strawberry maps showing where the patches were and then we hid the maps in a wood pile elsewhere in town. The Super Secret Strawberry Patches. Ha! Likely, even if others knew the whereabouts of those wild strawberries, they wouldn't be bothered to pick them since you can pick for an hour and only get enough for one pan of shortcake. Maybe. But ohhhhhhh, nothing beats the intensity of flavor and the sweetness of wild strawberries.

We have some growing in our yard this year and I wanted Romie to skip that section of the yard while mowing so I could once again taste that little bit of heaven, but he mowed it anyway. Maybe I should see if The Super Secret Strawberry Patches are still there ...