Sunday, August 30, 2009

Gardening in Connecticut

We were at my father and stepmother's house in CT for the last two weeks of July. This is the house in which I spent my weekends growing up "helping" my father in the garden. I didn't have a good camera with me, so I can't really do it justice, but here is a snippet of my father's garden as it was in late July.
I was having serious misty lense issues with the camera, but it came out kind of cool, I think. This is my father's main vegetable garden which he has attempted to make wild animal proof. He used to have a woodpost fence, but Chuckles, the woodchuck would sit on the posts and well...chuckle.
Just inside the gate.
Dad's kohlrabi is gorgeous. We've tried it here in Japan a few times, but no luck.
Beautiful and delicious fortex beans. M, especially, loved these. My father gave me three packets of seeds, but they mysteriously vanished from our luggage on the way home.
Look what we are missing out on!
Grape vines on the fence, with gladiolus beneath and baby carrots plants in the foreground. The grape vines are new and have baby grapes! Please tell us how these turn out, Dad!
This year was a bumper year for blueberries. These blueberry bushes were quite big when they moved to this house 33 years ago (though I was much smaller, so maybe they just seemed enormous) so they are very well established. M picked buckets of blueberries and L ate buckets of blueberries. Coming from Japan where we harvested a total of 4 tiny sized blueberries, we were in blueberry heaven. I think part of the secret is the huge mounds of leaves from the property that they haul to the blueberry patch each year.
Raspberries, too. I remember when my dad brought home several sticks and claimed that someday they would be a raspberry patch. We were skeptical, but here it is!
This is the shed that my grandfather built when he was...in his 70s I believe. Isn't it just perfect?
These are gratuitous yard photos so that my readers in Japan can be green as with envy over the acreage and large trees as I am.
This was my favorite tree, we used to climb it as kids.
And there is a park across the street with farm animals, a small playground and lovely scenery.
Thank you so much for a lovely visit D&D!!!

2 comments:

shinshu life said...

Oh wow. In lawn envy agony here!

Interesting about the leaf mulch under the blueberries- I'll have to try it.

What a wonderful @lace to visit and what a wonderful place to grow up! I see where you got your love of gardening.

Xana said...

Yes, well it is a drawback to lots of big deciduous (sp?) trees, lots and lots of leaves to rake. But they sure do have wonderful blueberries!

The lawn, I know!!! All those in the US reading will be like..."So what? It's a lawn." But to those of us in Japan, well, Japanese people who come to our house for the first time always say of our back yard "It's so huge! It's like a park!" Our whole property is only .09 acre (113 tsubo). Not including the embankment, of course, which is a bonus.