Sharing a little glimpse of my garden that makes me happy.
Wishing you a very peaceful day.
Once again this year, I’ll be sharing little glimpses of our gardens. Although so much is growing all the time, there is always a little moment every week that makes me smile extra wide and this is what I want to share with you.
Sp much is happening in the garden this week. All that rain has brought us so much bounty. Pounds upon pounds of beans, peas, kale and Swiss chard are being preserved for the colder months, herbs are being dried and frozen and we are eating from our garden at almost every meal of the day. We even picked our first red tomato today. JOY!
So I decided to focus on a little piece of happiness : My Calendula is finally blooming. See, I made a HUGE mistake this year. I usually start my Calendula inside every year, but since we were running out of space, I decided to direct-sow in late April as soon as the soil could be worked. I think that it would not have been such a mistake if it wasn’t for the fact that we have had such a cold Spring and Summer. All the seeds germinated very quickly and when they got to about 2 inches high, they stopped. And when I say stopped, I mean frozen in time for the better part of May and almost all of June. I was heart-broken at the idea of not being able to harvest my own Calendula petals for healing salves and my soaps this year.
But look at that! Better late than never right? In the last few weeks, my plants had picked up and today, I counted 11 blooms. 3 of them will be blossoming in the next day or 2 and most of my bigger plants are producing more buds as we speak.
If you put your faith in Mother Nature, she will always take care of you. This is a mantra we live by here. She is not infallible, some years, she may need a little help, but she is always on your team.
How is your garden growing?
Family, Faith, Food and Fabric 
How wonderful to see those blooms after so much waiting – and they’re pretty too!
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Yes they are! And after all the sun we had today, I’ll actually be picking 3 of them tomorrow. Just wonderful. 🙂
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Ah, I love calendula…it is my favourite flower and herb. It screams summer to me, and each bloom reminds me of the sun. So happy yours is finally blooming. The good news is, it won’t stop blooming now, it will bloom on and on and on 🙂 Enjoy!
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Yes, it is what I kept reminding myself of : Last year, my Calendula bloomed until late October. But I had also started harvesting in June so Yikes! Can’t wait til tomorrow morning.
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Slowly like yours! It sounds like you and I are having similar weather this year. My polytunnel is full to bursting but it is still cool in there :(. We are yet to harvest anything yet though so maybe my cool temperatures are a bit cooler than yours. I did predict it would be like this earlier in the year so I am not overly disappointed but it does make things a little harder doesn’t it?
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It does a bit, thank goodness for Farmer’s Markets! But even they are struggling. Prices have gone up, some things we used to get so cheap has almost doubled. I’m thinking the weather is just affecting everyone. It does also make for a lot of the same meals. I’m trying to get as creative as I can with all the greens, but some days, my kids just want something else so I have to cave and go buy something from a bit further away. Fruit have been an issue as well. The self-pick farms and barely able to supply the demand and all the berries have gone up in price. And we are SO far away from the orchard fruits. *Sigh* Like a friend once said to me : “To homestead out of pleasure and not out of necessity is truly a blessing”.
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Some things are obviously just worth waiting for, and sometimes made extra special by the wait! Hope you get many, many blooms now.
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Thank you Sally. Yesterday, we got insane amounts of rain again so I’ve kept the picking for today. I’ve counted 9 buds now and some 10 plants that are the right size to start producing buds, I’m expecting to be in Calendula heaven in the next 2 weeks. 🙂
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If you don’t have enough I’ll send you some of mine! My calendula has been blooming for months and shows no sign of stopping. I try to tell myself that maybe if I ask the birds kindly to stop eating my zinnias then maybe they will. The finches have been replaced by a cardinal look alike and grackles. We’ll see what they are here for.
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That is very sweet to offer! Maybe we could do an exchange : calendula petals for sage leaves. My sage bushes are the sizes of bowling balls and I have 5 of them! 🙂 I wonder why birds here don’t touch the flowers but birds in your area do?
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What a lovely peek into your garden. I love calendula, but don’t have any growing this year. I’ve always been a strictly flowers-only gardener, and gratefully relied on my brother’s love for vegetable gardening and generosity to provide me with a bounty in that area. But this year, due to extreme rain and river flooding his entire garden was wiped out. While it’s a sad thing, it really does make me appreciate all the more the magic of our gardens.
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Hello! Thank you for stopping by.
I’m so sorry to hear about your poor brother. We’ve had so much rain this year, but we live in an area that soaks it all up. But it has meant an abundant crop of some stuff and a not so happy crop of other stuff. Thank goodness for local farmers huh? Flower gardens are so pretty… we love day lilies here. I can’t get enough of them. They are strewn about everywhere on our property. 🙂
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Very cool that you grow the flowers for your soaps and salves. I’m going to admit that I haven’t come across a calendula flower around here, but love it in so many of the products I have and they are beautiful. Next year for sure. 🙂 So glad your garden is thriving. Have a great weekend!
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Thank you Carlin… I love calendula. It is one of my favorite flowers but is not perennial here. I’ve started growing quite a few of my herbs and flowers, but I also forage a lot. Nature around here is so rich with plants with amazing medicinal powers. I’m pretty lucky to have such abundance right outside my door.
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