This weekend has seen the final uncovering and dirt-filling of the beds, and after doing the not-at-all fun part of that yesterday, today was all about putting in our miracle pest-repellants in preparation for the big tomato-planting next weekend. We bought a handful of different marigold colorways, and then randomly dispersed them around the beds that had room for them.

They're in the corners of the potato beds, on the ends of the radish/pepper bed, and in the newly-filled tomato and basil beds, ready to be boon companions to our crops.

And if nothing else, they're a welcome spot of cheerful color amidst all the empty soil and wee, spring-green sprouts.

First to come up was the Banana Fingerling, and while it's very potato-y, it has a kind of elegant legginess to it. I'm sure that's purely coincidental, but I still think it's cool that a long and graceful tuber has sprouted a long and graceful plant.

The Yellow Finns have been slower to sprout than the others, and right now they look suitably stumpier than the Banana Fingerlings. That will probably change soon, but right now, humor me, okay? I'm trying to run with the idea that the plants are all reflecting the potatoes they're someday going to grow into.

What's kind of cool about those two plants compared with the Desiree and the All Blue is that they're the same color. The Desiree, meanwhile, is definitely veined with a hint of red:

Furthermore, I think the leaves are a little plumper and curvier. Although I'm probably projecting -- I am convinced this plant is called "Roselle" (I have no idea why), so I think I'm looking for "Roselle"y traits when I look at it.

By far the coolest thing to happen in our garden so far this year, though, is the sprouting of the All Blues. They grew in blue.

We had visions of totally blue potato plants dancing in our minds for a few days, but as they've leafed out, they've greened up quite a bit. That said, they're still a hell of a lot bluer than their compatriots.

So now I'm all excited that the four different plants have such distinct looks, so watch they all end up appearing exactly the same a month from now.

And meanwhile, in the next bed over, the radishes are rapidly expanding. Some of them are even growing their second leaves:

What's sort of hilarious about the radish arrangement is that we laid that whole bed out with a very ambitious design that involved two types of radishes and four types of lettuce. We had concentric diamonds of lettuce, and then chevrons of radishes between them, everything to be direct-sown in successive plantings. Which is all well and good, assuming your seeds actually take. Which the lettuce did not. So now we have chevrons of radishes and big empty expanses where there is no lettuce. Which is probably a good thing, because we completely forgot to allot space in our planning for our pepper plants. Now it looks like we'll have chevrons of radishes radiating out from a clump of peppers.

We have had almost no luck at all with our lettuces this Spring, which means we're complete and total losers, because even the dimmest of bulbs can grow lettuce. But we did direct-sow some radishes a couple of weeks ago to go with our now totally imaginary lettuce crop, and they're looking very sassy today:

We also direct-sowed a row of scallions in one end of the onion bed, and for the second straight year, were despairing that we're too incompetent to grow bunching onions. But today, lo and behold, there are three wee little seedlings in the row where we planted dozens.

We'll try not to eat them all in one place. (And we're also going to start a tray of scallion seedlings tomorrow, because they were a crazy-good crop two years ago. The regular onions seem to work very well when they're started and transplanted, rather than just tossed in the dirt, so maybe we'll have better luck this way.)

The potatoes are in fine form, and we've got 17 plants coming up now of the 24 we planted. We're going to give the remaining seven one more week to show they're sprouting before plopping a few more seed potatoes into their places. Interestingly, when we went to strip the straw cover off the bed we're putting the gherkins into this summer, we discovered there was an abundance of volunteer potatoes coming up in there. Obviously, we did a lousy job completely harvesting the crop we had in there when that bed was hosting potatoes last year.

There were no fewer than six potato plants above the soil, and it took some work to get all the way down in the soil to the sources.

Damn, that's a lot of potatoes we missed. Oh, regrets. Terrible, terrible regrets. As Boomer said as we gazed upon them sadly, "That's a whole meal." This year we will be digging down to China if need be, to ensure that we've harvested each and every delicious potato morsel from our garden.

Meanwhile, the garlic is growing like a weed...

... And speaking of weeds, we've got lovely little violets growing of their own volition in our pumpkin patch. What a nice change from the dandelions and poison ivy that normally live in there.

Rome Beauty

When we were perusing Trees of Antiquity for our second wave of apples, we thought we were going to go in for the flashy pink types, with the showy blossoms and bells and whistles. But on closer review, we ended up falling in love with the modest charms of the Rome Beauty. It's said to originate in Ohio around 1848 and its fruit is "medium to very large with handsomely striped to almost solid red, thick skin".

I imagine someday this tree looking like a picture a little kid would draw of an apple tree: a green circle on a brown line of a trunk, with bright red dots all over it.

It's self-pollinating, and last year it claimed the honor of being the first tree in our orchard to bear fruit that the squirrels didn't get to before us.

As you can see, those apples are not bright, solid red. We were totally squirrel-shy after the Peach harvest debacle, so we picked those way too early. They were, um, not very good. Should the Rome Beauty produce fruit this year, we're going to consider letting them ripen before eating them this year.

White Pearmain

According to Trees of Antiquity, this is the oldest known English apple, dating back to the 13th century. How could we not choose to plant a type of tree that people have been cultivating and enjoying the fruits from for over 800 years? That is just beyond cool. We really don't care what the fruits taste like (although this one allegedly is good for just about everything from eating fresh, to desserts, to making cider) -- we just like that it's been around for so long.

I should point out that we took some "artsy" shots of this one to show off Pookie's favorite thing about our baby apple trees: the color and texture of their trunks.

Ashmead's Kernel

The description of this from Trees of Antiquity's catalog is like something out of an apple tree soft-porn romance novel:

"An old English winter russet, medium size, golden-brown skin with a crisp nutty snap, exploding with champagne-sherbet juice infused with a lingering scent of orange blossom."

We're not expecting any champagne-sherbet juice explosions this Autumn, thanks to the fact that Ash here has opted not to blossom this Spring.

For some reason, I suffer under the impression that this tree is actually the Ashmead's Colonel, not Kernel, so I kind of feel like it should be some kind of Confederate gentleman officer from the Civil War, not an apple tree from 1700's England. Clearly, this tree is a constant source of disappointment for me.

Cox's Orange Pippin

This is kind of the apple tree. It's supposed to be finicky, temperamental, and generally difficult, yet everyone who plants heirloom apples seems to want one. We also are operating under the belief that it originates somewhere near Blenheim, so we've decided it's the same apple as the ones we fell in love with during that cheese dinner from Neal's Yard.

Our tree here has yet to demonstrate even the slightest inclination toward blossoming, even now in its third Spring in our orchard, but he has managed to become our most resplendent tree by far. When we planted him he was less than waist high, then got ravaged by marauding deer, and somehow, in just two years, is now a towering, branchy behemoth.

Someday it will be a towering, branchy behemoth covered with the most delectable fruits we could ever imagine.

Alexander

We have one spot in the middle of our front row of trees that is the Hole of Death. Two years running now, we've had that one tree get completely devoured by deer. The first year it was a cherry tree from our nursery co-op, and the second year it was some now-forgotten apple variety. This year we plugged the hole with an Alexander, a Russian variety dating back before 1817. We don't have a picture of him just yet because he is literally a three-foot-tall stick with one branch shooting off it. It has one tiny little proto-leaf. If it's anything like the other trees in our orchard, though, next year it'll be four times the size it is now.

So that's all of them -- the trees of Maple Hoo Orchard. They're remarkably lovely, even in their unsightly cages of deer netting:

And maybe someday we'll have to open to the public to let people pick their own bushels of apples, as we struggle to keep up with them.

Heute waren wir zum Abendessen in Kunsilta eingeladen gewesen. Kunsilta ist ein kleiner "Vorort" von Turku, in welchem einige Studenten in kleinen Wohngemeinschaften zu günstigeren Mieten wohnen. Morgen sollte ich zwar für meine Prüfungen lernen, aber um 14 Uhr gehts erst mal zur Schnitzeljagd in die Stadt :-D, danach ist Salsa angesagt und wer studiert schon "Saturday Night" ;-).

Nächste Woche sollte ich einen Essay abgeben, endlich meine theoretische Prüfung in WLAN schreiben und mich auf Vappu freuen. Was ist Vappu? der 30.April, also einen Tag vor dem 1.Mai, welcher von Studenten in ganz Finnland festlich gefeiert wird. Dazu sollte ich allerdings noch einige Patches auf meinen Overall nähen ;-).

We moved into Maple Hoo almost immediately after returning from England, and suddenly fell under the sway of the magical gardening vibe here. Along with our unprecedented (in our lives) urge to plant vegetables, we decided the front lawn needed to be augmented with a bunch of apple trees. Not because we love apples, but because we love those gnarly old rambling apple trees that live in so many of the yards around here. Pookie started researching heirloom apples, then, and found Trees of Antiquity, which is, if you're even remotely interested in planting fruit trees or bushes of any kind, total porn. We never found exactly what the "Blenheim apple" is, but after poring over the catalogue, we developed an obsession. Twelve fruit trees later, these are the apples on which we're pinning our hopes and dreams of making us learn to love apples.

Enterprise

This guy isn't actually from Trees of Antiquity, as we were antsy to get planting, and they were mostly sold out when we got around to ordering from them our first year here. We picked him up on a "let's see how many saplings and shrubs we can fit into the hatchback of one Prius" shopping spree at a nursery co-op. According to google, these are its traits: "Large fruit; red glossy skin; good for fresh eating and cooking; scab resistant. Mid to late bloom; late apples." We haven't expected much from this tree, other than just being gnarled and autumnal, and maybe standing in the mist occasionally like a picture in a Martha Stewart magazine.

And then this Spring happened.

It is covered with glorious blossoms. They were just a riot of little pink buds when we were restaking his cage of deer fencing and took that full portrait above, and then a few days later, they became a riot of huge, white, beautiful, fluffy, graceful blossoms.

The Enterprise tree has gone from bobo to crown jewel in just one Spring!

Spitzenburg

It seems like this is one of those status trees for apple snobs. It was Thomas Jefferson's favorite, is "unexcelled in flavor or quality" (according to Trees of Antiquity), and is fussy to get cross-pollinated, because it needs three other trees' pollen.

We figure we'll never get an apple from him, but what kind of heirloom orchardists are we if we're not cowing to the pressure to have this "unexcelled" tree in our collection? (You might be able to see in that picture taken during his deer-fencing restaking that Spitzy was sans buds or blossoms, when almost all the other trees had at least one attempt at a flower going on. It's like Thomas Jefferson's favorite remedial apple tree.)

Calville Blanc d'Hiver

We bought our orchard denizens in two waves, with the first year's trees mainly just the dregs of what Trees of Antiquity still had in stock, and the second year's trees selected in a glut of impulse-buy, "hey, we totally have room for a bunch more trees, right?" early ordering. The catalog description of this one is, "This is the gourmet culinary apple of France, excellent for tarts. Uniquely shaped medium to large size fruit, skin yellow with light red flush. Flesh is tender, sweet, spicy, flavorful, with a banana-like aroma. Fine-textured, yellowish-white flesh is also higher in Vitamin C than an orange! Grown by Le Lectier, procureur for Louis XIII. Continues to be served in fine Parisian Restaurants." We can't have a home orchard that isn't growing Louis XIII's apples, can we? It's a touch of French aristocracy to balance out all that Spitzenburg Jeffersonianism.

And unlike Spitzy, Cal was sporting some lovely blossoms on class picture day:

Granny Smith

Also picked up at the nursery co-op, at the same time as the Enterprise. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that we've got all these fancy-pantsy trees, poor Smitty probably thinks she's there just to produce grocery store-grade apples to make the other fruits look that much better by comparison. She was the first of our trees to ever blossom, though, an event that surprised us to no end. It was her first summer after being planted, and she produced two tiny, mutant proto-apples that did nothing but attract weird, creepy ants.

For all that she seems kind of mundane, she's got the lushest, thickest foliage of all the apple trees in the orchard.

Northern Spy

When we planted our first wave of trees, we stupidly decided that we don't often see any deer in our front yard, and anyways, there were lots of other green things budding and leafing out all over the place, so surely our new babies would be safe from those rapacious creatures. We were wrong. Every day we'd say to ourselves, "We should probably fence those..." and then we'd decide, "Eh, we'll do it tomorrow." Finally one morning we woke up and asked each other, "Do the trees look a lot smaller today?" Yes. Yes they did look a lot smaller. The deer had devoured them. The one that got it worst was our poor little Northern Spy. He was basically left for dead, just a lame little stick poking up out of the ground where there had once been a perky, leafy sapling. We were confident the other trees would rebound from what turned out to just be a really invigorating pruning, but we had serious doubts about the Spy.

Two years later, he is a towering beacon of hope for plants all over the world that have been ravaged by pests:

It is absolutely stunning to us that this tree, that had been nibbled down to a waist-high twig, is now significantly taller than we are, with leaves and blossoms, and, we hope this fall, delicious, crisp apples. It'll be the feel-good story of Maple Hoo orchard.

The most obvious place to start is the daffodil bed under our black locust tree.

Two years ago, Boomer decided to buy two 100-count bags of "The Works" from one of those specialty daffodil bulb nurseries. We spent a giggling Autumn afternoon randomly planting the bulbs in the comma-shaped swirls that I'd read occur in nature, and then promptly forgot all about them. The following Spring, we were delighted to be reminded of them; this Spring, then, has brought double the joy, because these daffodils are dividing like mofos. I have no idea what specific types of bulbs were included with "The Works", and a lot of them have already passed their peaks, but here's a closer look at some of the brightest lights in bloom today:

Elsewhere in the front yard, the orchard is starting to look gorgeously pink. The most resplendent of the apple trees today is the Enterprise:

I suppose as a so-called gardener, I should be repulsed by all things "weed", but you know what? I love dandelions. Look at how cheerful and bright they are!

Probably the biggest surprise of the day, though, came when we trooped around back and happened upon the grapevines we planted during our first Spring at Maple Hoo. These are pretty low-priority plants for us, but they persevere in their little bed behind our garage. And today, they offered a nice little picture:

It's not quite a bloom, but it'll do.

Den Ausflug haben wir mit Kaffee, Tee und Waffeln in der "Kahvilla Vahvetti", einem altmodisch eingerichtetem Café, gestartet. Danach sind wir zur Kathedrale gelaufen, deren Inneneinrichtung wirklich sehr eigenartig und misteriös war, aber seht euch die Bilder selbst an. Nach zwei weiteren, planlos umherlaufenden Stunden, sind wir schließlich in die Markthalle zum Mittagessen. Während die anderen von der traditionellen "Mustamakkara" (Tamperes Spezialität) etwas angewidert waren, habe ich das Abenteuer gewagt und eine verschlungen. Erinnert mich an eine Blutwurst, von daher nix besonderes aber dennoch lecker.

Nachdem ich den Akku meiner Fotokamera in einem Fotoshop hab aufladen lassen, sind wir zum einzigen Spionage Museum der Welt gelaufen. Auf unserem Weg dorthin sind uns immer wieder verkleidetet Leute über den Weg gelaufen, glaube Fasching wird in Finnland später gefeiert :-D.

Danach haben wir einen Abstecher ins Mineralmuseum gewagt, wobei die Mädels von den glitzernden Steinen mehr angetan waren als ich.

Gegen 17 Uhr sind wir etwas abseits des Zentrums gelaufen, um uns, von einem Aussichtsturm aus, einen schönen Überblick über die ganze Stadt zu verschaffen.

Zum Abschluss sind wir in eine Art Wirtshaus/Restaurant/Pub zum Essen gegangen. Den letzten Zug um 21.11 Uhr haben wir auf die letzte Minute, natürlich ohne Ticket, erwischt (Ich bemühe mich um mein Finnisch, aber entschuldigt das ich den Ticketschalter nicht ganz geschnallt haben :-) ). Nachdem Jacq den doofen, ausländischen, Studenten gemimt hat, wurden uns dann doch keine extra Kosten in Rechnung gestellt. "YES! Thanks Canadian".

Um 23 Uhr angekommen sollten wir eigentlich noch Noémies Geburtstag feiern, aber dazu waren wir nach dem großartigen und anstrengendem Tag doch zu müde gewesen.

Heute, Sonntag 20. April sind wir um 12 Uhr mit mehreren Austauschstudenten nach Ruissalo zum grillen und Saunieren gefahren.

Seit 2 Wochen trainiere ich am Hochschulsport Golf und nächste Woche fahren wir auch endlich auf eine richtige Driving Rage nahe Ruissalo.

Gestern war ich 6 Stunden mit Mirka unterwegs die ich mittlerweile meine finnisch Lehrerin nennen darf. Mirka ist 20 und studiert Sprachen an der Uni. Hab sie auf der Laplandreise kennen gelernt und seit dem sind wir irgendwie im Kontakt geblieben. Rein platonisch, versteht sich natürlich :-P. Im Gegenzug spreche ich Deutsch mit ihr. Sie versteht mich ohne Probleme, aber beim Sprechen hapert es noch ein wenig. Naja das kriegen wir schon...

Heute hatte ich mit Tom und Joleth unser erstes "Meeting" bezüglich unserer großen Skandinavienreise. Heilige Maria, da steckt ja viel mehr Organisation dahinter als ich mir je hätte vorstellen können. Hat jemand zufällig ein funktionsfähiges Auto für mich übrig und wäre bereit es mir für die nächsten 5000km auszuleihen? Transport, Unterkunft, Geld..., wir werden nicht das letzte Mal dbzgl. diskutiert haben.

Morgen fahre ich um 07.00 Uhr mit Marc, Joleth, Tom, Jacquelyn nach Tampere für einen Tag.

Sonntags fahren ca. 20 Austauschstudenten nach Ruissalo an den Strand um zu grillen, Sauna und Spaß zu haben. Laut dem "finnischem Institut für Meteorologie" ;-) soll es sommerlich 10° warm bleiben.

Nach 6 stündigem Meeting, 2 Vorlesungen und..., habe ich bereits erwähnt, dass ich heute in einer Grundschule, 10 jährigen Kindern von Deutschland berichtet habe? Nicht? Wie auch immer, es ist sehr lustig gewesen und gespannt waren sie allemal. Vielleicht hätte ich doch Erziehungswissenschaften studieren sollen :-D. Dann doch lieber Nerd ;).

Ich hau mich in die Pfanne. Es ist bereits 1 und ich muss um 6 wieder auf. Na Prostmahlzeit!

So we discarded the protective straw coverings from two of the beds, and pulled up the volunteer garlic and onions coming up in the old soil. Then we lugged bags and bags of new soil into the garden and filled the beds up with the stuff. Then it was time for the fun part:

Our delicious crops this year are going to be Yellow Finn (the single most delicious potato we've ever eaten, and a bumper crop last summer), Desiree, Banana Fingerling, and All Blue. We've never grown the latter three varieties, and if they suck, we're going to be very disappointed by the space we gave over to them that could have been Yellow Finns. (Just kidding. I think we get Banana Fingerlings from our farm, and they're fantastic.)

Potatoes are very fun to plant, because you dig a four-inch hole and drop a whole potato in.

That's it.

Of course, they're moderately high maintenance once they grow, since you have to continue to mound soil around the plants to keep them happy, but in the meantime, we're feeling super-productive. I mean, look at how much of our garden is now working hard at growing magnificent crops!

The best part of doing all this work today was when we read the growing instructions that came with the seed potatoes, and discovered they can be planted starting two to four weeks before the last frost, and all the way up to twelve weeks before the first frost. So now we're thrilled at the prospect of doing a second planting later this summer. That would at least justify how many seed potatoes we've got left over after this first planting.

Men hva gjør jeg nå? Skal jeg laste ned én og én episode? Skal jeg vente til alt kommer på DVD? Kan noen arrangere BSG-fest? Har jeg nok penger til å dra til Dragoncon eller lignende? Er det noen som blir med på Shadowcon i år? Jeg er forvirret. Identitetskrise. Faen.

And the garlic? Towering.

The garlic bed is starting to look lush! (Okay, it's not quite lush, but it certainly looks more green than any of the beds around it.)

Meanwhile, one bed over, the banana fingerlings are starting to reach for the sky: