Vintage landscape: berry season

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Fruit jars on fence, 1938, Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress/enclos*ure

“Fruit jars being sterilized on old lady Graham’s back fence in berry season. Near Conway, Arkansas,” June 1938, by Dorothea Lange, via Library of Congress Print and Photographs Division.

We just gather and can peas, beans, berries, and sausage when we butcher the hogs in the winter. We put up seventy-five quarts of berries, sixty of beans, sixty of kraut, thirty of grapes and twenty of peaches. I swapped two bushels of grapes and got two bushels of peaches and I swapped one bushel of grapes for one bushel of apples.

— Mrs. Graham (?), Library of Congress online catalogue

Wyoming ranch fence

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Cast iron fence detail, photo by Jack Boucher, Library of Congress/enclos*ure
Cast iron fence detail, by Jack Boucher, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The photo is part of a 1974 Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of Swan Land and Cattle Company, Platte County, Wyoming, a large cattle ranch operation founded in 1884.

Uptown bird

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

Last week, the town of Weston, Massachusetts, celebrated its tricentennial by hosting  a garden tour.

coffee pot birdhouse on Of Gardens

This charming fancy bird house was one of the highlights shared with us by Of Gardens, on Friday.

Photo by Amy Murphy, used with permission.

For more photos of some lovely Weston gardens, click here.

Foliage Follow Up: two sedums

Cindy at enclos*ure23 Comments

[Ahem, make that two succulents.]

Sedums:enclos*ure

I’d be grateful if anyone could identify these sedums succulents — both came with the garden.

Sedums:enclos*ure

I’ve had the tall, bluish one in at least two other African gardens.

[It’s a Kalanchoe, possibly a variety of “mother of millions,” K. daigremontiana.]

Sedums:enclos*ure

It’s nice in combination with the pink small and miniature shrub roses; otherwise their effect would be too sweet.

Sedums:enclos*ure

Sedums:enclos*ure

I didn’t realize until I took these pictures that the rosette-type sedum almost exactly matches the two-tone clay pot.  They also match the terracotta colors in the landscape beyond the hedge.

[It’s probably a Graptopetalum.]

Sedums:enclos*ure

Sedums:enclos*ure

Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up — the 16th of every month — is hosted by Pam at Digging.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: June 2013

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

Here are some of the flowers that are blooming in my garden today.

Russelia equisetiformis or coral or firecracker plant
Pale yellow R. equisetiformis
The plants fountain over the retaining wall.
R. equisetiformis in front of Lantana camera
L. camera or Spanish Flag
Oenothera missouriensis or Missouri primrose
Strelitzia or bird of paradise
Orange and yellow dahlia
Looking up into Brugmansia or angel’s trumpet
Cape plumbago
Kniphofia uvaria or red-hot poker
Aster oolentangiensis or sky blue aster in the cutting garden
Garlic chives
Garlic chives seedhead
Bearded iris and marigolds
Marigolds

GBBD — the 15th of every month — is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Click here to see other garden bloggers’ mid-June flowers.

Click on ‘Continue reading’ and then on any thumbnail to scroll through larger images.

Miriam had allowed her interest in gardening, which had gradually grown to a full-fledged hobby, to consume and define her. . . . She didn’t care for clothes anymore, just equipment; knee pads, trowels, a little bench to carry about and kneel on. To pray to her god, the garden.

— William H. Gass, from Middle C

(In the novel, the main character’s mother discovers her love for gardening after he gives her a stolen packet of annual seeds.)