During our first spring on the farm, in 2016, I remember marveling at the huge lilac bush behind our house. It had the classic lavender-purple blooms, but that year it only had a few flower heads. The lilac was at least 10 feet tall and so overgrown. As the season went on I noticed a much older, more scraggly burgundy lilac close to the creek as well as what I assumed was more young lilacs as a hedge along the south side of the house.
Last year, before the lilacs came out of dormancy, our lovely chickens took to work scratching and digging underneath the overgrown purple one, which did wonders. Last year we were swimming in those blooms! The chickens' work down by the burgundy lilac helped as well, but there were still no blooms on the young lilacs along the house.
Fast forward to today, when during my walk I noticed that we had these beautiful white lilacs in bloom! What a lovely surprise. This year, we'll be offering a trio of lilacs. I can't wait to post photos of a bouquet that includes all three.
One downfall of moving into a farm that had well-established cut flowers from many decades ago is that it is hard to catalog the cultivars. I don't have cultivar names for these lilacs. With some of the excellent resources I have found online, though, I was able to find names for some of our other flowers. That shaggy, fragrant daffodil we had a few weeks ago is Van Sion and dates to the 1600s. Below and to the right, the white daffodil is Narcissus poeticus. This has been a very fun hobby for me to explore lately.
Below and to the left you can see the columbine that Aurora picked out for the honeyberry plot outside of her bedroom window. This is a lovely cut flower but also an attractant for hummingbirds.
An update on vegetables: the radishes are, as always, speedy growers. We are expecting to have them, along with baby greens, by June 1st. Within the next week we will have rhubarb, as it is so very close to harvest time. Bok choi will be ready shortly after the radishes and baby greens. The tomatoes went in the ground yesterday and the peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos will go in tomorrow or Wednesday. No signs of germination on beans or cucurbits but I think we will start to see them in a week or so. The peas are growing really fast now, and I noticed yesterday that a bunch of favas have germinated without me noticing so we may even have some of them, too.
Even though it's a late start, we really feel that this is going to be a wonderful season. We're getting excited!