Garden Family, Friends and Saints

Jeeves, my feline gardening friend

In the garden quite a few plants get on with each other swimmingly. Well known examples are corn, squash and beans grown together in one bed. They are known as the 3 sisters as they get on so very well and form a tightly knit family. If you've never heard of them before you can read all about sister bean, sister corn and sister squash here.
In the Bliss potager we not only have the 3 sisters, but also some of the very bestest friends growing together in one bed. This is my onion and garlic bed that I planted last November.
They are now sporting quite fetching green Mohawks as you can see. But to jolly things along it's high time I added some new friends to my punk bed.
Soon there will be carrots
and some annual flowers, in this case Silene coeli-rosa (seeds I got from a dear friend), as well. Why? I hear you ask, and frankly that's a very good question. At Bliss, as we are all friends here, no one is ever afraid to ask if there's something that makes you go WTH? So let me do the explainy thing: by adding carrots to the onion bed the carrots will protect the onions from the onion fly while the onions will protect the carrots from carrot fly. That's a win-win situation, always of the good.
My feline friend Dolly Daisy meets gardening feline friend Jeeves in the potager

But the flowers? They will also help by confuddling the carrot flies and, another bonus, they will attract a lot of bees too. Bees, as you know, need all the help they can get from their gardening friends.

Another thing not to be sneezed at is that the Silene flowers are very pretty and they come in pink, lilac and blue.
This year I will have my third 3 sisters bed but I try to make it a bit different every year to keep myself from getting bored. From my Polish gardening friend Ewa I got some spaghetti pumpkin seeds.
A few weeks ago I'd sown some of the seeds and they came up, I'm happy to say, and yesterday they were put in their bed in the potager together with a few pumpkin seedlings from this packet.
In honor of the Indians in America who developed this wonderful method of growing the 3 sisters together, I've bought a packet of Indian corn.
True to form they did the coming up thingy extremely well and are now with their beloved sister pumpkin in the 3 sisters bed.
As it is only half April and night frosts still happen in this neck of the woods until the 3 Ice Saints have come and gone, I've decided to tuck my 3 sisters in very nice and comfy in their bed.
But, but, that's only 2 sisters YE, I hear you stutter. Well, I'm frightfully chuffed to know that you are able to count to two, gentle reader, but not to worry sister number 3 is not forgotten by yours truly, whose one remaining and functioning brain cell still manages to count to 3. On a good day.
Here she is, my third sister and how very pretty she is too. There seems to be a picture of an angel on her and angels, as you know, are holy creatures.
So we Dutch call these beans heilige boontjes = holy beans, a wordplay as it is also the name we call an holier than thou person.

So there you have it; gardening family, friends and saints.

In other news:
Puppy Fija (ears flying), Tara and her sister Aukje on the right

Quite recently we had a DFD (= Doggy Family Day) where Tara had lots of fun with her sister Aukje, her mum Renske and daddy Jeppe. Little puppy Fija (no relation) and dear Minka where there as well. So all in all there were 7 Kooiker dogs, a sight to behold!
Tara's breeder Margo with most of the dogs

And yours truly? Well, you have noticed the new header, haven't you? That's moi with Aukje, and in the background with her silly feet in the air is Tara. So there, no more complaints that you never see any pics of me, OK?
Hanny. who owns handsome daddy Jeppe and sister Aukje

This is the lady who's responsible for the new header pic. Any complaints about not seeing my face all that well may be directed to her. ;-)

Time for a quote from my gardening guru, the saintly Geoff, still deeply missed by many:

A seeds man's trade is not in seeds at all - it's in optimism.
Geoff Hamilton

copyright 2009 Y.E.W. Heuzen