And then right after the butterfly, while I was hanging a new screen door on the barn, I saw this little moth on the door that I was about the hang. It is called an Eight Spotted Forester moth. What a neat looking, and important moth for the ecosystem! 

This afternoon I found this little butterfly in the greenhouse struggling to find its way out. I was able to pick it up, and it just sat on my hand for the longest time, not really interested in leaving! I walked it over to the garden area, and finally it turned around to look at me and then flew off!  It was almost as if it was giving me a little wink! It is a White Admiral butterfly and I'm not sure I've seen one before actually, much less held one! So beautiful!! :-)

Just got the first three classes up this evening under the Class Offerings page. Classes start on Thursday, June 15th with Essential Oils 101 (with our guest Christy Feiker), so sign up as spaces may fill up soon!

Tomatoes are also starting to outgrow their pots, so they are slowly being moved into bigger pots to sell as larger plants (price TBD). They are doing so well and I am just so thrilled with the six varieties we chose for this first group of tomatoes this year!

Since they were bursting out of their pots, the remainder of the lettuce bouquets were just planted. We have the new mixed lettuce 4pks ready to go though, and they are beautiful and super healthy! They are ready to go into the ground and we have loads of them! 

We are switching over to an appointment system for plant purchases. We have way too much going on to be watching the driveway for the pop in visitor, and we have been in and out (sometimes missing folks - so sorry!), so this will make more sense going forward. Also classes are being announced shortly as well so that is going to keep us very busy soon! You will notice the nursery address is not on the website, but will be given out for shopping appointments and to those registered for classes so that people aren't confused and show up when we aren't here or open. :-)​

What a beautiful afternoon, and finally some sun! Hours are as follows for this weekend. These are our last regular hours at this point. Again, please use our contact form if you would like to set up a shopping appointment or we can shop for you as well for curbside pickup! Have a great weekend! :-)

​Saturday 2-6pm 
​Sunday 3-6pm
​

One big thing you will notice about the plantings in our education garden is that we pack a LOT into the beds. It goes against what typical recommendations are for spacing plants. The reason we do this is that plants are happy being closer together. This one small planter has over 15 plants in it and it is thriving! It is not the prettiest display, however the plants are doing so well and are flourishing a lot more than if we had planted them separately, or farther apart in a garden bed.

If you look closely at the natural forest systems and in the wild, on the sides of the roads, etc. you don't see neat plantings, but chaos! And there are never monoculture crops! They are all growing very closely together and intertwining, providing shade, nutrients and also protection from predators. They are HAPPY!  This planter display I have on our front table sort of represents the layers of every forest system. While all layers are not represented, the kale is like the overstory tree layer, and the smaller herbs are the understory or shrub layers, and the low creeping thyme is the ground cover layer. It's a really neat mini visual display for people to see.

We continue to work on the new outdoor area, and have moved out a bunch of the plants that really needed to move on out of the warmer greenhouse such as the kale, lettuces, spinach and herbs. We also needed to create more space as we have loads of new seedings that need to be separated out and put into new pots and trays in the greenhouse.

​We've ordered new picnic tables for classes and programming, and can't wait for them to arrive soon! Also working on the design for the planting areas as well. Lots going on, but all good! :-)

Well, it looks like a little relative of our tree frog friend Birch has made himself comfortable in our greenhouse! More specifically, in our lettuce trays! This little guy is the cutest little frog, and we are so glad he's here! Birch is in the photo below - this photo was taken almost 10 years ago.

​We saw Birch the other day (well, one of his relatives likely since tree frogs live to about 5-9 years of age) and he sings LOUDLY right before it gets dark every night now.  Just love having these previous critters around the farm!  We will be thinking of a name for him.