Sunday, May 08, 2011

"We'll put the toilet in the kitchen"
























What garden could be complete without a dwarf? I love dwarfs and trolls and the like, and am now the proud owner of 2. This one came with the garden. I purchased my first dwarf in 2004 at the flea market.


















Last weekend we discovered this asparagus peeking out of the sand behind the cottage. Yes! Asparagus! Today while watering the plants I spotted 3 more little stalks sprouting.


















Behold the blossoms on the blueberry bush! I can't wait to eat the blueberries!




































Here are 2 sections of the vegetable garden with spinach, leeks, dill, radishes and probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting. In the background you can see the little shack. From the outside it looks okay, but the inside...we still have a lot of work to do.


















The quince tree is just lovely right now.



















All those blossoms on the cherry tree are now turning into little sweet cherries, yay!


















The strawberries are blossoming like mad and are also producing some little berries already!


















After I thought I'd transplanted all the flower bulbs from the lawn, these little guys pop up and contradict me. A garden is always full of surprises.

It seems like the previous owners of our garden really did gardening the last time in 2006. While reorganizing the cottage and getting the little room ready to set up a kitchen I started rifling through a box of GDR gardening books. At the bottom of the box was a folder with "Personal thoughts about the garden 2006". I thought this might make for some interesting reading, and did it ever! Not only was the work plan for the garden neatly typed out for 2005 and 2006, but there were also notes about other "Gartenfreunde" ("Garden friends", this is how people address each other in the garden colony. Maybe you're "Gartenfreund Smith" and I'm "Gartenfreund Leser".)
There weren't many scathing notes about others, but one of my favorites was about how "A Gartenfreund bitched at us for driving down path XY. He was stupid!"
The quote of the year for 2005 was neatly typed at the end of the personal thoughts for 2005: "We'll put the toilet in the kitchen."