Shepard Lane Garden

       The moonflower seeds I planted months ago have their very first flower, and it smells wonderful.  I saw the cone starting to develop this morning, and wanted to catch a picture of it, but I forgot to.  I was distracted by the development on the Devil's Walking Stick Aralia spinosa (seen below the moonflowers)   Ipomoea alba, white moonflower Aralia spinosa, Devil's Walking Stick, Prickly Ash, Hercule's Club We call it Devil's Walking Stick around here, because of the prickly long wooden stem that hurts if you accidentally grasp it while walking through the brush later in the year.     We have passionflower vines!  It can take a while to establish them from seed.  I planted these maybe three years ago, and they must have 'took' but not done well.  This year, we found them growing happily alongside the moonflowers.  Maybe this is the year they will bloom, too?  Passiaflora caerula, blue passionflower, it says o...

    These whipporwill peas originated in Mansfield, TN from an Etsy shop that popped up in 2012 and has since disappeared.  I don't have the lady's name anymore, but her first name was Barbara.  She called them 'brown speckled whipporwill peas', and told me they had been growing in the area for at least a century.   They are a type of the group of legumes called cowpeas.  I have been trying to keep the variety alive by growing it out every few years.  Although the 'purple-hull pea' is more popular around here, this item actually has a very long history and I actually find more success with keeping it as a mold-free dried seed than I have with the purple-hulls.  I consider it an important historical local food.  The best thing is it that grows well even in poor soil.   But, 2020 has been hard!  The weather has been so unpredictable, and I am hearing reports of slow maturity in everything.  Our tomatoes are finally starting ...