Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Plant Swap and Breaking Bread

The first weekend in June I made a trip to a Plant Swap and Pot Luck Lunch with a bunch of gardening friends in the Ohio River Valley. Last June I attended for the first time, so this year it was a combination of greeting old friends and meeting new ones.

The weather cooperated and we had a lovely day for a picnic along the banks of the Ohio River. The food was wonderful and the people were great. I don’t understand how plants multiply like zucchini, but everyone went home with more plants than they brought to swap!


Plants were not the only things swapped, either. Some bantam chickens were traded, and one woman brought ornamental glass objects from her studio to trade for plants.
It was a fun weekend and I got a good dose of free-range bantams, guineas, and a peacock at my friend Geo’s in Kentucky where I stayed en route to Ohio. I did feel sorry for the peacock, though. He lost his mate recently, and kept putting on a glorious, colorful show of tail-feathers for the guinea hens. They were not impressed!
Peacock photo by Moshe Ash, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PeacockHead.jpg

I came home with some very nice plants for my garden. I’m happy to say the plants included 2 small fruiting trees for my growing collection: a crab apple, and a wild American gooseberry. I am disappointed that I didn’t get fruiting quince but the man who has them was unable to make the trip. I had ordered pineapple quince and orange quince early this spring but they were out of stock. There's always next year.

My sharpest memory of my maternal grandmother is the smell of guavas cooking down for jelly in her kitchen when I was 5. I think quince will be very similar!

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