Summer blues.

A baby, two classes and weeks and weeks of rain have turned my beautiful spring garden into a late summer nightmare. It seems that the only consistent theme in my garden is rapid redoing. I have a very very long list of to do's that will (maybe) never get done. I have lovely images in my head of lazily laying in the hammock on a rock bed next to my peaceful fountain watching butterflies flit from one flower to another. Each year my plans get scrapped for reality and I end up having to start all over. When the rain started this year I was so excited. NO drought, Yeah! I harvested a few peas and some chard and lettuce, cool. However, the weeds have taken up permanent residence and I am not having to rethink the garden, AGAIN. So, my mantra has become make it smaller, simpler, less labor intensive. I will be planting more perennials than I ever thought i would.We are shooting for good cut flowers and lots of rock. I already have a good basic plan. I just need to have something a little easier to maintain.

Scrumptious Snap Peas

I'm so looking forward to the pea harvest. I thought I had lost my peas because it appeared that they had a fungus near the ground. They have rebounded nicely and have been so happy because we have had regular rain. Everything in the garden has been so green because we have had a wet, cool spring. I'm so looking forward to this summer and not being pregnant. The garden work will be even more enjoyable because I'll be a lot lighter. Things are finally starting to come together. By the fall we will have made a lot of progress. I am not expecting a surplus in harvest. This year the goal is just to have one.

Nature's generosity

Suprise! A tomato has appeared out of nowhere in my compost/blackberry bed. I had spread out the compost from last year and planted the blackberries in it and now there is a lovely tomato, happily lapping up all the nutrients. I love that all over my garden there are these prolific plants that I didn't put there. Nature has more than we can consume. I think often we don't give nature enough credit. There is s0 much life in the earth despite all of human destruction.

Herbs and Tomatos

This is a new glorious bed. I planted two brandywine tomatoes. I transplanted mexican mint marigold, anise hyssop, oregano and will plant basil seeds. I may try to work in some cucumbers. This next week my high priority is mulching this area. I'm excited because I feel as though I am getting my style together. This year things have been easier to decide, there hasn't been as much crazy frantic overhauling (although I am still in the habit of spring rearranging). The bush in the top left corner is covered with sweet smelling flowers that have brought many bees. I'm hoping that the bees will stick around and pollinate my squash and other assorted needful flowers.

Ready for more.

Other fun goings on. The bottom pick is my fluke experiment with potatoes. I didn't realize that they were so easy to grow. We bought the seed potatoes at the garden center (they were very inexpensive) but I didn't have a plan for them. They were an impulse buy that the kids and Dave thought would be cool. They were so cheap I didn't argue but when we got home and I didn't really know what to do with them, they sat in a bucket for a couple of weeks. We had read that dusting them with fireplace ashes would help prevent rot so there was some ash in the bucket. I finally got tired of it, and needed the bucket so I took a few out to the garden and just stuck them in the ground. I don't even remembering watering them in or anything. Now a month and a half later they look great. I don't know what they are supposed to look like but at least the foliage is nice. I planted some bush beans next to them. And will add several more squares of beans next week. They are supposed to be good companions. I cleared an area the other day (the soil is nice and moist and easy to work) and have plans for herbs and butterfly type plants. I have sunflower seeds too and think I might put some on that side of the garden. I venture out there a few times a week and just do what I can. I usually don't work long but its enough. I have so many things I want to buy that it is making it difficult to be patient and do a little bit each month. Plants get expensive and we need a huge load of mulch. As long as I don't think about what I haven't done and focus on what I have I do ok.

Greens!

I love this first burst of spring. The weather has been a little wacky and I was worried last night that the hail would damage my tender plants but no one is injured.The lettuce I have up looks really good and I may be snipping some in the near future. We managed to do some staggered plantings so we will have a steady harvest for a while. The oregano was a wonderful treat. I didn't think it had survived but it is doing really well and I will probably dig some up to give away by the end of the summer.

I LOVE RAIN!!

And so does the garden.

Surprise flowers

We have white Lady Banks! The plants were supposed to all be yellow. We were so surprised to see these beautiful white flowers. I love the roses. I have plans to increase my rose collection over the years. The double knock out have been so far worth their cost. The one in the picture gets more sun than the other one right now but as we move into the summer the sun will move enough that the other rose will look really good as well. They are getting better established.

We have some volunteer green beans. If they were bush beans, I would be more excited. I have about 4 or 5 pole bean sprouts but they aren't in a position to be trellised. I am going to leave them for a little while to see what happens. Apparently when you totally neglect the garden for several months and all the beans dry and fall to the ground, the garden still blesses me and doesn't give up. What a lesson in perserverance. My garden is not hte most hospitable place in the world. It is usually too dry, overgrown and generally untended. Yet it still brings me a great deal of hope as these plants work hard and be fruitful despite my not so green thumb.

The spring flowers have been blooming. I love the spirea and the Lady Banks. They are so exciting to see come out. The Lady banks have been more prolific this year than ever before. The veggies that are planted are doing great. In fact the peas have started climbing. I have the seeds to begin planting more this weekend. We are going for slow and steady wins the race. Hopefully, by the time the baby comes things will be pretty well established and I can just maintain 15 or 20 minutes a day in the summer. I am also hoping against hope for rain. We are not the only ones in the US that are worried about rain but it would really be a blessing if it actually rained this weekend as much as they are forcasting. The weather people I think really want to believe that we will get the rain but unfortunatly it rarely comes to pass. It barely sprinkled this morning and now the clouds have moved off and the weather is absolutely gorgeous. It is cool and breezy and bright. I opened my windows and have fresh air coming in. I love the spring. I have always been more partial to the fall but the spring has become such a wonderful time. I think its the gardener in me that is blossoming too. I have been dreaming of chickens also. I would love to have a chicken or chickens again. They are really great animals. They are cheap to maintain and cute to watch, plus provide good manure and eggs. They are all around a perfect backyard pet. Our family could completely stop buying eggs for the summer with just a few chickens. Ayla and I were looking at a blog with a woman who has just had lambs. They are so beautiful. I know that farming is an incredible amount of work but so rewarding. I am hoping that Dave and I will be in a position sometime in the future to have a small farm.

New Growth

One of my favorite things in the world is seeing plants appear from a seed. I'm not usually very successful with seeds but I have great hopes. My carrots seeds have not come up and I have found that they are the most difficult to be patient for. They take a long time to germinate in optimum conditions. 10-25 days. We've had some oscillating cold and heat and so I'm not sure how the weather will affect their germination rate. However, the lettuce I planted has sprouted and the peas. I'm very excited about the peas. I am trying several new things this year. In a couple of weeks we will put in tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers probably. Then, corn, pumpkins and maybe some squash. I have a large area that need to be prepared for planting though. I haven't quite worked out how to get water I need there. I like the bucket and scoop method, advocated by the Square Foot Gardening book. I may have to just try to be really consistent with that. I would love to have a go at some things like corn and pumpkins. We also need more flowers. The last couple of years have been awfully dry and erractic and some of my perennials have had it. I did notice this morning that my two strawberry plants have flowers all over them. This is really good news. I have plans to put more strawberries in this weekend. I am trying to go slow, get things established before I move to the next thing. It is encouraging that I have seeds growing with all that's going on in life. Spring is a time of rebirth, regeneration and growth. I feel those changes in my bones. With Abigail coming and school there is alot of growth happening this year.

Spring is coming!

Its that time again and I have the fever. Literally and figuratively. We were all outside at about 7 am yesterday enjoying hte cool fresh air and digging! We had some beds that needed to be repaired and tilled up. We added some organic matter and we put up a chicken wire fence as a doggie deterent. Nora is not sure about being blocked off from half of the yard but I'm hoping with a little training she can learn to stay out of hte beds and on the path, until we can find time to do that, we have a fence there. The picture on the top left are some of the early spring veggies we put in. Everyone helped with planting (their favorite thing). They like to water because I gave them a spray bottle. Its very gentle on newly planted carrot seeds. The picture on the bottom left is a $40 rose plant. The garden center lady was a very good sales person. She said this rose (called a double knockout) will bloom until November with huge red blossoms. She also said they are idiot proof (this was a good selling point). Hopefully, with a little bit of care we will have big red blossoms all summer. There is no fragrance, which was disappointing but I'll take the flowers. We have a schedule lined up until the end of March to do things alittle at a time. Hopefully, this year will be an improvement over last. It seems as the kids get older and we get more experience, it gets easier. I love to be out there, I love the smells and the feeling of accomplishment. If nothing else we'll have onions out the wazoo because that's what I planted the most of.

List of things planted: onions, swiss chard, parsley, rhubarb, peas (snap and pod) lettuce, carrots (little baby finger ones, so cute)

One the list for this month: strawberries, more lettuce, broccoli, spinach and more parsley and carrots, radishes

For March: Tomatoes (beautiful heirloom varieties in purple and green stripes), cucumbers, corn, pumpkins, bush and pole beans, and whatever else I see that catches my eye. We would like to work on putting in some more permanent plantings as well, expanding the butterfly garden, which has been moved and adding more medicinal herbs. After saying all that it doesn't sound like I'm moving any time soon.