Florist.

We have some lovely roses on the kitchen table, fresh picked from the front yard.

Start of Summer.

The summer garden is almost there! We put in tomato and pepper cages the other day and we have baby zucchini.

And baby cauliflower.

And bean flowers!

And lots of roses.

Harvested today:

• A handful of broccoli
• 1 carrot
• 6 green onions
• 1 gallon size bag packed full of lettuce
• 1 gallon size bag of chard
• 4 tiny radishes
• A handful of peas

Planted today:

• 1 row green onions
• 1 row carrots
• Filler green beans
• Filler dragon tongue beans

Inattentive Gardening = Magic!

Oh, I'm a bad gardener. Very, very bad. Well, I'm at least very inattentive when it starts pouring down rain for weeks on end in the middle of May and I just don't want to go outside or do anything really.

Almost two weeks ago I planted some beans. Two days after I planted them it started raining. And hailing. And being windy. And raining some more. And a little more hail. And even some thunder. And being generally colder than normal. I just assumed that they didn't sprout and I had on my list of things to do to sow some more beans to replace the ones that must have died in this crappy weather.

I haven't really spent much time in the garden since then, except to harvest what I needed for meals and pull a stray weed here and there. So, I was getting ready to go out in a break in the weather today and opened up the bedroom window that looks out over the garden and was absolutely shocked when I saw two rows of beans that were sprouted and kinda big! They must have been sprouted for at least two or three days and I just didn't even see it.

Then I walked around to the side yard to take a peak at the peas and see how they were doing – and there were peas on them! They must have been growing for several days to get this big without me noticing. Color me embarrased. That's one more thing to add to Mike's garden to do list while I'm gone; harvest peas.

So, I will be missing the garden for a couple weeks, but it's going to be like magic. Just like it was when I ignored the garden for just a few days and suddenly there were new plants and new food. Now, being gone for two weeks I can't even imagine what the garden will look like when I return.

At least I got to see the first roses blooming. There are oodles more buds that will bloom while I'm gone.

Picture Update - May!

The last time I did a big picture update was almost two months ago. I have a lot to catch up on! Here we go---

Now that the days are getting longer and the temperatures getting warmer (barely), the growth is taking off! Take a look!

I've thinned a bit of the kale so far and the remaining ones are really getting big. We have had a lot of heavy wind the last few weeks though, and a lot of them are slanted and now growing sideways. Whatever. They're still growing, right? They just aren't quite as pretty and uniform.

The spinach is awesome. I realize now that I did not allot enough space for spinach in the garden this year, and I will give it more room next year. I love spinach because you can use it in just about any style of food; Italian, Indian, Mexican, American, Greek, and on and on. Plus, it's great as a fresh salad, on a sandwich or wilted by itself or in a dish.

Spinach and onions, living happily together.

And, yes, this is ONE spinach plant.

The lettuces are coming in pretty well now. I impulse bought a third lettuce variety at the store the other day, which I'm going to squeeze in somewhere. It's a fast-maturing miniature butterhead. I'm pretty excited about that one.

I have also realized that I've been keeping to my garden calendar a little too closely. Every two weeks I have a note to do the next sowing of lettuce or chard or carrots, but I am trying to listen to the garden a little more than my calendar now, as I realize I'm going to have way too much lettuce all at one time and I should really space it out some more.

The chard is starting to get it's true leaves. Yeah!

The broccoli finally took and it is getting big! It's also been a victim of the wind, however, and they are all kind of growing sideways.

This must a sign that summer is fast approaching, as today was the day to transplant my zucchini starts. I put three in the ground and I may regret this. They tend to grow to gigantic proportions.

The pear tree is starting to grow pears!! Apparently we are going to have red pears instead of green. What a nice surprise!

As for my $3.99 roses; they are on the verge of blooming. You can see some of the rose inside this bud ready to burst forth.

And Lemon in the window.

We had our BBQ last weekend and it went really well. I made buns and veggie patties from scratch and they were good. Although, I'm going to have to work on this hamburger/sausage bun thing. They didn't rise nearly enough, so I had to improvise and pretend I meant to make sliders instead. But, they are pretty darn cute.

Going into the oven.

Done!

For my birthday Mike got me garden/rain boots! I've been wanting some, especially when I do my volunteer work at the Food Bank garden. It's a sloshy mess when it rains, which is most of the time, and my pants and meager hiking shoes get pretty covered by the time I'm done. Now I'm set!

Mike also really seems to like worms. This is why he is generally in charge of the worm compost bin. The other night he was outside and discovered the creepy-crawlies doing their thing in full-swing in the garden. He took some pictures. He brought a worm inside on his hand to show me. I screamed like a little girl and ran into the bedroom. Gross.

And, lastly, these pictures are mostly for my mom. I painted my living room! It's espresso brown, and I think it really ties things together. I (mistakenly) painted my kitchen some shade of chartreuse and the deep brown finally makes it look like I did it on purpose (pardon my mess).