Good morning, happy sunshine, and welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging!
We've been having off-and-on cool weather, and got a big dumping of rain last Wednesday. I was off work on Tuesday, though, and the weather was perfect - low 70's, warm enough to get up a sweat, put on cut-offs and shed my socks - bare toes in the breeze for the first time this year. Whoo-hoo!
Last week we had a request for iris; mine started to open last Saturday afternoon. Main show hasn't happened yet, but the warmest corner is looking mighty fine
The large-leaved plant with the iris is clary sage. A stupendous plant. It's a medicinal, whose uses are described
here , but I grow it because I find it extremely beautiful. It's a biennial, the first year it's quite small, then the second year it just astounds you with its size - a yard tall with huge spikes of pink and lavender flowers. It self-seeds, but not annoyingly. I have 3 plants this year off the original planted 3 years ago (the original plant has now died).
Here are a couple more iris, one dark purple, which has bloomed before its sisters, and one dwarf:
The remainder of the iris are budded, but not bloomed. However, the creeping veronica is giving a fantastic show this year, and another favorite, the coral Jupiter's beard, is budding out well.
On Tuesday, when we had our fine, fine weather, I worked my butt off outside. I laid the rest of the soaker hose in the veggie patch, planted the tomatoes, zucchetta, cucumber and moonflowers in wall-o-waters, and got my first picking of fresh veggies, radishes and spinach:
And then I washed, and washed, and washed spinach.
I even remember to put on sunscreen - something I'm notorious for forgetting. I was so proud of myself for avoiding a sunburn until I went to shower, and discovered that although my shoulders and nose avoided a crisping, my ears were sunburned. Damn, always forget to slather the sunscreen somewhere.
I've been putting together the planter boxes, but still have a bunch of plants to stuff into containers. Not going to get much done today, though; we're celebrating a boy's birthday! My youngest, Ian, is 9 today, so we have a full schedule. Here he is as a baby with his big brother, and what he looked like at 1 year old:
And here are the brothers now, engaging in a water fight yesterday evening with their brand new squirt guns:
The umbrella rather kills the idea of a water fight, eh? And I know pictures of the boys aren't exactly "garden blogging", but it's a good excuse to show them off, and they are in the yard.
I expect the majority of today will be spent breaking in a new bicycle, if it doesn't break Ian first! Ian is autistic, so it's sometimes difficult pushing him forward to the "next phase of things". We had the damndest time getting him to peddle a tricycle on his own when he was a toddler, and now he needs pushed into riding a bike without training wheels. I'm sure we'll have a few bumps and bruises to nurse before the morning is over, and then it's off to the movies (Robots on the IMAX screen), and home for pizza, birthday cake and an overnight visit from his best friend.
Yesterday after work I baked the birthday cake (a cholesterol-laden nightmare - one and a half cups of butter in the cake, another stick in the milk-chocolate frosting, along with heavy cream), then got beneficial nematodes onto the daffodils - perhaps I can make progress on eliminating the narcissus fly problem this year. It will probably take a couple of years, but we've had good luck with the nematodes in combating the larval stage of some pests in the past. We're still loaded with ladybugs so I haven't seen many aphids, and with all the rain we've had I'm on the lookout for powdery mildew on the roses and honeysuckle.
A question has come up in the past about why my zone 5 garden was blooming when east coast zone 5's were still in the snowy mud. Here's the deal: your "zone" only deals with how cold it gets, not how long it stays that cold. So, even if we start warming up in late February, and you start warming up in March or April, if your lowest temperature in the winter can get to -10 to -20, you're zone 5.
In any event, we are now in mid-May, so even our northern U.S. friends should be getting some action. Your turn - and I want pictures!