Good morning, and may the gods of hail avoid you! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging!
Denver's foul weather finally cleared out, more of less, on Tuesday. We've crept up into the 70's for a couple of days this week, and for today it will be mid-60's, partly cloudy, with a "chance of afternoon thunderstorms". Yesterday's "chance" gave us a spattering of hail.
It's an in-between time in my flower garden. Lots of big fat buds on lots of plants, but few have actually bloomed. We do have blue flax, though.
I really like the blue flax, although Mr. Frankenoid and I have an ongoing argument about who planted it - he did, but won't admit it, because it tends to spread. I actually don't mind that it self seeds, I treat it as an attractive weed, leave it where it looks good, but have no guilty feelings when I rip it out by the roots.
Speaking of "attractive weeds", we've a spectacular year for johnny jump-ups. Been several years since we've had so many.
Mr. Frankenoid has finally gotten my garden arch up, so Mom's Corner is getting to the final phases of construction for the year. The arch is naked right now, but soon the rose bush planted on the east side (to the left) will be throwing up new canes, and on the right side I planted, with very great effort, a couple of clematis. Cross your fingers and hope they survive to meet their rosy friend in the middle. I've killed many a clematis.
Along with lots of johnny jump-ups, we have lots and lots and lots of ladybugs. Yeah! Not a single aphid on the peony buds this year, but I counted 15 ladybugs on one plant last night:
Both the Carol Mackey daphne and the lilac are in full flower now. The scent is so intense that I can open the back door and have the whole house flooded with the smell:
Today's plan is to get the rest of the veggie patch ready for the planting. The tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, pole beans and moonflowers have been on the front porch since Wednesday to harden off. I'll get them into the ground, inside wall-o-waters, by Wednesday. And pure excitement -- one of the moonflowers has a bud! Last year they didn't bloom until late August, so that's, like, so spectacular. I may also try and get some planter boxes put together. I have a couple of (gawd-awful expensive) rail planters for the back porch (they have a groove down the middle to rest on a deck rail). I also have some half-circle planters that will go into Mom's Corner.
The pea, radish and kohlrabi crops are encountering some difficulty, namely a pest named Arwen the Terrible. She's decided that the area between the pea fences are her own personal, private litter box, and has been merrily digging away. I mean, there's another 72 square feet of open, unplanted territory in the garden, but nooooo, she's The Terrible, and must terrorize the planted areas. Lengthy areas of pea seedlings are gone, and I've replanted there, so we'll see if anything grows from them.
I've started a flat of corn inside, so that will be ready to go out in two weeks or so. My pest problem with corn in the early days is Stray Cat Strut - he thinks corn starts are very, very yummy. My later problem with corn, and something which showed up for the first time two years ago, is corn aphids. Google information has it that corn aphids winter down south, then move north. They land on the plants while they're first tassling. Until the weather pattern was disrupted, the aphids were migrating through our area before we had tassels on the corn, but changes in weather patterns has stopped that. It's a horrible sight, and I'm now in the experimental phase of control. Any suggestions?
OK, your turns. And, as usual, I want pictures!