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On Wednesday I came around the corner of the house and found this happy sight -- irises blooming away:
I could photograph them all day:
Really, they're just the most beautiful things:
Do you have irises blooming? Are you as happy with yours as I am with mine?
In some ways I've been really good at sticking to my self-imposed $100 budget for annuals. I only bought a few things here or there and if you don't count the perennial herbs I bought -- which you shouldn't in the 'annuals' budget -- I was just at $100 and that included veggies. Seriously, I've been good. See, I'm patiently waiting for all this basil to grow (which would happen much more quickly if the sun would shine) instead of buying bunches of it though it's killing me to wait:
But I willfully and knowingly ignored the budget and spent $36 on petunias:
But I saw these deep purple ones with white edges and fell in love:
The pink is brightening my spirits considerably:
And I can't quite get this color to show up correctly. It's a deep burgundy, wine colored, so lush:
Really, I had to do it, splurge and spend $36 on hanging containers, right? The pansies were nice for some color through the cold, rainy spring, but they just weren't saying summer to me. I'm trying to figure out where to put them though, because they are still pretty and I read that if they make it through the summer, they may re-bloom in the fall:
And I further exceeded my plant budget, but this was such a good deal I couldn't pass it up. Groupon had a $15 deal for $30 worth of plants at a nursery about 10 minutes from my office. I had never been to that particular nursery before, but I figured there had to be $30 worth of items I would buy at any nursery. It was quite an experience. It has changed hands and names numerous times, the staff were friendly enough, but had no idea what they had in stock or where it was on the property. Let's just say I probably won't be going back. But with my powers of persuasion and my groupon certificate I managed to walk out with a tomato plant, a golden lemon thyme (another one, I know, but I love it so much), a golden sage, a variegated oregano, and a rosemary:
The tomato plant was in the cutest trellises square container and has actual tomatoes on it already! How could I resist? It had two labels -- Mountain Pride and Husky Cherry tomato -- it should be pretty obvious quickly if it is a Husky Cherry tomato or not if those tomatoes don't get any bigger than they are now:
But that's it, I promise I won't buy anything else. Really. Well unless something fails, like my basil seedlings. And once Vaiuso starts having their stock clearing sales. Or if I find an incredible bargain. Oh, who am I kidding? Are you having trouble sticking to your garden budget or are you smarter than me and realize you'll never stick to one anyway?
This month's GGW Picture This Photo Contest theme is Lighting: A Closer Look. The judge, Alan Detrick, gave us a directive to:
"The subject choice is yours but make it a close up or macro image. If you don’t have macro equipment, get as close as you can. Look at your images carefully to make sure the lighting sets the mood."
So I'm going to enter the same exact photo I did last month because I don't have another that fits the theme better than it does. This backlit astilbe leaf that I snapped a little over a year ago is my entry:
I hope I'm not breaking a rule by entering the same photo two months in a row, but it only got an honorable mention last month, so I think it's okay.
*You can click View this photo for a larger size version of my entry.
This bright warm yellow thing appeared in the sky on Friday. And no water was falling on my head. Once I finished my work day I headed out to the garden. First I stuck four impatiens into each of the containers flanking the front steps. I also stuck three in the bleeding heart container for when they die back and one in a random pot up near the biggest stump on the shady side of the house. I hope they grow quickly here since the rhododendrons look a little sparse:
Next I went around hilling all the potatoes. This is one of the only spots where they were growing pretty evenly, so I could show a before and after (left is after in case it's tough to see):
I probably should have hilled the gigantic Yukon gold potatoes on the left even more than I did. I still can't believe they're growing so quickly...from leftover store-bought potatoes no less! And the blue potatoes on the right are absolutely beautiful:
I planted beans in the 6 containers in the veggie garden -- some Royal Burgundy and Maxibel Bush beans that Jennah sent me last year:
One of the pepper plants snapped at the stem, no idea whether I did it while planting or if it was the pouring rain, but I picked up an eggplant to replace it. I thought I was buying an Ichiban eggplant, but apparently I grabbed a Black Beauty instead:
The radishes and carrots are out of control. I thinned them after taking this photo, but I scattered the seeds poorly as usual:
And an interesting zinnia seed from Botanical Interests went into this large container on the corner of the patio. I may also plant some in other spots in the garden, but I haven't quite decided yet:
I added a basil seedling to this container and am declaring it done:
I stuck a basil seedling and a piece of hot & spicy oregano in this hanging container of herbs and it is also done:
Saturday dawned, alright it 11:00 am'ed (I was out late on Friday night), beautiful, sunny, and warm. Lee got out early and mowed and I wandered around doing random things. Like potting up the coleus cuttings that I rooted in water:
And I suddenly remember the very sad houseplant that Lee's mother gave us about 10 years ago. Have you ever seen a sadder looking pothos? I'm telling you, we can kill any houseplant, though this one is much tougher than most seeing as it has lasted a good decade despite our torture:
Wow, hardly any roots on those plants:
Hopefully the nice fresh potting soil and more frequent watering will have help it bounce back (and it's back inside out of direct sunlight, don't fret):
Two rows of Royal Purple Bush beans are sown in the planter table:
And the two wooden troughs and the ceramic pot to the left have Asparagus Yard Long beans in them. Another interesting and new to me seed from Botanical Interests. Oh, and if you're wondering why containers instead of just planting in the soil? Because there is very little soil here. You can actually see the asphalt and tree stumps poking up through the soil, so containers it is because it's one of the sunniest spots in our garden:
Lee did a great job of planting dahlias down at the end of the veggie garden where we're trying to grow flowers this year. And I put the ones that we didn't plant down there into containers for future use elsewhere. Not sure where, but I'm sure they'll get used. Only three basil seedlings survived the first round of seed-starting, but I did transplant them into larger containers and added them to the top shelf of the wire shelves. In contrast, the tarragon was widely successful. I planted all four of these tarragon seedlings in a larger container and they will eventually go into the herb raised bed:
It felt like I did a lot more than that on Saturday, but I guess I didn't. Rain loomed, but never arrived. I went out to get some cupcakes for dessert and had to stop at Expect Discounts to see what else they had after that incredibly successful stop there a few weeks ago. Not as great as the last trip, but I did come home with a 6-pack of coleus for $5. Too pretty and inexpensive to pass up:
I decided to stop by Shelley's on Main Street in Branford to see if they had any unusual basils (they didn't), but I did find something really exciting -- a golden lemon thyme:
One last look at the herb barrel on Saturday because it would be Sunday's project:
I dug out all the perennial herbs except for the creeping thyme (barely visible behind the geranium). I think it will look very nice here if it ever actually creeps. Five of the coleus plants purchased the day before surround the Cranesbill Pink geranium:
Which was blooming before I transplanted it and will hopefully continue to do so:
The other coleus went into the empty green ceramic pot. I must remember to pinch it so it's nice and bushy:
I transplanted most of the herbs from the barrel into the large black container on the driveway now cleared of spinach. The sage (one of the first plants I bought when we started gardening five years ago) was a little floppy in the center, but it perked back up after a good soaking. Parsley at 8 o'clock, silver thyme from midnight to about 4 o'clock, and golden oregano at 6 o'clock:
I also moved the second of the two lemon thyme plants I already had in the grouping by the patio garden to here. It won't hurt to have some herbs close to the front door, especially the lemon thyme, we use it often in cooking:
I hemmed and hawed about putting the chives in the raised herb bed, but I think I'm going to do it and probably right where they're sitting. I'm also pretty sure that the alternating row of cilantro and dill at the front of the bed is in my plan. The other plants here are a purple sage, lavender, that golden lemon thyme, the tarragon, and a hot & spicy oregano. But I really don't want to plant until I have a better idea of how much basil I'm going to have so I can actually design this bed, not just throw stuff in:
But I'm going to have to plant the dill and cilantro soon, they both have true leaves and roots poking out the bottom of the pots:
I did plant the zucchini and cucumbers in the other side. That's two groupings of Black Beauty zucchini in front, three groupings of Spacemaster Bush cucumbers in the second row, and three groupings of a hybrid zucchini in back. I'm still waiting to see if the Red Acre cabbage is going to do anything (small seedlings, just barely showing true leaves) and I may stick them in here somewhere:
I had more Black Beauty zucchini seedlings, so I decided to plant them in the veggie garden in front of the lovage with the mystery seedling:
I think it's a zucchini maybe? It's self-sown and we've decided to leave it and see what develops:
And a row of Early Pride Hybrid cucumbers went into the raised veggie bed at the base of the trellis:
And here are the nursery shelves as they appear today. The two grey trays are full of basil seedlings -- grow already! I'm sure I'll be detailing my adventures with these plants over the next month or two:
But that's it. Other than the raised herb bed, I'm done. Oh wait, I still have that row of beans to plant along the house too. I want to stagger the bean planting so we can stagger the bean harvesting. But there are lots of things to look forward to, like the irises just about to bloom:
Now I would like some warmer temps and days of sunshine to alternate with days of gentle warm rain. Is that too much to expect?
How's the weather where you are? We're experiencing a little rain here. I think there have been two sunny hours since Saturday -- one on Wednesday and one on Thursday. I keep finding this:
I think I've emptied the seedling trays 4 times in the past 30 hours. My rain gauge says 3 inches, but I'm not sure that we haven't had more rain than that. What's a gardener to do? Well this gardener keeps ending up with wet, dirty feet:
But I've also been catching up with things like housecleaning, seeing friends, and work. On Monday after a long work day I ran over to my friend Mary's house. She had put out a Facebook plea for empty 4" nursery containers. Mary puts out dahlias in little pots in front of her house each spring and asks people to leave $2 in a jar. I think she makes enough to pay for her annuals each year. So I threw 20 or so empty pots in a bag, grabbed my garden gloves and handy Felcos and headed east. See Mary has glorious lilacs along her driveway and since they're at peak or slightly past, I knew she would let me cut some to bring home. Only gardeners come home from someone else's garden with more than they brought:
Mary couldn't resist sending me home with a bunch of dahlias. If it ever stops raining I'll even plant them:
And how beautiful the lilacs were. They're somewhat past their peak now 3 days after this photo was snapped, but they still smell divine:
I stopped at Walmart on the way home from Mary's house for some contact lens solution. Guess what I came home with -- yup, more plants:
I got lazy and decided that two $9 hanging containers of impatiens were worth not having to find and buy new liners for the hanging baskets on the shady side of the house:
They don't show up well against the fading marsh marigolds, but once that's all bare dirt I think the lighter containers will look pretty good:
But this rainy weather is giving all the transplants time to get good and established, like this creeping jenny in the fish container:
And all the seeds are developing nicely like this kale in one of the raised beds:
The potatoes need to be hilled already. All of the potatoes in all of the containers:
And the grass is coming back slowly, but surely. I love this shot from high on the hill in back of our garden. I wish you could see my neighbor's funky garden. Maybe I'll take you on a photo tour some day:
I might be able to get out to the garden on Friday and get some stuff done like hilling the potatoes. There's only a 60% chance of rain. That's practically a clear day after what we've been experiencing. If you're reading from the Northeast, are you managing to maintain your sanity?
Bet you expected me to start off with a photo of the veggie garden! Nope. Lee hit Home Depot early Saturday morning to get some more garden soil and potting soil and then got out into the garden while I was supposed to be getting a facial. They messed up and cancelled my appointment, so I headed back home just in time to approve the placement of the new azalea SS2 got me for Mother's Day. It had to be out of the roof drip-line, but not too close to the walk:
He did a great job and I'm very happy. Now I just hope it thrives there:
Then Lee headed off to do other things (weeding, sucking up more leaves, etc.) and I dug out those 6 Japanese maple seedlings I found in the driveway and added them to ever growing collection of plants on the wire shelves in the driveway:
While I was doing that I somehow managed to knock over the plastic container holding the Japanese maple in the middle of the lamium spilling it all out. So I took the phlox that is barely holding on out of this ceramic container and put the poor spilled plants and soil in instead. I don't have a home for it, so I just stuck it on the wood table on the gravel patio:
Then I went to work planting the tomatoes and peppers. Lee helped out by following behind me putting the cages in the containers. From L to R -- Purple bell pepper, 3 empty containers that will hold beans, 2 Lillian's Yellow tomatoes, Purple bell pepper, Soldacki tomato, 3 empty containers that will hold beans, Soldacki tomato, Lilac bell pepper, red potato, red potato, Lilac bell pepper, Brandywine tomato, 2 Hillbilly tomatoes, Brandywine tomato and then the two metal trash cans of potatoes and the small one in front of them has mint:
I was part way through the containers on the gravel patio when Lee brought me lunch -- chicken salad on rye/pumpernickel:
After lunch I got back to planting and Lee headed inside for a shower. The gravel patio is all tomatoes, from L to R -- Black Krim, Black Carbon, Paul Robeson, Paul Robeson, Black Carbon, and Black Krim. Nothing in the raised beds yet. I'm thinking herbs on the right, probably a lot of perennial herbs too, and zucchini and cucumbers on the left:
And I wanted to point out our first attempt to grow tomatoes in the ground in the veggie garden. 2 Black Krims on each side of the Hillbilly tomatoes in the trellis planter. People ask why we garden primarily in containers and tree roots is one answer. This is our fifth year gardening and we can finally dig a hole here without a pick-axe to break up the tree roots. I hit one big one on the left but was able to get through it with just the trowel:
I managed to come home with more tomato seedlings than I had containers large enough for them. Two went into the ground above, but I didn't have another in-ground spot that would work. So one Lillian's Yellow is in the pot that the azalea came in on the driveway:
And the other is in a largish pot on the patio next to the patio tomato. I don't see this working long-term, but for the moment it will do:
Here's another view of the gravel patio and raised bed from the patio. I love this angle (the one I see most often):
I was so happy to be done with the tomato and pepper planting. I forget how long it takes to plant 22 seedlings. I sprinkled fertilizer on each container (the gray stuff in the photo of the wooden trellis planter above) and after taking photos, watered them in. More on the fertilizer I'm using this year towards the end of the growing season. I wasn't quite ready to call it a day because rain was forecast for the entire week, so I went over to play with my herbs:
In addition to rearranging them, I potted up the variegated ginger mint and sqeezed it in. I think this is the final arrangement of the pots, but their contents may change a little:
I'm not very happy with the way the herb barrel looks. I think I may finally give up on growing herbs in this spot and instead plant the barrel with some shade loving perennials because I just don't think it gets enough sun. The chives do great, but the golden oregano is barely there, only one sage came back, the creeping thyme is okay, and the silver thyme is sparse. Oh, and there's a bit of parsley. I'll give it a few weeks to see if it's going to bounce back at all:
Actually I drafted this post on Saturday night and since then I've found a sage blossom and the rains have the whole container looking better. But mostly I'm excited about the sage blossom:
I think I'll try to stick some hot & spicy oregano in this hanging basket, maybe some basil too. The chives and creeping thyme look great, but again, another sage that didn't overwinter:
And I pulled the thyme and sage that didn't make it in this one and replaced them with more golden oregano and a lavender that I grew from seed that overwintered successfully -- in a tiny little pot no less! Will likely also stick a basil in here:
And this is one of the things I'm most excited about this year. Nasturtiums in hanging pots:
Planted at exactly the same time as the other one in the same configuration. Where are my seedlings? I will give them another few days and if none appear I will plant more seeds:
I have mixed feelings about the 7 days of rain in the forecast. We're two days in and I'm not going stir crazy yet, but I still have a little bit of clean up to do -- the beans along the house from last year. Ugh. At least I won't have to water anything like I did last week. Then when it stops raining and warms up again beans, zucchini, and cucumbers!
Carol's been hosting GBBD for years over at May Dreams Garden, and now I'm a monthly participant after years of observing. What a difference a month makes! I just looked back at my April post and there were only hints of plants poking up through leaves and marsh marigolds everywhere. Heck, even the spinach has bolted and will soon flower:
There's purple phlox in bloom:
And pink too:
The Purple Gem rhododendrons flanking the front door have a few flowers:
But the strawberries are doing great:
I love this photo. I have so much fun photographing the chive blossoms and this one is poised to burst:
The azalea SS2 got me for Mother's Day is more flowers than anything else:
Technically this patio tomato is cheating, but at least it was grown in a CT greenhouse. I don't know if the husky cherry tomatoes were CT grown, but they've also got flowers. Unlike this plant they've already got little tiny tomatoes too:
Still have vinca blooming and still have marsh marigolds everywhere we haven't weeded or mowed, but they won't last much longer...too dry for them:
The bleeding hearts in a container in the perennial shade garden put on a show:
This self-sown lamium is the first to bloom by far:
This astilbe is the first to have buds although they all look good:
The pansies in the hanging baskets are not wowing me. They're pretty, but I don't know, I think they're just not right:
Hopefully I will have irises to share next month. And I wonder what else?!
Except for the few hours stolen on Monday after work to get the new raised bed in I didn't get to do a thing in the garden this week. Work, work, and more work, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I did manage to get to Cyndy's garden club's plant sale on Thursday. It was all of 5 minutes from my office so I was able to pop by before work. I managed to find a spot to park and get in line just before they opened for sales:
Still in the line watching the swarm of people before me:
I knew I could only purchase what I could carry because I couldn't leave plants in the car on such a sunny, warm day. But what a smart idea having a holding area for people so they can buy their plants and then go pull their car up closer:
As I said, I could only buy what I could carry, but I did find Cyndy to say hello before I left. Two hardy geraniums and a little tray of hens & chicks came to work with me:
One of the geraniums was a gift for my boss, but the other, a Cranesbill Pink, is now patiently awaiting a new home in my garden and I don't have a clue where I'm going to plant it:
But I got the hens and chicks into that shallow ceramic container after work on Friday. This is my first experience with them. I hope I don't overwater them:
At last the basil seeds are finally sprouting:
And this one completely cracked me up...a Japanese maple seedling sprouted right in the middle of some lamium I stuck in a plastic pot until I figured out where I needed it. I've actually found 6 Japanese maple seedlings growing in the gravel driveway and will try to get them out and into a more hospitable spot this weekend. I'm going to let this seedling grow there and if it becomes a pretty container planting I'll transplant the whole thing to a ceramic pot:
Much like I'm leaving the random sunflower that self-sowed right in the front of the largest of these pots (directly south of the burgundy colored heuchera). I know it's a sunflower because the seed husk was still on it. I'm very pleased with this arrangement of plants and pots:
This will also be one of this weekend's projects. Lee is going to dig a hole right where that pot of bleeding hearts is and plant the beautiful azalea that SS2 got me for Mother's Day. It might be too shady over here for it, but I found a comment online from someone growing the same species in similar conditions and they said it blooms beautifully each year, but doesn't get any larger. I would actually be very happy with that:
And I don't care what else happens this weekend, I am getting those damn tomatoes and peppers planted.
A lot of gardening isn't much fun at all. Especially in the spring when it feels like all you do is clean up bed after bed endlessly. So I try to find things to be excited about as we get the grunt work done. Like lots of buds on the irises:
And the pretty pink flowers on the phlox:
Well, back to the work. Lee's first task on Saturday was mulching the perennial shade garden:
Then the Mother's Day garden. There are a few signs that the azalea isn't dead, but it sure doesn't look good:
I was so impressed by the speed at which Lee mulched. He is now calling himself the mean mother mulcher. I blinked and he had the hosta/rhododendron bed done:
While he did all of that, I surveyed the patio garden. And then I started pulling the tulip/daffodil/crocus border in front. It hardly bloomed this year (well the crocuses did pretty well, but the others not so much) and will definitely need more bulbs in the fall:
I have to admit that I got bored and had to take a break. That rosemary that I picked up cheap at the grocery store will be very happy in this beautiful pot:
And it's looking very at home in the herb garden, but there's still room for one or two more pots:
Back to the patio garden...there were lots of marsh marigolds mixed with some other weeds. And then I found a little baby lupine. I wonder how many I weeded out before their true leaves appeared. This one will stay:
There, isn't that much better? I even mulched this one myself:
I think Lee was scared of getting in between the irises, which frankly I was kind of frightened of doing myself. They have lots of flower stalks beginning and I was sure I was going to break some, but I didn't:
We called it a day a little earlier than we normally would because we knew that we'd have all day on Sunday to garden too. My first celebratory Red Stripe of the year -- and it's a 'light' one:
And here's Lee lighting the first fire of the year. We didn't need it for warmth, we were trying to drive away all the little flying insects buzzing around. Lots more this year than usual. Probably the cool wet spring we've been having:
SS2 even came out and sat with us for a while. We enjoyed it until a strong thunderstorm blew in, but the thunder and swiftly darkening skies gave us plenty of time to get ourselves and all our tools inside before the rain arrived. Lee got outside early on Sunday, while I hid inside from the sun, and SS2 went to have brunch with his mom (who's in town for a few days). By the time I got outside he had the veggie garden tidied up and mulched. It's ready for plants:
I stood in the shade and transplanted the jalapeno peppers to the hanging containers. Hopefully we'll actually get some peppers this year:
Then I was down in the veggie garden leveling out the containers when SS2 got home. He brought with him an excellent gift -- a 'Hershey Red' azalea. Now I just have to figure out where we'll be planting it (I think I have an idea):
Then he gave me the best Mother's Day present by helping to assemble the new raised bed without complaint. Plus he's really good at it:
And here it is in place. We were hoping that it would be level enough that we wouldn't have to dig, but it's not. So Lee and SS2 will get there on Monday and get it done:
SS2 did one more thing for me before I excused him from garden duty. He almost stepped on that little lupine seedling several times, so it's now "protected" from wandering feet by two of the butterflies on stakes. Yeah, I don't think it will work either:
Then I headed back over to the potting area and transplanted really the only seedlings that survived my tough love...the marigolds:
I finally got around to potting up the dahlia tubers and I got the hose cart reconnected. It's possible to garden without running water to the entire garden, but it's a whole lot easier with it:
I had two dahlia tubers left over, so I stuck one in this pot next to the purple fountain grass that I don't think is coming back. You can see it just above the coleus that I brought out from the kitchen and stuck in there too:
And the basil from the windowsill went into a pot added to the herb garden:
The hot and spicy oregano went into the other big pot along the driveway as did another leftover dahlia:
I'm not sure that the scattering the radish and carrot seeds together method worked. They're all kind of in clumps around the container like this:
And that was the end of Sunday/Mother's Day...or was it? Lee and SS2 did promise to get that raised bed in on Monday when Lee got home from work. And they did! First up was marking around the bed in place and scraping back the 'sod' which was mostly weeds:
I was helping too, so no more photos until we'd already finished leveling the spot...well mostly leveling it, nothing's perfect. I take credit for the idea of filling in that little channel between the patio and bed with some river rocks we had on hand:
Items to note in the photo above: 1.) The soil looks pretty good, lots of worms, not too much debris, some glass, so we didn't line the bottom of the raised bed. 2.) The planter table is making getting to the back of the 4 foot deep bed a little difficult. That's easily fixed...the new home of the planter table:
Oh, and while I'm over here, the two wooden containers to the right of the potatoes will hold climbing beans. We need something to make that fence less ugly. We really miss the ivy:
So here is the raised bed filled with soil and ready to plant. Even once those pots have tomatoes I'll be able to easily reach all portions of the bed (and there's something funky about this photo, I swear it's all level, not slumping in the middle):
I'm very pleased with our progress in the garden. One more push to get the tomato and pepper starts in and we'll pretty much be finished. Now let's just hope that mother nature and my work schedule cooperate!
On Sunday I walked in the March For Babies with some girlfriends. I had to leave the house very early and in my rush out the door (not accustomed to leaving the house before 9am) I neglected to assign Lee chores. I didn't need to worry. I arrived home some 6 hours later (we brunched after the walk) to a very tired husband and some weeded beds. The Mother's Day garden:
The hosta/rhododendron garden:
And he got every single leaf out of the lawn (he had left a huge pile over the winter and they were a bitch to get up). Now we just have to mulch the various beds and watch them grow. Speaking of growing...the first of the Swiss chard seedlings appeared that day in the pots along the driveway:
As did the first flowers on the phlox. Pink on one plant:
And purple on the other. Love the funky shape of the flower buds:
I saved the wire trellis from the patio tomato plant that I bought at Walmart last year and luckily it fit the one I bought last week. Now in its home on the patio:
The other plants I bought that day have not found a home yet, but I am playing around with potential pots for them:
Tuesday brought the first potato plant poking through the soil. I think we have plants or signs of plants in every container now:
On Wednesday I managed to talk Home Depot into honoring the $2.48/bag price they had over the weekend for 1 cubic foot Miracle Gro Garden Soil for flowers and vegetables (regularly $4.97/bag). We stopped in on Saturday to get it along with the mulch that we did buy, but they had sold out of the bagged soil. I think someone made a mistake and posted a lower price than they were supposed to, but regardless, I got all 16 bags for $42.06 or 37% off:
Unfortunately in order to get that bargain price I had to go to Home Depot in the middle of a pouring rainstorm. And then I carried all 16 bags to the back patio by myself. I was soaked:
And there they sit still. Life has conspired to keep me out of the garden all week. Luckily the garden has continued right along without me. This picture doesn't really show how pretty the strawberries are with their little white flowers or how perky the tall growth is, but boy they're making me happy:
I did find some time to stop today and pick up tomato and pepper starts which will be planted over the weekend. And we have the raised beds to build and fill -- I think SS2 can be counted on to help with that on Sunday as part of the Mother's Day festivities.
I had a wonderful weekend. Didn't get much accomplished in the garden, but thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine. It was back to work today, but the colder temps and rain forecast through Thursday made that more bearable. Until my laptop died this afternoon. No idea what happened, but I really hope our IT department can get the photos I hadn't gotten around to backing up off it for me. So no garden to play in, no laptop to work on, and I'm attempting to blog from my phone. After dropping the laptop off at FedEx I stopped by the grocery store. I happened upon a really healthy, rather large rosemary for $2.47 and I had to buy it to cheer me up!
So hoping I'm back on-line properly and back in the garden before too long.
