This Year's Gardens: Chapter 4

Red cabbages

As May closes out, I thought I would update the garden report. A lot has happened since I posted earlier this month. Despite May being colder and wetter than previous years, the seeds and plants are doing what seeds and plants do: grow.

The Hej garden is valiantly catching up from my false start of starting seeds inside and then trying to transplant them outside. There are cucumber and zucchini plants popping their heads up. 

And, to my absolute delight, there are potatoes! 

Potatoes! 

I talk with my Aunt Gail, my dad's only sibling, a couple of times a week. It is a way for both of us to share information as to Dad's well-being. We have grown very close over the last several months and we share more than just family updates as we laugh and talk. Gail has gardened all of her life, from Ohio to Guam to Chula Vista, California, and we keep each other abreast of our gardens' achievements. Being in far southern California, Gail has been eating fresh vegetables out of her garden for weeks now and, talking last night, reeled off a list of everything she has already been picking. She knows that we are weeks behind her; last night I told her what was up and blossoming. I did not know about the potatoes until this morning (we were out of town several days this week) and I am so thrilled to see them that I may call her just to announce that WE HAVE POTATOES!

The kitchen garden is much more sedate. It looks cleaner and crisper (because it is) and the various vegetables and flowers are starting to thrive. 

There are already blossoms on some of the tomatoes, so there might (might) be a tomato or two by the end of June. That may be overly optimistic on my part: last year I did not have that first tomato until July 14; the prior year July 19. But when you never buy tomatoes from the grocery, only eating them during the season, that first tomato means so much.

Warren and I have spent time working on the flower beds, which we plant in perennials, and we have filled a few large planters with annuals for the deck. My children's earliest pottery attempts are back in the garden, from Sam's T-Rex about to be engulfed by a tidal to a very, very early fish by Ben.

Sam's T-Rex

Ben's fish 

Finally, no garden update would be complete without a photo of this:

What, you may ask, is that? That, my friends, is a Leysa pepper, the pepper I pinned my hopes to earlier this spring and got nothing in return, either from the starts or from the three I started after that earlier failure. A few weeks ago, laughing at myself, I tucked three seeds into a pot and said, "Do something."

And it did. 

Will this ever get large enough to move outside, let along produce a blossom? I doubt it. but there it is.