May Flowers

My previous post mentioned all the rain our gardens had been enjoying, apropos of April. Now, let's talk about the positive results we see in May.

This morning, I took a pre-breakfast coffee walk with a purpose. I had noticed on Sunday's walkabout, that in addition to the mountain of flowers, there were several nearly-ripe strawberries in the beautiful bed on the edge of the Berry Patch. 

I just knew I would find at least a handful in the first harvest of the season...but I was hoping for enough to make my bowl of Raisin Bran worth eating. I was justly rewarded for my two-day delay in picking.

While in the Berry Patch, I was thrilled to see all the lively blueberries on the bushes...won't be long now before the berries on my cereal will be blue instead of red! And the blackberry bushes are loaded with flowers, foretelling a heavy harvest in a couple of months. The grapes are adding leaves on all the vines, except one that was lost to winter damage. So far, so good.

Over in the Orchard, I noticed fruit on the pears, peaches, plum, apples, and crabapples. I need to spray sooner rather than later, since the trees have all finished flowering and this is one of the most vulnerable times to pest damage.

Checking on the Block Garden, where the (English) peas are busy vining up the fencing and flowering, I spotted some corn leaves poking out of the ground! Hooray! Ok, I admit I'd had my doubts. I planted those seeds of Silver Queen (some of which were from 2012!) on a rather cool day...and in extremely muddy conditions (I almost lost my garden clog to the sucking mud when I stepped in the wrong spot!). It was a case of having to plant that day...or wait another week or so until I returned from Georgia. So, maybe it will work out after all.

Then I moved on to the lettuce in Box #3 in the Raised Bed garden. Oh my goodness, what a delight for the eye! 

Of course, seeing all that lettuce reminds me of two stories:

1) After my parents retired and moved to Smithville, TN (buying my Aunt Christine's house on Jennings Lane), Daddy took on the weekly chore of going to the grocery store. He would start out with an early run to Webb's Drug Store on the Square for coffee...and the latest "news." Following any other trips (to the post office, to the hardware store, etc.), he'd eventually wind up at the Sav-a-Lot, where he thrived on getting the best bargains...and hopefully most of the items on Momma's shopping list.  One particular week, they had iceberg lettuce (the only kind he knew) 5 heads for $1.00. Granted, that's a great price, but remember it was just the two of them at home...and he was always more of a meat 'n potatoes kinda guy, calling salads "rabbit food." Anyway, he comes home with 5 heads of lettuce...to which Momma said "Sidney! What are we going to do with all that lettuce?" And he famously replied "well, we can freeze what we don't use...can't we?"

Ahem.

2) In 2011, just after we found out that Momma's lung cancer had returned, she became withdrawn and began staying home most of the time. So, I was preparing three meals a day, rather than counting on many meals eaten away from home. At about the same time, we were enjoying a bumper crop of salad greens. We had mounds of leaf lettuces on every sandwich; spinach leaves in omelettes; and a salad with almost every supper. When the Hospice volunteer came by for a visit, I overheard her ask Momma if she was eating well...meaning, did she still have an appetite for food? Momma exclaimed, "heavens yes! Patricia gives me a salad from her garden every time I open my mouth. I'm going to turn into a head of lettuce!"

Looks like 2015 might turn out to rival the salad days of 2011!

I did say this post was about May flowers, didn't I? The irises in the Rondel (the ones that are descendants of ones passed along to us by my Lunn cousin Betty Jean) are looking so pretty, with the red-bronze ones in full bloom and the yellow ones just beginning to open. 

And the (mostly purple) irises in the front yard have been putting on quite a show for us this year. We divided the ones around the lamppost last year, so I had little expectation of flowers this year. Wow! Did they ever surprise us!

The rhododendrons in the back yard are both in full flower, as the azaleas end their run for the year. 

And the roses are loaded with buds, poised to pop open into a riot of colors over the next few weeks. As usual, the winner of "first bloom" in the Rose Garden is the David Austin rose "Susan Williams-Ellis." Although small by comparison with most of the so-called English roses, SWE has proven both hardy and reliable...and we are always assured of having white roses in bloom to honor the memories of our mothers, Edith and Maryen. 

Around the path from SWE is this Winchester Cathedral (also white, but with a pink edge, denoting its "Mary Rose" parentage)...

...and this Abraham Darby (on our lone remaining AD bush...having lost one to Rose rosette disease and one to winter damage). 

What you may not be able to see is the beautiful brown mulch that Mr. T spread last weekend in the Rose Garden...with Winston's help, of course. Along with black mulch to mark the paths, this brown mulch makes the roses really stand out.

So, How Does Our Garden Grow?

• This week, I planted Clemson Spineless 5195 okra in Row #2, as well as Nanking Green cotton seeds. Many of you will remember, I got my first few colored cotton seeds from the 2011 Seed Exchange at Old Salem; the seeds I planted yesterday were descendants of those, hand-ginned and saved in the fridge over the winter. I will get a couple of containers of sweet potato slips (probably 18 in all) from Soviero's Tri-County Garden Center and plant those just before the next rainfall. The landscape fabric I used last year for the sweet potato row...complete with perfectly-spaced holes...is already pinned to the north end of Row #2 (which Mr. T tilled a couple of weeks ago), just waiting to receive the slips.

• I planted seeds of yellow and zucchini squash; Sweet Slice and Straight Eight cucumbers; cantaloupes; and three kinds of watermelons (Jubilee, Sugar Baby, and Charleston Grays) on Row #3. The cukes will grow up the latticework trellis again this year, under which I transplanted 6 pots of basil. I put tomato cages around the squad seed hills and added some seeds of the Empress of Indie nasturtium And we are trialling growing the melons on either side of a 5'x35' fence, placed in the center of the north end of the row.

• We also put a fence down the north end of Row #4 to accommodate the green beans. I planted seeds of Kentucky Wonder pole (both white 191 and brown seeds) and Garden Bean Advantage. Then, I created a three-row bed for Fordhook 242 Lima beans on the south end of Row #4 (calling it Dixie's Bed, like last year...;-), along with a bean tower, planted with the gigantic seeds of the Garden Bean Tenderstar, a runner type from England.

• The tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers in Row #1 are growing well. In fact, there are yellow flowers appearing on several tomato plants already! Unfortunately I also see some lesions appearing on a few of the tomatoes, too. It's time to trim up the lower branches of the tomatoes (up to the first flowering branch), remove any suckers (rooting the more promising ones), give them a second dose of Tomato Tone, and mulch them with straw. I will also dust all with Dipel to ward off the tomato hornworms.

• Not to be forgotten, over in the Raised Bed garden, in Box #1, I dusted the broccoli and cabbage plants with Dipel after noticing a few holes in the leaves (of the cabbage, mainly) and a single green worm. Where there is one visible worm, there are probably many more I can't see. I also dusted the beans growing in Box #2 and The Center Square with Dipel after seeing some cutworm damage. The lettuces in Box #3 look great, as do the carrots, spinach, and beets in Box #4. I noticed some "volunteer" tomatoes in Box #4 (again this year...no doubt from the Sun Golds there last year), so I thinned out all except the three in the middle of each 3x3, around which I placed tomato cages. I know, I know...this flies in the face of all gardening wisdom (hybrid tomatoes don't come back "true;" you should never grow tomatoes in the same place year-after-year, etc.), but I figure "what have I got to lose?" They are free plants...let's just see what happens.

Remember I told you in my last post that May is Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Awareness Month.     I heard back from my dermatologist about the biopsy she took a week ago, after removing a suspicious mole on my back. Calling it a "dysplastic nevus with mild dysplasia," she said that she wants to observe it for any changes in the next three months. She also said that I should stay out of the sun from 10:00-4:00 each day; always wear sunscreen with a minimum 30 SPF; and wear protective clothing (long sleeves, hat) and sunglasses. I know I should not be surprised since I fit the description of someone at-risk for skin cancer (fair hair and skin; sunburn-prone as a child; works outside; and family history of skin cancer), and I am thankful that I got the next-to-the-best possible report she could have given me (the best being "it's absolutely nothing...go on about your business;" the worst being "it's definitely melanoma"). And, I am going to have to make adjustments around that "10-4" restriction. But I frankly am counting myself one lucky ducky!

Happy Hoeing!