As much of a PITA all the rain has been this year, I have not had to water my garden ONCE, and it's strong and lush, if somewhat weedy and completely taken over by slugs. If I get off my hiney and get some beer out there for the slugs (I know, I don't buy beer for myself, but I'll buy it for garden pests?) I should be able to get some swiss chard that doesn't look like swiss cheese. No pictures of the carnage there. It's too heartbreaking.
I pulled off the first meal's worth of snap peas this morning, Hopefully I get to eat lots of them before we go camping. Yay camping!
The rat-tail radishes are starting to be ready too.
I've got a few baggies of them for the ladies at work to try, and put a bunch in a jar with some recycled pickle juice and extra garlic.
The hairy-looking bundles between the radish seed pods (that's the edible part - neat, eh?) are flower buds from a couple of flowers that came back after winter. I've never had that happen before... it's pretty awesome! The tiny orage bit you can see near the bottom is a calendula bloom. When planting calendula, it's apparently a good idea to make sure it's going to be *taller* than the other plants around it. Lesson learned.
I tried to get a better picture of the calendula. I took dozens of pictures, but this #$%^ camera just will NOT focus on what I want it to today. I'm sure the few pictures that turned out are just flukes. I tried taking a couple of pictures of thistle and dandilion blooms too, and got the same grief. I'll have to get Twelly to figure it out later. She's the camera guru around here.
Again, it wouldn't focus on the carrot flower that's thisclose to blooming.
They look like they're going to be pink flowers, which kind of confuses me a bit. The ones in the other garden that came back look like *they* will have white flowers... I wonder if this is one of the purple carrots that didn't grow very well, and they might have coloured flowers too. That would be neat.
This is my dog Amie.
She figures she's hunting something in the weeds. She got bored and ate the tops of the dandilions. She's awesome that way, I just wish she would be hungrier and eat more dandilion flowers. I could get used to cleaning up yellow dog poop if I didn't have a yellow yard for half the summer.
Another plant that came back after winter.
Nope, it's not dill, it's a parsnip. There are 4 parsnips that overwintered, so I'm going to have TONS of parsnip seeds next year. Each plant has about 20 of these umbrellas, and they're each the size of my face. They stand about 4 feet tall. Kind of cool looking until the wind and hail made them lean over like they're drunk. I really need to get the back fence moved so I have room for root vegetables. they don't get very good roots in a raised bed. Last year the parsnips were only about 4" long. The carrots were just pathetic. I'm surprised either one had enough root to make it through the winter.
The squash are starting to bloom too.
This year I grew dandilion squash, as you can see by the closed flower. Just kidding. They're Table Queen green squash. I like them because they're not really stringy. I'm only growing 6 squash plants this year, and 4 zucchini plants. No pics of the zucs, but they look pretty much like the squash. You can see some oriental mustard on the right. Just a little bit of slug damage on them in that bed. It's a little drier than the other beds so there aren't as many of the little sleazeballs. You can't see it in the pic, but the squash leaves are totally shiny with dried slug slime. The bean plants in the other garden are shiny enough to counteract the albido effect. What's left of them after the slugs chowed down, that is. grumble
It's interesting how our best shade trees are also some of our worst weeds.
In case you haven't seen these before, they're box elders, closely related to maple trees. We just call them maples around here, because there are very few true maples that can handle Saskatchewan winters. They grow HUGE, and have a ton of leaves that make awesome deep cool shade. They also seed profusely, and baby maple trees pop up in gardens, between patio blocks, in planters, pretty much anywhere they can fit a root. If you don't catch them fast, they're nearly impossible to pull. Also, when you cut a tree down, it suckers big time out of the stump. That's what these are. When we moved in we had to cut down a small tree (the trunk was only about 3" diameter) because it was pushing on the wall of the garage (remember those seeds I just mentioned?) Now it grows a 5 foot diameter clump of little green branches and lots of leaves. Lots of shade for the slugs to hide in. As you can tell by the sickly looking leaves, they aren't enjoying all the rain this year. My heart bleeds for them.
As well lined up as they are, I did NOT plant the sunflowers. The best we can figure is that the birds were sloppy eaters from the suet feeder Twelly put out last winter, or maybe they brought them over from the neighbour's yard (they had a couple of sunflowers last year). We can't come up with another explanation. They add to the hickness of my yard, I think. I'm mostly ok with having a hillbilly yard. It's comfortable, it invites all kind of birds, bees, and butterflies (although there's a sad shortage of bees this year - I blame the rain) and it makes me feel like maybe I'm NOT in a city and only 3 blocks away from a 6-lane road. My neighbour's girlfriend says it reminds her of a movie set - there are all kinds of stories if you look around. If I had just a little more ego, I think that might bruise it, but my yard is full of stories, and it's someplace that children and pets can explore without worrying about them eating something that is either toxic or covered in something toxic. It's mostly safe, as long as they stay out of the garage. We won't talk about the gar"bage". It blocks the wind from blowing into the yard, so I guess it's not completely useless.
Speaking of volunteer plants and movie sets...
I found these nastly little things creeping around in the corner I never seem to get to (as you can tell by the huge thistle plants, which are about actual size in this picture). Cleavers... nature's velcro (and the seeds look like tiny bums). If you've never had the opportunity to touch them, I do totally recommend it at least once for creep value. You can't see it, not even when you're right there beside the plant, but it's totally covered in little hooky hairs. Teeny weeny itty bitty hairs with hooks on them, and the plant uses them to stick to anything in the vicinity, and it climbs all over, branching and sticking and climbing. It's got seeds already, which means it would have been blooming in June... June Cleaver! (if you don't get it, you're obviously younger than I am) We've all heard the Beaver Cleaver references... but June - that's gotta make you wonder. Were they really portraying her as something pretty yet clingy that can't stand up on its own, yet still takes over everything? Hmmm....
The plant is skinny enough that you don't notice it until it's everywhere, and then the seeds fall off when you try to pull it, which you can't because it's brittle and the stems just break off. Then you can't drop the handful that you have, because it's stuck to your hand. Seriously, the hairs make it so grippy it feels like it's covered in duct tape glue, except there's nothing gooey or sticky, it's all the little hairs. If you ever find this in your garden, KILL IT. Don't do like I did and think "it's kind of pretty, one won't hurt", because it WILL hurt. One plant gets HUGE, and I think every seed that falls germinates, because in a single year it goes from one pretty plant to filling an entire corner of your yard. I mean FILLING - those skinny branches grow up and down and back and forth til its packed in there like a hay bale, with about 10 seeds every 2 inches up the stem. Worse than dandilions, at least the rabbits like them. Nothing eats these things.
Late this afternoon I planted the Salvia and grape vines I picked up the other day. No pictures, they look like a mint plant and a couple of sticks with leaves. Hopefully the grapes grow well. They're supposed to be zone 3 hardy, so they should be ok.
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