Turnips?

Planting the vegetable garden this spring was a bit of a scramble. With Oliver's two-year-old "help," we had to get a little creative sometimes in keeping him occupied and getting things in the ground. This has manifested itself in the nearly grown garding in quite a few ways. For one thing, there are random sunflowers in several spots throughout the garden. And, most rows have "walk-throughs" where the seedlings just weren't tough enough to survive Oliver's wandering.  The funniest thing, though is that we planted a lot of things that I couldn't remember planting. We have what I think are delicata variety summer squash, but I'm just not sure that's what they are. And this week I realized that we must have put in some odd varieties of beets. Seeing some non-beetlike greens early on, I had assumed they were swiss chard and happily eaten the greens several times. Then, I noticed the bulbs. Huh. That's not swisschard. So, I asked my sister and she said maybe they were turnips! Ah, turnips. I don't remember planting turnips, but whatever. I dug a few up (what the heck do you do with turnips?) and peeled them and oven roasted them. Kevin and I cut into a few on Sunday night ... and ... they tasted like beets. Delicious. And I'm pretty sure that's what they are. I think.

Heat wave

I love Black-Eyed Susans.

We're in the midst of a string of super-hot and muggy days and I'm hoping it encourages our tiny tomato plants to beef up a little. The vegetable garden looks good, but we started with some pretty runty tomatoes and they're not making much headway. It's discouraging to me because fresh tomato sandwiches are one of my favorite garden foods. But, we may have to buy them this year. Another goof we made was to buy pole beans rather than bush beans and, while they look great, we need to figure out a way to let them climb. The bee balm and black-eyed-susans are starting to bloom and so the gardens are beginning to show their colors. The black caps are ripening and Oliver has eaten all of them right off the bush, none have made it to the house. But, the blackberries will provide more than enough for canning! Ah summer, I wish it lasted longer.

June Berries

June has got to be my favorite month. Winter is a distant memory and summer stretches out ahead of you like an inviting back road. We've been busy with life, and I haven't posted much, but the gardens don't really wait for you and they've grown and --- of course --- gotten a little bit ahead of us. Our small strawberry patch did well this year and now the black raspberries are coming in. From the looks of the blackberry bushes, we're going to be busy picking those soon, too! Even the blueberry bushes look good, two of the four have a fair number of berries for their first year in our yard! It wasn't a great year for iris blooms, but this variety did well. They smell like grape soda to me and are fragrant enough to fill the yard with the scent. We put the vegetable garden in Memorial Day Weekend as we always do and everything seems to be doing well. Now if we can just find some time to weed.

April Snows Bring May Frosts

Taylor Park

Well, the snow is gone. But we've had a couple of weeks of cold weather, even some snow and sleet. It's discouraging because I'm itching to get out in the gardens and do some work. One unexpectedly nice side-effect of the cold weather had been an extra-long bloom time on the tulips. It's as though the flowers are reluctant to take off their coats. The spring plants and flowers are doing their best to make the most of the chilly spring. We've got flowers on the blueberry bushes and on the strawberry plants. The bleeding heart is in bloom, and of course the lilacs are out. It's a beautiful time in the gardens and around town where the blooming trees are in full swing. We're eating asparagus from the garden - well, mostly Oliver eats it before we get a chance to. It's time to mulch and think about tilling the vegetable garden. Only a couple of weeks until we can plant. I hope that we've seen the last of the frost. And I'm trying to take a cue from the plants who seem to know that warmer weather can't be far off. I hope they're right.