Day 28

   The spring veggies box on Day 28.  It's hard to believe it has been 4 weeks since we got this box started.  It's also been a lot of fun to keep visual record of growth.  I slept in this morning, so this photo was taken in full sun when the boxes were out of the house's shade.  Everything looks brighter. :D  You can see the radishes are starting to overflow from their squares. And the Alaska peas (farthest back to the left) are about 8 inches tall now.  The corn box (SFG Box 3) is just now starting to see seedlings appear.  They are still too little to show up well in photos, so I'll wait a few days before taking pics of them.  It took them about 11 days to germinate.

   The irises from the front yard.  The pale blue ones do so well in my yard and they have dominated in good years and bad years.  I have not seen the two-tone pink ones in several years, so I'm delighted to see them come back.  I think they look lovely together.

   The white peony I took a picture of on Friday, May 4th, has fully blossomed.  It was already too heavy for the stem to support the weight of the bloom and it was drooping. I had to prop it up with my left hand for this photo. ^^;  So many soft white petals, accented with streaks of magenta.  I love it!

   My camera has a really hard time capturing the deep magenta hue.  Same thing happens when I take a picture of Sweet Williams and the First Prize rose.  The color of this peony is actually bluer and deeper magenta.  It just started opening yesterday, so it still has a little more to go before it looks as stunning as the white one.

   One of the two pots of canna I have in the front porch.  They are one of the giants of summer plants, and therefore, really fun to watch them grow.  Especially now that the daily highs are consistently in the mid 80s, they are really liking it and show their appreciation of the hot sun by growing fast.  The seedlings of dwarf marigolds encircling the pot are also doing well.

   My Russian Olives in the front yard have started blooming and they smell absolutely wonderful!  It's a refreshing, green scent, not like the other spring flowers like lilac and wisteria, but it wakes up your senses and makes you want to take a deep breath and keep repeating.  I just LOVE the smell of these tiny yellow flowers.  I grew these two trees from one-year-old branches that were rooted in the soil medium.  When I got them from a friend, they were no thicker than a pencil and not much taller than a foot.  They are now about 15 feet tall and equally wide after 15 years.

Cats Will Be Cats

   On the evening of the Friday the 27th, we had the National Weather Service issue a frost advisory for our area. They were predicting the morning low to be about 34, but said some pockets may experience temperatures as low as 25.  Time to cover the strawberry and the spring veggies boxes, we thought.  I also moved my large pots of cannas in the front yard to the front porch, close to the house where it will be much warmer to protect them.

   On the morning of the 28th, I checked the cannas first, and saw they were unaffected.  There was no frost on the ground, so it was a false alarm for our area.  I went to the backyard to remove the tarp from the two SFG boxes.  Much to my disappointment, I found that our cats (I don't know... maybe only one of them did it...) had squeezed themselves under the tarp and trampled all over my spring veggies box! I saw Mesclun seedlings dug out of the soil, radishes with torn leaves, onion seedlings mashed into the soil, etc. all with deep indented paw marks all over the box... T_T  I'll have to look into building (More building!) some protection for the boxes.

   I was a little sour after finding out they had messed with my vegetable garden, and even after tidying up and rescuing as much as I could of the damaged seedlings, I couldn't bring myself to take a picture ... or write up an entry for that matter. XD  I just watered them in really well and put more sticks into the soil for the time being.

   Here's the look at the spring veggies box on Day 21.    Every square has something green in it.  So far, the only failed germination was one of the soy beans.  I have seen this before.  Some seeds just rot right in the soil.  Everything else is going well, despite the damage from the kitties. ^^;

   These two adjacent squares are planted with peas "Alaska".  They started out looking about the same size as the Asian snap peas variety planted in the next 2 squares, but now they are noticeably taller at about 3 inches.  They are starting to grow the tendrils.

   Today, I also cleaned our small garden pond.  I didn't do this last spring and I didn't do it last fall, so it was time that I got my hands dirty and gave it a thorough cleaning it deserved.  I scooped out the dead and decaying leaves and the accumulated mat of roots from the waterlilies that have been in there.  The water was dark purplish brown (Ewww...) and smelled the all-too-familiar sewer smell, thanks to all that anaerobic decomposition taking place in there.  I discarded the debris and the dark water into the various parts of the garden.  A big portion went to the rose bed for extra nutrition.  Some also went to the raspberry patch, which is continuing to show fresh growth, and even some white flowers.   I'm hoping that the water parameters will be acceptable within a few days for me to add some feeder goldfish (mainly for mosquito control).

Rare Rain

Yesterday afternoon was quite unpleasant with strong gusts of wind stirring up dust and debris all through the valley and limiting visibility.  My asthma acted up from all the particles in the air and kept me inside for the afternoon. :(  The good thing was that once the low pressure front that was causing all the gusty winds finally crossed into the area, we got a bit of rain.  It's so dry in our area we are lucky to see moisture on the ground -- usually you see rain clouds in the sky, but rain drops do not reach the ground.

So when we got up this morning, and it was still raining, it felt so nice and cool.  I think everyone loves that smell of rain. :)

I don't get to see this very often in our yard -- rain drops on petals.  There's nothing that feels quite as refreshing as seeing cool dew drops on delicate flower petals.

So lovely! *sigh*

While I was admiring the iris, I saw the first rose of my yard.  This bush is planted really close to the foundation of the house and well protected.  This particular bloom was so low to the ground, I almost missed it.  It definitely cannot be seen from the street at all behind all the pale blue irises.  I think this is called "First Prize".  It produces huge, richly saturated magenta/deep hot pink colored flowers with lots of petals with a nice fragrance.  Here, this one's looking a little bit frost damaged along the tips of the petals.

Our wistera vine was hit by the late frost when it was loaded with bud clusters.  T_T  At least, a few dozen clusters had survived and they are still blooming while the vine started to leaf out.  I love the combination of reddish/brownish green leaves against the purple.

Now that the days are consistently hot, the cannas have started growing vigorously.  I planted some dwarf marigold seeds around the periphery of the pot and you can see the tiny seedlings starting to appear.  Once the canna leaves reach good size, I will remove those cat-deterrent sticks. *can't wait*