It's Wedding & Graduation Season!

It's wedding season again, so I should have more cake pics to share in the next couple months.   Here's a few from the last couple of weeks.  Not all weddings, but still cute and fun.

A Test of Will

It's almost Memorial Day.  At this time last year, there was absolutely nothing in the garden.  Our last frost was on Memorial Day, and so I put all the seedlings outside that following week.  They did great from there, but we weren't harvesting tomatoes until mid-August I think, and then the first fall frost came as quickly as the third week of September and killed everything.

This year I've been determined to have food earlier and do something of a three-season garden.  I suppose it's moderately successful so far -- the perennial herbs from last year came back fuller and lusher than I imagined: oregano, chives, sage, lavender, and thyme.  The cilantro went to seed last year and managed to reseed itself all over the place, so that will be plenty.  I also started some cool-weather vegetables which are coming along slowly but surely: beets, carrots, peas, leeks, swiss chard, spinach, lettuces and a solitary broccoli plant.  We've been harvesting spinach for about a week for salads and pizza and quiche, so that's nice.

Now the summer crops, on the other hand, are testing my will again and again.  I started seeds way back at the beginning of March.  We were really brave but determined, and put the seedlings outside in April, because we built covers to go over the gardens to protect the plants and figured they'd be safe enough.  The problem has been, however, that it gets really cold at night and really warm in the daytime, so we can't just leave them on all the time.  They're fairly heavy, and there's four of them, so it's no little thing to go put them on or take them off the garden, and contrary to our original design, we didn't build in a way to just prop them open.  So I had put the seedlings out in the garden during a beautiful week in April -- sunny, warm, etc -- and then we had to leave town for a family wedding.  A day and a half later we came back and pretty much all the seedlings had fried.  I believe it was too much sun exposure; Scott thinks lack of water.  Granted, I didn't temper them for very long, just a few days (what good does putting them outside do when it's cloudy and rainy for three-four days at a time?) and it came back to bite me.

So I started over.  I put in rows of all the same peppers (jalapeno, pablano, mixed sweet and green peppers), tomatoes (roma & brandywine) and flowers (snapdragons, delphinium, columbine, nasturtium, pansies, and marigolds) with plenty of time to start over.  At least if they get started outside they don't need to be tempered for the adjustment, right?  Forget about the brussels sprouts, it's too late already.  I'll try those again for fall.  Everything's been coming up a little at a time, and I was breathing a sigh of relief that we would have vegetables after all.  Now suddenly this week, the week before Memorial Day, the weather's been up and down and rainy and sunny and generally unpredictable.  We've had the covers off for weeks, but put it on two nights ago because it was gonna be really cold and there was a chance of frost -- good save.  But I took them off again yesterday because it was in the 70's.  Last night I worked late and didn't think about it.  This morning I went out and it looks like most, if not all, the seedlings are shriveled again, and the tomato plant we bought a few weeks ago on a whim is barely hanging on.  I checked the weather from last night and -- WHAT?!  28 DEGREES?!?!

I'm feeling defeated, but gotta be realistic and admit that I was gutsy (or just stubborn) this year.  If I never tried it, I'd always wonder.  Some of it's paid off.  At least we've got herbs and spinach already.  Beets and carrots and lettuce will probably be next, hopefully followed by peas and broccoli and leeks.  We may just have to go buy some tomato and pepper plants this year, though, because at this rate I wouldn't be harvesting until September, just in time for the frost again.

Cilantro is growing back in abundance here and several other places in the garden.  That's ok, ladybugs like it and supposedly it deters some bugs.

Perennial herbs that grew back bigger and fuller than last year: (L to R) oregano, chives & sage

Thyme that grew back from last year much fuller -- I can never have enough of that!

Frost damage to my tomato seedlings.  Notice how the weed just next to them (bottom right) seems just fine!

Peas in front and spinach behind

I think the bean plants got too much frost too -- maybe I'll try them again for fall.