Happy May Day

Our winter was kind of a nasty one. Not too many snowy days, but all in all the cold weather came in and just stuck around from about mid-Fall to... about two weeks ago. Our temps were so cold for so long that my freakin' rosemary froze. It's supposed to be this really tough evergreen plant, and it just dried up, froze, and 4 of the 5 large bushes dropped their needles like a Christmas tree. We've trimmed back the the sad little plants, but I have little faith they will come back.

The rosemary can be viewed from my kitchen window, whereas my garden beds are a trek up the hill from the back door... so my general outlook about my yard has been based on my poor, scraggily rosemary. You can imagine my surprise when, after two weeks of "warm" weather (read: above 50) I wandered out to my garden to find my oregano, chives, and thyme thriving.



If you listen closely, you can hear it saying "I'm not dead yet!"

The two bits of dried up stems in the center of the bed were my lovely lemon balm and citrus sage... I'm not sure those will make it back from the dead either. I'll give them all a couple more weeks, then if I see no progress I'll replace them.



My chives were a couple of strands of green a few weeks back, now they are developing great purple flower buds already.



The oregano has spread out to where it has overtaken the plant label. Looking forward to lots of dried oregano this year.



I swore off tomatoes again last year, so this year I decided to plant some sugar snap peas. Just before vacation I ran out to my prepped garden beds and plunked some seeds in the ground, just to see if they would grow. When we came back I only saw one little sprout, so when I went to the garden store I picked up some sweet pea plants. Today when I went to plant them, I found that my entire row of seeds had sprouted (see below) So I had to improvise a spot to stick the plants I bought... hence... the tomato cage (see above).



My wee little sprouts are barely the size of my thumbnail, but every one of them sprouted.



I know... I swore off tomatoes last year.... but after talking with our landscaper guy I changed my mind. All my neighbors had a horrible time with tomatoes last year, however when I mentioned this to the guys doing our yard clean up, he said "everyone says that, but I had a ton of cherry tomatoes!" His secret? He stuck his plants in the ground the end of April instead of waiting for Mother's Day like everyone else around here.

So what the hell... $10.00 in plants, it's worth a shot. This year we're trying yellow pear tomato, roma, and a red cherry.




The raspberries need some TLC this year. We didn't cut back the stems from last year, and they have sprouted a rather impressive bunch of leaves already. We'll need to build some kind of support structure that will hold them upright against the fence.



The raspberries also spread like MAD... there are a few weeds in there, but most of this is little raspberry sprouts. The long stems above are the "early" crop, and these little sprouts will be a late summer bunch of berries. With any luck I'll have enough to make some jam.