Plantin' The Garden - Or That's The Plan!

Johnny Jump Ups have taken over several beds

 

Middle of May.  I’m on “vacation” – basically, two weeks off to get the garden planted, catch up on stuff, and with any luck also get some much needed mental  and physical rest.

So far: Buzzy Boy the excellent hummingbird is back from his winter travels – I found out when he dive-bombed me late one afternoon. Dive-bombing, buzzing pass-bys, and hovering are his ways of interacting with his humans, about whom and their doings he has some strong opinions. Buzzing pass-bys are his hello, dive-bombing means I’m not refilling his feeder soon enough or going back to the house from the garden in the evening when he thinks I should, and hovering takes place either when he’s peering in a window to see what I’m doing (he’s very curious about human doings), or when he’s saying goodbye for the season – always the day before he migrates, he’ll hover for a few moments right in front of my face.

I’ve planted out four of the eight heritage variety tomato plants, at least two weeks too early, but they’re all 2 feet tall at this point. I ordered them from a nursery  when I was ordering seeds, and included a note to them begging them to send them only in their last shipping date at the very end of April because I can’t plant them out safely ‘til June. Aaaannnd, of course, they arrived early April. As my Chinese medicine teacher used to say: Bastards!

Tomatoes hardening off

 I potted them up into quart yogurt and cottage cheese containers, because they were already too big for their 6-packs.They lived near the wood stove, and I’ve been shuffling them from sun patch to sun patch indoors ever since. Now they’re two feet tall, pot-bound, too tall to plant deep enough in my raised beds to make any difference, and too tall even for a large plastic cloche for protection. So out they go, fingers crossed, after a couple of days of hardening off on the back wart.

When it was the right time to plant peas and fava beans and lettuce and other cold-weather seeds, and onion sets and leeks and shallots and seed potatoes,  it was too rainy, too windy (it’s amazing how far an onion plant can fly), and below freezing at night. So those things didn’t get put in the ground at the right time, though I managed to get some of it done early in May. Now it’s too hot and too dry, and I just wish I knew why the weather gods are messing with us.

Clematis setting buds

I missed the lunar eclipse last night, it was too overcast to see, so missed that entertainment. I did, however, find a tick sitting in wait near the cat food bowl, and when I took it outside to crush (I keep a small, sharp stone on the deck railing for the purpose), I found another crawling up the inside of the door, which led to an evening of being certain I was feeling ticks crawling up legs and arms and torso and repeated tick-checks: the New Englander’s obsessive activity this time of year. Often with results – usually middle of the night. BTW, they don’t flush well, it’s better to crush them.  A patient told me she uses a lint roller on herself and her dogs before they go indoors after a romp outside. Doesn’t kill the ticks, you have to pull them off the roller and kill them, but it does pick up any on the surface. Brilliant.

It did rain last night and today’s humid. I’m having a hard time getting my butt in gear, and I keep reminding myself that this is, actually, vacation and only day 3 of 16, so it’s ok to take a day and, maybe , just sit under the wart tent (no blackflies where it’s covered) where it’s shady and there’s a small, nice breeze, and Biscuit’s been lounging for the past 3 hours,  and itch my blackfly bites and do tick searches, ponder poison ivy, and read something, maybe doze. This is hard – the remaining four heritage tomatoes are growing taller by the moment and shouting at me - not to mention the last batch of seed potatoes that I didn’t get to yesterday, the last package of fava beans, and all the other vegetable seeds that need to be planted now now NOW NOW NOW.

Today, the lilac blossoms are starting to show purple. The birds are singing, the hummers are busy, and I need to refill Buzzy’s feeder. There’s a load of dandelions in bloom in the back forty, and the grass has finally turned green, and the leaves finally came out. I’m told there’s a blue heron nest with a sitting Mom on it up the road in the moose pond. The bleeding heart plant’s in bloom, as is the Blue-eyed Sue. Asparagus are up and edible – I made an asparagus, fiddlehead, ramp, sorrel, mushroom, leek, and spring herbs (tarragon, winter savory, chives) soup this weekend. The peas and favas I managed to get in the ground earlier are arisen.

Lynx hiding in his ripped-paper pile

 The world’s going to hell in a hand-basket, but my garden remains about the same, minus (I hope) the roving gangs of chipmunks that decimated it last year.  I’m still finding and filling in their tunnels. And if I can find the coyote pee scent bottle, I may use some of that for good measure, though I don’t want to freak out the cats.

And now, a Covid update, because you need to hear this:

It’s on the rise again in NH and parts of VT – dozens of folks hospitalized, a big handful or two on ventilators, some dying. There are many dozens more people sick with Covid who haven’t been counted, even locally – no one reports the results of their rapid tests, so these folks aren’t included in the official state or CDC counts. There are currently dozens of those people locally with active cases of Covid – I know, because I hear about them, because of what I do for a living.

If you don’t want to catch it – and trust me, you don’t, for many reasons, including the risk of developing long Covid, the risk of passing it on to unsuspecting bystanders, the loss of income and community service, the risk of getting a really nasty and painful case of it, and the risk of the symptoms dragging on for weeks and weeks– no matter whether it’s required or not, don’t go into public buildings unmasked, and bring your hand sanitizer along and use it. Outdoors – depends. Wear a mask, try to stay away from the unmasked, and if it’s crowded, don’t go.  And let’s not make the mistake of assuming those allergy-like and mild-cold-like symptoms are either allergies or colds. If you have the symptoms, take a test.

No whining. Put on your Hero face, fight the good fight, and don’t doubt yourself if you’re the only one in the crowd wearing a mask – that just means you’re the only one in the crowd not causing medical issues that can be life-shattering or life-ending, and brave enough and smart enough  to do the right thing..

You always knew you were Special, right?

 

For the blog, May 16, 2022: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

Cinquefoil in bloom, yarrow leaves in background.