Making Progress

The garden is almost fully planted. Of course I'm also counting on a lot of volunteer plants out there. Those are mostly flowers from the edible flower seed packet I bought a few years ago when the school had that as a fundraiser. But there's also volunteer cilantro and dill (you only ever need to purchase those once!), husk cherries (you can find their fruit in the store now as golden berries), and moon flowers. Oh, and some asparagus. I'll move a lot of those volunteers into rows and always plan to weed out the excess. But often my plans go awry.

The fencing for the peas was erected last week. I'm trying to enclose my previous pea plants inside a tent of netting to prevent bird predation. It's a lot of work since I'm pounding in six extra fence posts to erect fencing in the two adjacent rows, but I do want the peas all to myself. Regular readers know Dennis doesn't eat those: they're green! I put in three types of peas - regular, sugar snaps, and Chinese pea pods. I like them all.

The corn is up, as are all the onion sets I put in the ground a couple-three -weeks ago. I haven't yet checked to see if the carrots, leaf lettuces, or radishes are peeking through the dirt yet. Carrots are notoriously slow to show themselves. I put in three kinds of those as well and have high hopes for the rainbow ones. That packet of seeds had the least amount of seeds possible.

The scarlet runner beans I saved from last year were sown next to one of the protective pea fences. They haven't failed me yet. I've never tried eating any of those even though they're supposedly edible. I just like their fast-growing vines and the pretty flowers. I found a baggie os sweet pea seeds I'd saved years ago (2011!) and figured "What the heck?" And so those also went alongside that same fence, although on the other side. My regular beans (also saved from previous gardens) just went in the ground last week.

The tomato plants are surviving these winds, as are my four cucumbers, one zucchini, and a couple squash plants I picked up at a greenhouse. I put in six peppers also. I'm trying three new-to-me varieties of potatoes, but put them in late so they aren't up yet. I expect everything to be up and thriving after I return from my next big trip.

Our grandsons will be competing in the Florida state roller blade hockey tournaments. They're both in the 14U A division, which occurs early in the last week of this month. The younger boy also will be competing in the 12U AA/AAA division during the end of that week. As a bonus, our son-in-law will compete in the over-40 division late this week. It could be interesting: he and a buddy helped set up the professional roller blade hockey sport in Florida years ago.

Back to gardening and plants: I do have almost all my houseplants outside now. There are a few that won't go outside in the summer. Those include my clivia, my three Hoyas, the orchid cactus, my three small orchids, and a huge pothos I'm not going to try moving. For now all the potted plants outside are clustered on our front deck where they'll be somewhat easy for Dennis to water them if it doesn't rain while I'm away. There are four planters I've put new flower plants in near the garage he'll have to keep alive for me. All the plants are as protected from the winds as I can manage. Which, as you know, means they'd better toughen up and deal with it!

I've just mowed again. But before I could do that, multiple newly downed tree limbs had to be picked up and moved out of the way. I'll have a huge wood-chipping party when I'm home again. Several bird nests have been dislodged from the trees as well. I've only found one egg on the ground, and it was unbroken! No fledglings were found, and I'm amazed and happy about that. Nature can be cruel.