Gardening season that is!

I was away last week visiting my mom in San Diego and the weather I left in Minnesota turned out to be nicer than the weather in California. Go figure. It being California, however, the trees were green, some were flowering, and and all sorts of shrubs were in flower too including the neighbor’s avocado tree. Of course my timing was off and I missed my mom’s oranges and tangerines by a couple weeks. Her rose bushes were in full bloom though. Her red rose, no idea what the variety is since it was there when my parents bought the house, is still going strong and is over 50 years old! 

Before I left on my visit, the buds on the the trees were just beginning to swell. When I returned, the trees had a green haze about them. And now this weekend, there are little green leaves all over. My allergies are raging but my heart is singing!

All my indoor seed starts are doing great. James kept them alive just fine. It’s time to start hardening off the onions and cabbage. The onions are already pretty far along on that front, they sat in the sun for half the day today. I’ve been babying the cabbage though and will need to be slow and gentle with it. I have killed so many plants in the hardening off phase I could probably make an entire garden out of them. 

Today James and I removed the leaf mulch from all the front garden beds. Saying leaf mulch makes it sound so fancy when all I really do in late autumn is not rake up the leaves that fall from Silver Maple and my neighbor’s oak tree. I also cut back the prairie grasses and any dead stems still standing from last year’s perennials. A good many plants had already poked up through the leaves, but still more were buried beneath them and appreciate the sun and air they now have. I could practically hear them sighing with happiness. Or maybe that was me.

The grape hyacinth is blooming, and the early meadow rue, and the species tulips are starting to bloom too. These little tulips are the only ones I can grow that the squirrels and rabbits will not eat. My regular red tulips still have tight buds on them—so many this year! But I will be lucky to see them because someone will eat the flowers right before or right after they open. Happens every single year. Once in awhile the critters leave one for a day and I can coo and marvel and then they come by the next day and snip it off.

In the backyard garden the chickens were banished two weeks ago. Now they sit at the gate between the main garden and their little chicken garden and watch us, begging to be allowed in. They will not get to return until the growing season is over. We made them very happy today by pouring a big pile of the leaves from the front yard into their garden. Chickens love a good pile of leaves to scratch in. They will have it all spread out in a day or two.

The bush cherries are covered with blossoms that are just starting to open. And Professor Plum has fully recovered from the rabbit girdling and severe prune we made as a result two years ago. The Professor is currently covered in flower buds and I am already imagining it’s August and I am biting into the first ever plum from the tree. Mmmm.

Today we direct sowed Lincoln shelling peas, sugar magnolia snap peas, a summer lettuce blend that allegedly will hold up into the heat of July, and purple plum radish. I had hoped to plant potatoes this weekend too but Saturday was so crammed with doings that I didn’t get a chance to cut them to cure before planting. They will have to wait until next weekend. As will the beets and carrots. 

My allergy befuddled brain is running low on energy. I wore a mask while outside and it helps. I also had some nettle and mint tea this afternoon made from nettles and mint I dried from last year’s garden. That helped too. I currently have the house windows open, which doesn’t help. But no matter how aggravated my allergies get, I refuse to keep my windows closed to a beautiful day.

Reading

• Book: Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, translated by Heather Cleary. What happens when you live in a coastal town that suddenly suffers from an ongoing environmental disaster? Toxic algae in the water causes the “red wind” and if you are caught out in it you will die a horrible death. But the town is not evacuated, people go on living there and make adjustments. And the disaster keeps getting worse and the wind begins to reach “safe” cities further inland. The rich can leave but everyone else? It is a compelling story because it isn’t about the disaster but the people and their relationships. 

Listening

• Podcast: Imaginary Worlds: African Sci-Fi Looks to a Future Climate. A good discussion of Africanfuturism (not the same as Afrofuturism) and how climate change is often a central element.
• Podcast: Crazy Town: Escaping Technologyism: Dreams of AI Sheep and the Deadliest Word in Film History. Ah, it did my heart good to hear Jason Bradford, one of the hosts, meltdown over “AI will fix everything.” He said all the things I wish I could have said in a recent workshop I attended about AI and the legal profession. So many people have drunk the AI Kool-Aid and I wanted to have a ranty meltdown but I doubt many people in the room would have thought I was anything but that kooky bike-riding librarian.

Watching

• My mom has the TV on all day. So much NCIS. And did you know there is an entire channel devoted to game shows? Also, I was astonished that every other commercial was for some kind of drug. 

Quote

The beginning is never the beginning. What we often mistake for the beginning is just the moment we realize something has changed.

Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, page 32

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

Just the usual everyday wizardry. James did make pizzadillas yesterday and added greens from the garden—violet leaves, curly dock, green onions, and baby arugula (so gourmet!). Also, I must say I did wonders making meals with black beans, hummus, carrot, broccoli, apple, avocado and whole wheat bread while visiting my mom.