Still wearing sweaters...

Other than Saturday, which reached a balmy 74 degrees in the early afternoon before making a rapid decent back into the 50s as the evening storm rolled in, there has been no resemblance of an upcoming summer in the weather lately. It's supposed to be rainy all week, though I've heard a rumor that it might actually be warm?! At this point, I'll believe it when I see it.

Weather pitfalls: My tomatoes, peppers and eggplants have given up on growing and flowering I think. All my recently planted seedlings have been super slow to emerge and/or drowned out and washed away. My roses are full of leaves, but my hopes of them flowering for Memorial Day weekend, as they did last year, are declining. The spring flowers that were/are in bloom were largely destroyed by the multiple torrential downpours last week. My poor irises look like they've been through a war and the ajuca, which I had hoped to stay in bloom until June, was pelted to death--all the blooms fell to the ground as a result.

Weather benefits: I haven't had to do any manual watering lately. My cool weather veggies are thriving and nearing harvest time. I was really late getting all my spring veggies in the ground, so looking at the bright side, I might actually yield a decent harvest from my broccoli, peas, carrots, beets, and radishes. Speaking of radishes, two in the row revealed their red crowns this weekend, so we got to pluck and enjoy them. Well, I didn't, but Cavan and Hubby did. I'll try the next one. It was pretty exciting picking the first vegetable out of your own garden. I can't wait for a major harvest, when we get to reap the rewards of all the hard work and effort and patience over the last few months.

Despite the rain and the cold, I was able to make some headway in the garden this weekend. I continued my pursuit to rid the herb garden of wild clumps of grass and weeds. One more day ought to do it. (This wouldn't normally be a three-day job, but it's extremely tiring wielding a hoe, tiller, and pitch fork with a baby belly, especially when bending over has become a robust challenge.)

I was then able to plant my 16 hosta roots, most of which actually sprouted in the plastic bags they were delivered in! Seven were used as the herb garden border and accents around a strategically placed boulder. The others were amassed between two trees bordering a stone staircase leading to another tier of our property. I will be interest to see how big each of these hostas get and if the spacing I used was appropriate. Ideally, they will all gently overlap without crowding, but when mixing varieties it's hard to tell how they will actually spread, despite following the spacing guidelines.

Still on the list to plant are my three remaining burning bushes. And I just received an order of eight astillbe plants. And my petunias for my hanging baskets should be arriving any day. I'm interest to see the size and condition of how these arrive--I usually buy my hanging baskets from the nursery, but I thought I'd try to grow my own this year. And a replacement rose bush should be coming soon. It will be nice when I can just focus on maintaining the garden rather than all these new plantings, but with two acres to manicure, that might be a while.