Well Underway

We got frost last night at The Slice.  May 16, 2014 and we got FROST.  I had to scrape my windshield this morning before we could head out to the market. Just what sort of nonsense is that anyway?

Hmmm?

In spite of the overnight low approaching freezing, the gardening season is well underway.  All the plants seem to be doing quite well.  Except the ones I tried to grow in the greenhouse.  Not so much grow, I guess, as start.  I have purchased replacement plants for all the seeds that haven't really grown and they are doing pretty well.  The ones I've tried to start are also planted in the garden, but they are tiny and refusing to grow so much as a single new leaf.  I hope with warmer weather, they'll change their outlook and join us for the summer.

Yes, the greenhouse is pretty much a disaster.  But it's okay.  We've just started out with this greenhouse business and we pretty much immediately ran headlong into the learning curve.  All is well.  We just can't regulate the temperature well enough yet to get things to roll along as I expected them to.  Silly me.  Jump in with both feet?  Why not?

But I do have some really nice things happening in the gardens right now.  We are the proud parents of a bouncing baby Golden Curls Willow tree.

It's much more impressive in person.

Along the driveway, we've added two  more fruit trees:

Blurry!  For some reason I just can't get a good picture on this side of the drive.

The two trees in the back are a plum and another apple.  The front apple tree has these:

Spent apple blossoms.  I am fervently hoping for apples!

Out in front along the street side of the walk, we put in a couple of pear trees.  I took pictures, but you can't really tell what they are exactly. 

Not all of the new additions are plants.  We also added this cool gecko.

Here leezard, leezard, leezard...

Around back in the vegetable garden, the new tomato bed is planted and mulched in.

Those plastic bags around the tomato cages are a lifesaver!

Of course, I just realized that I promised a blog about how I use those all too numerous plastic shopping bags to protect my tiny tomato seedlings.  And of course I have no pictures of my process.  I guess I'll have to bust out a spare tomato cage and a plastic bag.  Sheesh.

The asparagus is doing splendidly.  In fact, of the 30 crowns I planted last year 27 have returned.  I expected half to die so I planted heavily.  We had to put some bracing in to keep the ferns from falling over.  I need to come up with a more permanent solution to this problem.

In the garden proper, the beds are filling in nicely.

And, try as I might, I can't get all of the potato and onion bed in one shot.

Looking good!

The flowers are blossoming all over the place in spite of the unseasonably cool weather.

Grandma Vi's fern-leafed peonies.

 I love those peonies!  I can't find them anywhere anymore and I'm so glad I have Grandma's to plant here.  They took a bit of a beating in a recent storm.  Still, this is nothing compared to the tornado ravaged countryside a mere 30 miles from here in the small towns of Beaver Crossing, Cordova, and Sutton Nebraska.  Scary stuff, huh?

What I love about my garden is its resilliance.  These chives were grown by my mother-in-law in a different part of the state and have been in a pot, in a bed, in a raised bed, in a pot again, dug up and transplanted numerous times.  Yet here it is, flowering like nothing ever happened.  So pretty.

Well, I guess that's it for now.  I leave you today with this picture of some creepy phlox.  Have a good one.