Into the Earth

hot, humid, heavy day. worked outside all day today, my son up with his great-grandparents in the house behind ours, they in town from away.

planted another round of lettuce & mustard seeds; re-planted zucchini & summer squash seeds again (i'll remember to water this time!); planted butternut squash seeds. tomorrow will plant: bush beans, pole beans, cucumbers, more parsnips (a few didn't come up).

spent a while expanding my cut-flower beds with the "weedless gardening" technique we use & love: lay down 4 layers of newspaper, wet them with the hose, then lay down at least 2" of soil/compost on top, and plant into that. this technique preserves the waterways under the earth that support roots, keeps the microorganism communities intact below the surface of the soil (which also support the roots of the plants) and saves you from "waking up" all of the dormant seeds lying under the ground that otherwise start growing after you till. into this expanded bed (8'x10') i happily planted my flower seedlings: dahlias, statice, and strawflower. the bed only accomodated about 1/3 - 1/2 of the seedlings, so i'll need to find more space for them elsewhere, but at least these can start sending their roots down. still need to plant various sunflowers, and zinnias.

an update on the saga of our plum grove: we learned last week that american plums are not grafted onto rootstock, which means that the new little shoots from our dead plum are the same sort that we want to have grow, so today we lobbed off the dead stalk and are now watching the two little replacement shoots make their way into the world. being our main pollinator, it stands in the center of our little plum grove. so now our circle of 7' saplings, which looked scrawny a week ago, absolutely tower over the new little shoots growing in their midst. they have a way of leaning inwards over the little one, so that it looks like they're guarding and monitoring the growth of their new little relative.

Courting

heavy clouds all day, but no more rain yet.

plants have lept up out of the ground since yesterday: foxgloves are a foot high with multiple flower stalks, some of our garlic is waist-high, lettuce is ready to eat, bachelor's button rows are visible from a distance now.

male purple finch spent the afternoon frantically courting a lady who wanted nothing to do with him. tail up like a wren, crest as puffed up as he could manage, singing his heart out. a little bit pathetic, with the female so relaxed and dismissive.

Rain Rain Rain

glorious rain, all day long!

Primary Birds

bluebird returned today, coveting tree swallow's house. spent some time getting a feel for the neighborhood, sitting in the apple bough that our feeders hang from. when he finally flew over to get a closer peek at the birdhouse, the swallow promptly swooped down and ushered him away. before he left, we had male cardinal, male bluebird, and male goldfinch in the tree all at the same time - "primary birds," as my husband stated.

current owner:


prospective owner:


visitor:

Weeds

worked in two of my beds today, preparing them for the flower seedlings i started indoors a couple of months ago. grass, clover, and gil-over-the-ground have set up shop all around the perimeter of the beds. gil & clover are easy enough to pull up from dry soil, but the grass has deep roots and holds fast. life creeping in from all sides, during the seasons when it grows. reminds me of when i was in mexico and they told us (and we subsequently saw) that the land was so moist and so fertile that when they placed newly-cut branches in the ground as fenceposts, the posts proceeded to sprout leaves and grow.

grass is thick and tall, trees are heavy and lush with leaves, crickets chirping in the dark.

Life

we all gathered today for a new babe heading into our world soon. our own little fellow was thrilled to have so many people to interact with. he spent the entire party enthusiastically making eyes at the children, shrieking with delight at everyone who talked to him, and cozying down quietly into me to nurse before reclaiming his social butterflydom.

put tomatoes, basil, peppers into the garden today - market-bought since we've had bad luck starting tomato and pepper seedlings for the past two years. only one of our eighteen beds is left unfilled now, waiting for cucumber seeds. re-started zucchini and summer squash seeds, since i forgot to water the first batch.

our dead little american plum is sending up new sprouts from the root stock that the scionwood variety was grafted onto, the roots reclaiming their original identity.

husband and i took some chairs, some glasses, a nice bottle of chardonnay, and a sleepy boy out under the apple at dusk tonight, and had a couple of glasses as we watched the trees dance and the day end. we talked about our growing plants, our desires for the future of our garden and our yard, our excitement about the possibility of our vegetables carrying us through the winter, and other pieces of our lives. i was holding our little boy in my arms, talking with my love under an apple on our lush earth in the springtime of our little family.

Rain

a downpour this morning, accompanied by glorious thunder and lightning. misty some of the day with a couple of sprinklings, and quite foggy now, at night.

indoor day for all of us. put my flower seedlings out for their fourth day of hardening off, up to four hours outdoors now. had to bring them in during the downpour, but put them back out and decided to leave them out all day, the sun being so filtered through the clouds.

birds flocked to the feeders during the downpour, especially grackles and goldfinches. have never seen more than two grackles around the feeder at a time, and today there were six or seven while it rained. not sure if there was a connection.

a little female hummingbird visited her feeder today.

here are some photos of recent visitors: rose-breasted grosbeak and bluebird during its scout of the swallow's birdhouse. both are perched in the apple bough we fixed to our porch for that purpose.