Rain rain rain rain SUN rain rain rain…
I wasn’t planning to spend most of the weekend indoors. I had hope that there might be a last-minute chance of sun on Memorial Day weekend. But Cliff Mass, local weather guru, pretty much called it. He didn’t actually say “look for grey, crushingly bleak weather all weekend, punctuated by soul-tormenting flashes of sunlight, and then back to rain” but I imagine that’s only because he’s an academic with a reputation to uphold and so had to say about the same thing in nicer terms.
Anyway, it rained.
Wet pea vines
And rained.
Moist spinach.
And poured and there were showers and precipitation…
Damp Asian pear.
And rain.
Soggy huckleberry.
Finally, today the sun came out for a couple of wonderful hours! I knew that if I didn’t get outside I’d feel like the little girl in the Ray Bradbury story that gets locked in a closet during her planet’s one non-rainy day in years.
I’d pretty much given up on being able to do any garden work by that time, so to get in the mood, I told myself that if I went out and weeded for one hour, I could sit in the sun (or whatever it was by that time) and play Plants vs. Zombies (don’t play this game ever, not even once. It’s video crack).
So I went out with trowel in hand and worked hard for at least 45 minutes…then I looked at my watch and discovered that only ten minutes had actually passed. But after a while I got into the rhythm, and got an entire flower bed weeded. And then I sat outside and, instead of playing my game, I brought out a bowl of fresh Rainier cherries that I’d picked up at the Lynnwood fruit stand, and stared at nothing (and sometimes hummingbirds) while the sun got fainter and fainter behind the clouds. It was nice.
Here’s the state of The Tiny Garden as of this week:
Things seem to be growing.
I even ate a radish or two this week.
- Crunch!
May showers bring crazy garden growth!
We’re having more typical Seattle spring weather: warm and sunny one hour, cold and rainy the next. The plants love it.
I planted a few more tomatoes in the garden, and one in a big pot; I think that’s as many as I can squeeze in, so now I’ll be giving away the rest of the starts, finally. I hate to let the babies go, but I’m sure I’ll find them good homes.
Ready to grow!
The rest of the garden is going nuts!
Spinach, almost ready to eat.
Carrots, coming along nicely.
I didn’t know if I’d get any blueberries this year. I planted two blueberry plants last year, thinking that you needed them to pollinate each other. Well, one of them developed no flowers at all, and the other did…so I thought they’d just fall off and die. But no: they’re turning into big bunches of berries!! I can’t wait…!
I'll be having blueberries soon!
And the asian pear tree is tempting me with things to come…
Asian pear looks promising.
Here are some of the radishes I’ll be having in a salad soon. Mina, in the background, is leaping straight up into the air, because she loves to eat the radish greens and wants me to give them to her. I’m not sure why. She’s a strange dog.
Radishes. Want.
Jupiter, on the other hand, is unimpressed.
They don't appear to be salmon.
It’s looking like a great year in the garden so far!
Mina checking out the basil.
Tomatoes planted, cross your fingers
A lot of my tomato starts didn’t make it through the last couple of weeks, but over 20 did, so I decided that I’d plant some in the garden, and if it really is too early, I’d have plenty for backup.
Tomatoes and radishes
The remaining starts are short and tough-looking.
Young tomato plant
Everything else seems to be doing well; the spinach, radishes and carrots are getting taller all the time, and the peas are slowly growing into their string trellis.
Spinach
Carrots
