Here comes that rain, again

Another visit to the garden, another approaching storm.

We went to the garden Sunday evening to plant pole beans.  From the very start we were hearing the thunder in the not too far off distance and seeing the dark clouds getting closer. 

Our first mission was to take a little walk through the woods and pick up half a dozen fallen limbs to use as poles for the beans.  Then after placing the poles in our patented lattice pattern, in went the beans.  And then the rains started.  Slow at first, with a pretty good light show to the north and west.  Then the winds picked up and then the rains came.  Our rain gauge at home showed 3/4 of an inch.  At least we didn't need to water the newly planted beans.

Lightning - on the lower right.

And finally, our blueberries are beginning to form.  It will be time to cover them soon.

Waiting...

Things are still moving slow in the garden.  Having not visited during the past week, I was expecting to see more progress.  There is some progress, but a lot of very slow movement.  And you will probably notice that our soil seems to be a bit clayey.  We do need to add more compost...

The lettuce is mostly coming along nicely.

  

 The Chard still looks like it is barely holding on.  

There is absolutely no signs of carrots germinating and the radishes we planted amongst the carrots are barely and spottily starting to grow.

 And the onions are growing, but again without much vigor.

On the other hand, the tomatoes are looking just fine.  

 Peppers, parsley and basil look good, too. 

 Near as we can tell, the squashes appear to be growing and will soon have to be released from their covers to fend off the pests as best they can.  The nasturtiums we planted around the squash beds are not faring well and we lost at least a couple of them.

 The biggest surprise is the garlic.  The scapes are coming along and we will likely be harvesting some shortly.  I guess we were clued in to the emergence of the scapes when we were seeing them everywhere at the Farmer's Market in the park Saturday morning.

Speaking of Saturday morning...we got out early and headed down to Maxwell's in Cape Elizabeth to pick our first Strawberries of the season.  It was their first day of picking and we arrived right about the 7am opening time and there were already dozens of cars parked and dozens of people picking!  We picked 4 pounds of berries in less than 10 minutes, and not moving beyond a 10 foot stretch of strawberry row.  And they are very good berries, too.  Looking forward to hopefully a 3 week picking season instead of the 10 days they were open last year.  I love picking in Cape Elizabeth with the sounds of the fog horns, the smell of the ocean and the sounds of the ocean, too, if the wind is blowing in the right direction.  And I am convinced that salt air helps make the berries especially good, too.

Beyond our garden, here are a few pictures of some other flowers in other plots.  And the Peonies are blooming all over the Maine Audubon  property right now, both in the formal garden plot and wild in the woods and meadows.  Lots of beauties.

And one last non-garden picture of a Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa) tree growing in our neighborhood.  I have never seen so many blossoms on one of these as this one.  They are normally full of blossoms, but this one is exceptional.  This is one of my favorite landscape trees.  It flowers abundantly later in the season than flowering dogwoods, it holds it's blossoms much longer, and it has beautiful raspberry sized fruits later in the year.  (The fruit is a globose pink to red compound berry 2–3 cm in diameter, though these berries tend to grow larger towards the end of the season and some berry clusters that do not fall from the tree surpass 4 cm. It is edible, a sweet and delicious addition to the tree's ornamental value. The fruit is sometimes used for making wine. - from Wikipedia)

A quick check in...and more rain

We made a quick trip to the garden on Friday evening and witnessed showers off in the western sky as the sun was nearing the horizon.

The plants have not been doing much more than just surviving, but I am sure that will change soon enough.

 

The lettuce and chard are still looking sad, but they are mostly surviving.  

  The radishes are poking up with the carrots hopefully soon to follow.

 

 The first Globe Thistle bloom coming along.

Chive blooms.

It was a short but sweet visit and other than having to fight a lot of bugs in the still humid air of evening, we were treated to quite a light show.  The showers finally hit after sunset, though they didn't really amount to much.

Quick, put those plants in before the rain comes!

We made a quick visit to the garden this evening before going to "Music Night" - our sometimes weekly night of playing and singing with friends.  Wanted to get the rest of the plants in the ground before the rain started.  The predictions are for somewhere in the 2 inch or more range over the next couple of days.  The ground is already pretty saturated, so we don't really need it.

We put in the 6 types of peppers that we picked up at the Farmer's Market on Saturday.  

Also planted Nasturtiums around the squashes and we planted Basil.  

Most things are progressing and looking good.  Some of the Chard still looks sad, but other than that we are in good shape.  The only thing left is to get our pole beans into the ground at some point in the next week or so.

More planting...and another beautiful evening. How much of this can we stand?

Tonight we tried to get as much planting in as we could before the rain that is due to arrive later tomorrow.  It was sad to see that our Lettuce and Chard that we planted 2 nights ago were a bit wilty.  Gave them a good soaking before we left and with the rain coming they should be fine.

We planted our 4 kinds of squash: Cosrom (Costata Romanesco - striped zucchini), Zephyr (yellow and green summer squash), Magda (a light green Cousa type of summer squash), and Sunburst (yellow patty pan squash).  Also planted radishes with the squash as a flea beetle decoy.  We also put in our 2 tomato plants: Sun gold and Sweet 100 and assorted marigolds.

Two of the squash hills.

We covered the squashes with row cover to keep pest out until the plants are big enough to fend for themselves.

The tomatoes and marigolds.

Finished.

Time to go home and have dinner.

"Oh what a beautiful evening!"

Back to the garden again this evening to do some planting.  The rain was finished, the sky had cleared and the temperature was much more comfortable than the last few days.  Just about a perfect evening to spend in the garden.

We planted our Chard and Lettuce, Parsley and Carrots, and some Breakfast Radishes.

I couldn't resist the Poppies again.

And of course the sun setting over the river.  Perfect.

There's a storm a-brewin'...

A quick visit to the garden to put up our fencing on the inner plot.  Finally ordered the black plastic fencing online and received it on Friday.   That's all we accomplished, other than cutting the grass in the paths - a constant battle.  Hopefully we'll finally get our other planting done tomorrow evening.

 

The new fencing with heavy rain across the river, somewhere to the west.

Notice the nicely cut grass in the paths...and the rain.

Our Columbine (new for us this year).

And the rain kept getting closer.

Poppies in our neighbor's plot.

And Iris in our back yard at home.