So far, I've got peas and chives in bloom, rhubarb ready to pick (it's in the shade so later than most others around here) and walking onions thriving. Roma, yellow, pole and yardlong beans have been planted. The strawberries are fruiting, protected by bird netting.
Chervil has come up and gone to seed already. Ditto with lettuces -- it's just too hot to put more in right now. They all bolted two weeks ago, before I even got a decent salad.
The Joe Pye weed is over a foot tall, iris are blooming and the giant hibiscus are just starting to pop up from the ground.
It all happens so suddenly every year. I poke around for weeks, looking for any signs of green, and rejoice at every shoot ...
... then next thing I know, I'm surrounded by green (and yellow/white/pink/red/purple)!
A lot of the green, of course, will be weeds. One day I'm thinking I should take the four-tined cultivator to a section of weed seedlings, then the next I need to get out and pull two-foot-tall plants, like in the area I designated for tomatoes this year.
(It was planted in melons last year, which all got wiped out by a flood, followed by squash bugs. I'm hoping for better luck this year as I'm trying real watermelons -- the huge, oblong kind, not the usual Sugar Baby type.)
This was a good afternoon's work.
I've already wrangled my first rock of the season, too. It was in a spot where I wanted to put a tomato plant.Yes, there are three other huge rocks right next to that spot, but I wanted a tomato THERE. So it had to come out.
It took me about an hour of steady work -- digging around it, sloping the ground in front of it, working it up and pushing soil under it until it was at surface level, then rolling it (by sitting on the ground and pushing it with my legs) to where I wanted it.
The 1" x 4' iron pike is somewhat useful, but I don't know what I'll do when my trusty wood-handled shovel finally gives out in one of these rock 'n' roll escapades. I'm not sure they make them like that anymore.
