weekend open thread – May 6-7, 2023 — Ask a Manager

We’ve had a lot of rain this spring, and things have been a bit delayed. Our camellia hedge is in full, glorious bloom. It goes along our curve for about 150′ and we keep it to about 9 feet tall. It provides a screen from the road and it is absolutely gorgeous in bloom. Of course I have to go out and sweep the spent flowers off our walkway, but totally worth it.

We have landscaping plans for the back and side yard. I could only afford to plant the side yard this year, but I’ve been buying plants all spring for it. I finally have the plants in and dh and I have spent the morning shoveling a yard of mulch to finish off that perennial bed. It’s all filled with (supposedly) low maintenance plants so that we don’t have to do as much yard work in retirement.

I have about 50 tomato/pepper/eggplant starts in half gallon containers on my covered porch. I have a few more than that in my living room in the south facing big window. I’d love to get them planted but there is no way – it’ll warm up late next week so it is likely I’ll start planting a week from tomorrow. I have to put some plastic up on the hoops today and tuck all of the ones on the porch in there because it is dropping down to the mid-40s. They’d probably do fine on the porch but I don’t want to lose them at this point.

I have FIGS! I planted the fig tree probably 5 years ago or so. The deer hit it heavily the first year, and then we fenced the yard. We had a late freeze last year that probably kept it from budding out. But I finally have figs! yay! And our plum tree – which is quite mature but may not survive the move when we do the grading of the back yard this fall – is full of hundreds of blooms. Last year, because of the freeze, we only got about a dozen plums, which was super unusual but a late freeze does have consequences.

And, I have Hood strawberry blooms! I’m using a Greenstalk garden tower for them, and this is their second year. I went out there a few days ago – I need to top off each little pocket with a bit more soil/worm castings/compost – and found a little birds nest in a pocket with 4 tiny eggs in it. It explains why I’ve seen the parents flying around whenever we walk by to get the mail. This morning dh and I took the top two levels off and moved their level up one so that it’s out of reach of our cat. She doesn’t go out much, but it’s just off the porch where she hangs out and I’d feel really bad if she managed to get baby birds. Of course it’s open to flying predators but not much I can do.

I’m going to harvest my rhubarb tomorrow and make a rhubarb syrup for mixed drinks. I don’t love strawberry-rhubarb jam or crisp, but I can do rhubarb syrup. Yum.