To The Surbiton Manor Born

It's been a wet, cool spring, making it difficult to believe that we are already halfway through June. It is amazing how quickly things have grown. We certainly have not been burdened with the need to water. Even now, we have "heavy rain" and 67 degrees outside. We've had this a lot. Minnesota is out of draught, and still, it rains.  Tomorrow is supposed to be our first truly steamy day, with a high of 89 and FEMA telling us that there's a heat advisory. Hooray! A few strawberries have shown up. There are many, many raspberries preparing getting ready. The tomatoes, cheaters & non-cheaters, are blossoming. The Early Girls actually have little green tomatoes on them.  One thing that's not happened today is any work on the garden path up to the garage, or finishing the work on the garden paths down in the berry patch. The clock ticks the weekend away, and still no progress.  Tomorrow is another day. Work awaits!  

If it wants planting, now's the time. If it needs waterproofing, now's the time. Today was a lovely day in the garden, at puttering speed. Sunny, 70, and bloody  windy (of course). It's dawned that the growing season is short, and if the seeds aren't in the ground soon, they're not getting in the ground. So, containers of lettuce & marigolds were planted. Cosmos went in. Marigolds were re-planted where they didn't start. The area by the garage was cleaned up, the workbench that had been there since winter went into the shed as a nice shelf.  Tomatoes are forming. There are some little green ones on the Early Girls, and blossoms showing. Raspberries are showing, and the bees are busy working on them. Green strawberries are showing up. Not ready yet, but soon. Yesterday was a bit more active - 6-mile run, recovering from last week's Dam to DSM Half Marathon in Des Moines. Involved a canoe paddle with the kid on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. (A horrible plac...

Stair Expansion It has been a busy couple of weeks at Steepmeadow, punctuated by planting and construction and observing a pair of robins that nested in our front security light. At last, an opportunity to catch up in the blog as rain falls and keeps me out of the garden. It is a bit of a race to get everything planted. The large tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse failed this year. It wasn't a total loss, as six cherry tomato plants made it into the bed, but everything else just didn't make it. This necessitated purchasing "cheaters." We got fourteen tomato plants (Early Girls, and two other varieties that I can't remember). We purchased two spicy pepper plants, four banana pepper plants, and a set of three "stoplight" peppers.  I had an idea that will help us to identify which are which, and also to help keep the pests off. I impaled the pots that the cheaters came in on bamboo poles that will serve to tie the plants to as they grow. Underneath the ...

  The crab apple tree in fleeting blossom As Motorhead put it in their classic, Suicide , "The air we breathe will kill us all, and no-one left to give a damn." It's a favorite tune, but I thought it was in the future a bit yet. Not so. It's May 13, and already Canadian wildfires have swathed Minnesota in smoke. Today is day 2 of a "red" air quality alert, which, I'm informed, looks like this: Red air quality: Unhealthy for everyone Sights and smells: In areas where air quality is in the red AQI category due to wildfires, the sky may look smoky. The air will look hazy, and you won’t be able to see long distances. You may smell smoke. Health effects: This air is unhealthy for everyone. Anyone may begin to experience symptoms such as irritated eyes, nose, and throat, coughing, chest tightness, or shortness of breath. Sensitive or more exposed individuals may experience more serious health effects, including worsening of existing heart or lung disease and ...

  Our overgrown pet rock, sadly abandoned by its previous owners after it grew from a tiny pebble. Remember! When you take on the responsibility of caring for a pet rock, you have to love the boulder, too. Workers swarmed our house this week, replacing the sunken front walk and dead flower bed. We'd expected them in May or June, but they got a jump on things, and let us know Monday that they could start Wednesday. This was a bit of a shock and sparked a need to move about 3 yards of dirt that we'd invested in fairly unsuccessful (if you don't count flooding our already sunken sidewalk with ice in the winter) berms. Need the dirt to build up a flat space in the back yard. They'd hoped to finish by Friday. They worked all day Saturday, and will be coming back tomorrow (Monday). But they have been busy beavers. Now we get the opportunity to replant our front yard with a bee friendly mix of fescues & clover.  The weather was fabulous this weekend. It's nearly overwh...

While the lights capping the many, many posts in the yard look nice - a pretty floating fairyland in the dark, it turns out that they are bad for insects that can help the garden .  “There’s no good light, period,” Owens [ Avalon Owens, a Rowland Fellow at Harvard University who studies fireflies and other insects] said. “And if you’re going to have one, have it on when you’re there, [and] turn it off when you’re gone.” And this isn't the only source of expert information that's led us to the conclusion that the lights have to go. Darn it. They were expensive and time consuming to install. But we need to do the right thing and remove them.

The weather in early March was basically too good to last, of course, and the weekend before last we paid for it with a heavy, wet snowstorm. On the positive side, it brought enough moisture to nearly get us out of draught. That's a big deal with spring planting on the way. The crazy early planted snow peas and arugula and kale were, I think it is safe to say, destroyed. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Bed with appropriately named snow peas in it... But other developments have moved along apace. The greenhouse is full of tomato, cherry tomato, sweet pepper & marigolds, all popped up and thriving. This year, I shall be ruthless. Note that there are two seeds in each container. The weak one (rather than in past years when I would try to plant them in another container & save them) will be...disposed of...[mwahahahaha...]. Hardscape work has begun. "Curb Appeal Summer" began this past weekend with a resurrection of the mailbox.  Old New We also signed up to ...