I think Spring is FINALLY here!!

I'm still here! I haven't posted recently as I was sidetracked by life for a little while. We had a house guest for a few days and DH has headed overseas for a time. I've been busy helping him get ready to go and then getting the house ready for company.

MAYBE we're finally done with winter! No snow recently and we have BLOOMS! The tulips survived this year and have been blooming nicely. The phlox does well here too. It bloomed like this last year. I hope these plants survive their upcoming relocation as they are in the future home of a few Jostaberries. This is in front of the porch and while the phlox and tulips are pretty, I think I need something a little larger for this area.


I planted the orange tulips in the fall. These are holding up really well. They have been in bloom for a week now, been blown by the wind and still look great! I found these on clearance at Walmart of all places.

We did have a little garden attack about 10 days ago. I went out to the garden and found this hole.

It's about one square foot and about 5-6 inches deep. The culprit is unknown. What is surprising is that the hole was dug in a nearly empty square. There were a few very very small onions there but that's it. It looks like something was tunneling in, but the hole didn't go anywhere. I had planted several tiny lettuce and spinach starts at the other end of the bed that were untouched. My main suspects are rabbit, small dog, or fox?? I think rabbits have dug a few spots in the backyard this month in some mulch areas, but this didn't look the same. This had a much bigger area dug up than the spots in the back. We may never know what it was. Very minimal damage though.

I hadn't realized how much the peas have grown until I saw the pictures in my last post. I think we'll have blooms soon.

Last weekend, I went to the plant swap for the Rocky Mountain Gardening Forum on GardenWeb. It was nice to meet some of the gardeners I chat with online. They have really helped me a lot learning to plant in my new location. I also brought home some great plants. I was especially happy somebody brought some peppers as mine did not do well at all. The few that germinated, didn't really thrive. I think it was just not warm enough for them in the basement. I got a California Wonder (green) and a Banana Pepper.

I planted out the peppers along with the tomatoes, squash & cukes I had started. It still may be a little chilly for these heat lovers, so they are tucked down into the straw mulch next to a gallon of colored water and are all under cover. I'm hoping I created a suitable microclimate for the little guys. Some of the tomatoes suffered from our winds this week. The black cherry doesn't look too good and I lost a couple smaller ones. Most of them seem in good shape though. The toms are all buried pretty deep to help them have good, deep roots.

The strawberries don't need their cover anymore. They're doing well still.

My potatoes are FINALLY starting to poke up through the straw. I've been peeking under the straw once in a while just to see if any of them were even alive! We're supposed to reach 82 on Monday. I think the plants will enjoy it.

Finally, here is one of the Freecycle rhubarb I got. This is the biggest of the 3 that I planted this spring but at least they are all growing!

I also planted some of the green beans. The beds seem to be pretty warm now and I also used covers to help keep it that way. We have finally hit our average last frost time, so I think it's fairly safe to try now. Next week I'll plant the corn then I'll try to stagger the rest of the bean plantings.

That's it for today's update. Soon, I think there will be much much more to report!