It's a sunny day at the farmette, though cool. It keeps clouding over and threatening to rain on the laundry on my line, so I've got everything crossed that it doesn't.
Yesterday, Sandy and I went to the Barrie fairgrounds to watch my niece Rachel in her barrel racing competition. She belongs to a club, and is consistently winning everything in sight. (Okay, not everything - I may be a biased aunt.)
She and her horse Trigger did, however win this one - against a dozen (or so) others. Pretty good form, eh?
It was a terrific day of visiting, topped off with me helping Sandy pick out all the plants for her raised beds. Her husband Brian made four - count 'em - four big boxes in which to put all their vegetables - tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, onions - you name it. They're a bit tired of the weeds around their place, so are doing it up right.
We, on the other hand, are continuing to go old school, pretty much.
Everything is coming up - which is good, because I had a lot left over from previous years, so I hardly had to buy any seeds. I'm a bit lackadaisical about putting years on the seed packs - and many companies don't put a best-buy date on them, so it was a bit of a crap shoot this year for most of my veggies.
But, as you can see, things are starting to pop. The radishes were the first to emerge - of course. Can hardly wait to chow down on the multi-coloured Easter egg variety I got from Vesey's.
The peppers and tomatoes are looking good after we had to rip out the last bunch because of frost. We were (okay I was) a bit too eager on the Victoria Day weekend and we got a good hard freezing the day after. Which rendered everything absolutely black and dead. Boo.
Oh well, lesson learned.
We have one of our two homemade raised beds planted - a true herb garden. Besides the requisite thyme, oregano, chives, Italian parsley and basil, I put in a curry plant. I LOVE that smell - and my stomach loves the fantastic Indian food that goes with it. It's in the top corner here. YUM.
The flowers are stunning, too. I bought a couple of Solomon's Seal plants at local horticultural society's sale last year, and they survived the winter! I just love the delicate white bells that are suspended under the fronds. Beauty.
The violets are also violetting, the allium are alliumming and I'm so pleased my red bud tree is finally blooming.
We planted a wee stick soon after we moved here seven (!) years ago in the hopes that we could replicate the gorgeous shade that the one in the back yard in Guelph gave us. It's a Carolinian species, so it's not really supposed live up here.
It hadn't blossomed in previous years, but voila! It's now about 10 feet tall and thriving.
Yay. The sun's come out again, which means I get to go and roll around the garden at the farmette again. Life is truly good. Until next week.