Peace on the farmette

It's a muggy day already at the farmette. We STARTED at 25 C and we're under a heat warning. I cancelled our reunion in St. Thomas, because nobody wants to be outside in 46C humid ooze. Boo. Will try and organize something for when the weather is less punishing.

In the midst of Middle East mayhem with the orange imbecile inserting the U.S. in Iran, the world feels like it's on fire, too.

Fortunately, here at the farmette, peace and quiet (except for birdsong and the odd feral cat fight next door) reigns. Speaking of birds, I highly recommend Merlin, an app developed by Cornell University to identify them from their song. Yesterday, I recorded a house wren, a yellow-rumped warbler (nice name) and a red-eyed vireo, which I didn't even know existed.

But I digress, already.

I really wanted to continue with the garden theme, because things are absolutely popping here in Grey County.

Our Japanese ivory silk lilac is in its full glory. It's another tree that we inherited, and it has really grown and thrived over the last 13 years.

I love it because it blooms after all the other lilacs are long gone. They're pretty common. You see these all over commercial spaces because they're so easy to maintain. That's ok. It's one of the reasons I like ours. Plus it's gorgeous, right?

The new raised beds are making a fantastic home for my vegetables.

The radishes, spinach, peas, beets, carrots, onions and mesclun (mixed lettuce) are all up in these two beds. There's also a few potato plants that I hilled up yesterday before the thunderstorm came through. Rob also put in a row of spuds outside the boxes.

The third bed is reserved for our tomato and pepper crop, which are doing very well, too.

I had to cover everything with a net because Gord the groundhog is back again this year. We also have cottontail bunnies, squirrels and chipmunks. So rodents aplenty around the farmette. They LOVE the tender shoots of new plants, but we humans would like to enjoy the fruits of our work, too.

I got all my pots and hanging baskets planted. Every year, I have to have a hanging red begonia. It blooms like crazy for the whole season.

It has pride of place under the deep shade of the maple that overhangs the house and the mask sister Sandy gave me from a local art shop.

We have tonnes of volunteer milkweed in the east bed beside the driveway. So much so that I had to cull out some of them to let my cranesbill geranium get enough sunlight.

I did keep most of them for the Monarchs, which have evolved a symbiotic relationship with the plant. Milkweed is the only thing they can lay their eggs on and the only thing their caterpillars can eat. They're just now starting to get blooms, which smell heavenly. Bonus.

So that's it for this week. Gotta say it's comforting to have our wee green oasis when it seems like carnage reigns in rest of the world.

Gratuitous cat photo courtesy of Hobbes, who likes to chill on the flagstone patio on hot days.