planting a vegetable garden - stage 2

It has been a rainy couple of weeks. Living on the drought-ridden prairies, this ought to have been a great thing. But it has meant that I have yet to put any tomato plants in. They need a lot of sun and heat and I figured that all the water would just drown them. So I am now going to have to wait until I get back from New York next week. Hopefully July and August will be enough time for them to get settled into the garden and start producing fruit.

In the meantime, the things I did get in the ground before Victoria Day weekend are doing very well. To begin with, the sugar snap peas are exceeding my wildest dreams and have just shot up. They are already tall enough to reach the trellis. Indeed, my concern for their safety has been mounting as I've spied several fearless jackrabbits puttering around the yard. The last thing I want is for them to discover the veritable salad bar that is my little vegetable garden.

So the other night I got down to business and built a little more protection for my peas. The trouble is, I'm not particularly handy, and even though I was working with bamboo garden rods and green garden netting, it was still a project and a half to construct.
For one thing, I kept getting tangled up in the netting. Another trouble was I didn't have any garden tape; so fixing everything together was a challenge. Eventually I figured it all out and now, I hope that the peas have a safe home to continue to grow and eventually bear lots of sweet pods.

I also discovered that all is not lost with the scarlet runner beans on the other trellis. There are three (yes three!) little shoots that have started to come up. As soon as I saw them my chest puffed up with pride and I went over to beam at my little bean sprouts. They are going to be beautiful when they grow up.

I hope there are lots of bright red flowers and that they bloom after the lilacs have all come and gone. Right now the scent of these lilac bushes under the front windows wafts all the way up to my bedroom window. As you approach my front door, you are immediately undone by them. They are intoxicating. Lilacs are magnificent flowers. When mine are in full bloom, the colour is so intense that they seem to be blooming just for the world to know what lilacs ought to look and smell like.

Salad greens continue to grow slowly. They get quite a bit of shade from the big stupid air conditioning unit that sits in the middle of the garden. Some day that thing will get moved and then there will be so much room to grow things here. In the meantime, the butter crunch lettuce is coming along nicely. I will have to thin them out soon, but I want to wait to see which ones are the strongest. The arugula may have been discovered. I feel like there are less little green guys here than last week. Maybe all the rain and then the one intense day of sun burned them up.

I think the slow bolt cilantro is starting to come up in the back herb box. The tulips are mostly done blooming, except for a few remarkable crimson ones I planted last fall. I want more of them and more white ones for next spring.