Garden update!

 These last couple of months have been unseasonably cool and rainy which has made my usual Springtime attitude a bit more...dank.  In keeping with the weather, I will share a picture of one of my raised beds (the same in the previous post), now filled with compost and partially planted. It was a very rainy day when this picture was taken.

And now here's a picture of it 10 days later - all the cool season crops are loving the weather.  In there I've got lettuce, carrots, mesclun, broccoli and nasturtium. I just recently popped in a sugar pie pumpkin start that I'm going to (hopefully) stake so that it weaves throughout but doesn't take over. I'm not too concerned with that considering how last year's vine grew.

And remember those irises I finally got transplanted this Spring?? I wasn't expecting any of them to bloom.....

...and it's yellow!! I've only ever seen one flower and it was purple- so this was a total surprise. Several others are also budding- no signs of purple yet.

Another new addition to our yard this year- blueberry bushes!  I bought four after seeing how well our neighbors grew along their fence last year; two different varieties.  I know I should probably remove these flowers to allow the plant to get better established but... I just can't!  I kind of want to see what might show up later in the Summer.

After a few failed attempts at covering my other raised bed to provide a warmer growing space for some of my heat-loving plants, I finally decided to put in something a bit more permanent.  Special thanks goes to my husband who actually did the installing. :-)  Please ignore the ill-fitting sheeting that's on there in this picture!  I was hoping I could reuse the Gro-therm but it's obviously not wide enough.  This bed is home to my cantaloupe, tomatoes, beans, peppers & zucchini.

In some non-food related gardening news, we have a couple new trees in our backyard.  We've spent the last year trying to find just the right thing to fill in the garish holes that were created when our neighbors behind us removed two full grown fir trees. Instead of planting something like an arborvitae which is commonly used as a screen, we opted for some small trees that will, over time, give us some of that privacy back while also adding a nice visual element to the space.  The Bloodgood Japanese Maple below is a gorgeous specimen; one of my favorites.  It will grow up to 25 feet tall and wide if left unpruned (it doesn't really require any). 

The other tree is one I've never heard of before but the information I read about it online and from the nursery manager was that the leaves should turn a yellow-orange in the Fall, and in the Spring the flowers that emerge are red.  As it gets older the bark exfoliates which is really striking.  I'm hoping we're in this house long enough to see that start to happen!