Tuesday, May 5, 2020

May Is Cool

In spite of the coronavirus, life on the farm is actually lovely right now. Spring is cool this year (for the South), and it seems to me the flowers and vegetables are better than usual. Here's my lovely elderberry tree!

Each little blossom will be an elderberry.
I want to make jam so badly.
Last April, this tree looked like this:

Isn't that amazing?
This spring, I cut off five more exactly like that from my tree, and now I have five more starts. I want elderberry to be one of our prime products on this farm in future -- lots of jam, lots of syrup perhaps.

Sugar sweet peas are bearing.
We'll pick some flat ones for salads and stir fries. The others I'll allow to mature, and I'll freeze peas again for the winter.

Speaking of freezing ... I've put two gallons of our strawberries in the freezer so far, and they are still bearing!



Perhaps we've mastered strawberries?
Lettuce:

Last year I told Adam I wanted a small bed dedicated to just plantain. I use it to make an ointment. It's a weed that grows in the yard, but it gets mowed down. He was tired of me saying, "Wait! Don't mow there! It's plantain!" I wasn't sure how a weed would perform in a bed to itself ...

... but it's doing rather well! 

I'm kind of a nut about growing herbs. It's ridiculous; I grow way more herbs than we could ever eat, and I don't even like eating some of them. But I love growing herbs. I have no idea why. And I can't help but make a video now and then about my herb beds. It's a little like showing off your children to others and saying, "See how he's grown?!" Anyway, here is the current video. Welcome to my herb beds:
I have a few basil in little pots that I'm taking around to friends. I have two more lemongrass plants to put in the ground somewhere. And only five Matt's Wild Cherry seedlings germinated, in my packet from Jonny's Seeds -- quite a disappointment! Soon I'll be moaning about the heat, but for how, I'm loving working outside in the cool May weather this year. Blessings to all of you, friends!

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