Falling Behind!

When your husband (AKA, Mr. Muscle on the farm) injures himself, farm work quickly overwhelms, and we fall behind. Not only am I behind in my blogging, I'm behind in my many duties around the farm! Weeds are taking over, Radishes are not pulled. Potatoes are not covered. Tomatoes seem to be taking over the world.
Peas. They are high.

 Pea production has begun. I don't want to pick any early; I want them fully-developed, so I can freeze bags of whole peas for the summer and fall.

Wando peas

These are just a few of our many potato plants.

 Spinach is bolting. Lettuce is looking puny, but the soil in that part of the bed was not prepared as well as it might have been. Below is a Brandywine potato-leaf tomato plant. I seem to have a million of them. (Just kidding.) But I do have a lot! They all need homes, and they must NOT find a home in our yard!

Seriously -- I put about 56 tomato plants in beds in our garden, and that is ALL that I want or need. I refuse to do as I did last year, plunking random tomato plants in any available spots next to a fence, only to have them consumed by weeds and die slow deaths. These are gorgeous heirloom plants. If you want one for free -- or a few, or however many -- please stop by and take them home!
If you look carefully in this photo, you will see bunnies. Can you find them? After I saw them, they both ran away. I hope the dogs don't find them!

 Adam is still leaving our clover and buttercups in the pasture, although he's mowing paths for us to walk easily. He wants the clover to go to seed and become thicker each year. It's so pretty and good for the bees.

 Here's our first tomato bed. The lines hanging down to each plant are recommended by Peter, who worked at a small organic farm last summer; this is the method they used. And it really works. See the one cord going straight down? It's longer and already is twining around the plant below. Or perhaps I should say the plant is twining around the cord.

 Some of you will recall my eucalyptus tree. I think it is most assuredly dead. However, I'll leave it for this season to see if anything happens. But ...

 ... below, at its base, lots of new growth has appeared!

 I'm relieved. I may have a eucalyptus bush instead of a tree, but that's okay.
And the dead branches are so beautiful and aromatic.

 Let's tour the herb garden, shall we? The thyme is blooming and the dill has reseeded from last year.

 

The bushy plant below on the left is tarragon, which returned from last year. I'd read that it should overwinter here fine, and it did! On the right you see just part of the conquering oregano that is taking over the entire herb bed. It is a low plant, so I'm letting it do its thing ... for now.

 

Most of this below is cilantro. I wanted lots of it, and I do have a lot.

 This is lemon balm, which also overwintered well. And on the right is lemon verbena. It survived in a pot on the front porch all winter.  

I'm sad to say that my little bay tree (above) must've died over the winter. I was so hopeful!

I may try again and keep it in a pot on the porch.

My overwintered basil is still alive in the herb bed, but on its last legs.

Roses are blooming. This one is beside the front porch.

Together Adam and I took down the plastic sheeting on the ends of the front porch.

 We will replace it with breathable shade cloth for the summer.

 See the yellow roses there?
And now we have good cross-breezes on the porch.

Above is my semi-shade garden along one side of the house. The elephant ears have come back. The artemesia is doing well, and the sedum is healthy if short. The two ferns are quite beautiful, and six of my hosta plants, two of the three astilbes, and the lantana have all come up. The hearty amaryllis is brilliant. Sadly, my new bleeding heart didn't make it, and one of my hostas is not up yet. Overall, not too bad. I will try again with a bleeding heart once I find out why it didn't survive here. The bed is quite long (all the way down to the wattle fence in the distance) and is still sparsely populated. I added a foxglove last week.