Rainy, cloudy, foggy, cool. Hardly feels like Memorial Day at all. This is the start of summer? Frank wanted to put out the summer flag, but I’d rather wait until it really warms up. Valerie is home from school, and she and Marmalade spent much time outside, chasing chipmunks. Didn’t catch any, luckily!
The fishies, or at least some of them, seem to be surviving. The most I can count at once is about a dozen. They’ve now figured out what the food pellets that we throw at them are, sort of. Only a few of them are brave enough to eat while we are watching. There aren’t any dead fish floating at the top or in the filter, so unless something like a raccoon came and scooped them out for a midnight snack, we’re assuming that they are just hiding really well. Unless Marmalade actually caught one … I watched him, and he was just fascinated with them, but never touched the water. Hmm.
The lilacs are definitely in bloom, not only in our garden, but all over town. We have both purple and white ones, and they look wonderful, and smell wonderful too. I wonder how big these bushes will get.
The annuals in the window boxes along the deck are doing quite well. It’s been a really rainy and cool week, which is perfect to harden them off. We brought the last of the ones from the basement up to the top balcony. Frank still has to build some more shelves for more, but we fit all but one of the ones I’ve already made.
We still have both tulips and daffodils blooming all over the yard. It’s pretty late, I think, but they look great. I guess we’re behind the village by about a week, and behind Keene by probably two weeks or more.
The perennials that I planted a week ago seem to be doing fine. The rainy weather has helped a lot for them, too. Conditions don’t get much better than this for baby plants. I put in a bunch of my seedlings today. I’ve figured out that the best thing for the bugs is to wear the bug suit and garden in the rain. I get wet, but I can stay out for hours that way. I planted some blue indigo, mostly, around the old well, as well as a few pansies. But my biggest thing, here, is that a friend from bridge gave us some gladiolas, and I put them in here. I have to remember this, because I’ll have to pull them up in the fall. We’re psyched to have them — showy flowers aren’t something either one of us has much experience with.
Frank put in a bunch of daffodil bulbs in today, hundreds of them. He put in about 50 white ones, and about a half of a 100 count box of “mixed for naturalizing” ones. He said that they were really generous with that box, though, because he swears he put in at least 100 of them. These are the left over ones from White Flower Farm that we ordered last year, but weren’t able to plant last fall. Our strategy was to keep them in the chest freezer all winter, and plant them in the spring. We’re not sure if that’s going to work or not, but it seemed better than just throwing them all away. So will they bloom in July or something? Or in the fall? Who knows. We’ll watch this spot, though.
I put a bunch of the annuals that I had left over from the window boxes along the stone wall in the front yard. I put a lot of lobelia right at the edge of the rocks, hoping it will cascade over. I still have some lantana that I need to figure out something to do with, too.
We’re having a great year for birds and butterflies so far. Our feeders are constantly busy. We put up an oriole feeder for the first time this year, but so far, only a couple of hummingbirds have checked it out. (seemed to like it, too) These glass hummingbird feeders are tricky to keep from dripping, though I love the way they look.