I just got back from giving the garden beds a watering for the evening. Tomorrow is not supposed to be as hot as today, but we haven’t gotten any of the rain that hit other parts of the province, some of which got serious thunderstorm warnings!
When I got to the trellis bed, I was rather blown away by how much bigger the noodle bean sprouts were, even compared to this morning.
They were not the only ones.
In the first image, you can see four of the five collars around pumpkin seeds – and they are all sprouting! Nothing in the fifth one, yet, but these were the very last seeds I planted, and they’re already up! I remember last year, being amazed by how fast these free pumpkin seeds grew, too.
I have also confirmed, and you can see in the next photo: we have sunflowers! Not a lot, but the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers are starting to sprout. I wasn’t sure if these seeds were still viable or not, so anything we get of those is bonus!
While watering the new asparagus and strawberry bed, I got another pleasant surprise. I am pretty sure I planted the bare roots and crowns too late; I had not expected it to take so long, or I would have stored them properly. And yet, I found a single Jersey Giant asparagus, sprouting along the stake I place to mark where the crowns were planted. It’s so adorable!
I spent a fair bit of time working on the snap pea bed, carefully using the hose to pull weeds without also pulling the peas and tiny carrots out. As I worked my way from one end to the other, I was startled to find a bean sprout. Several of them. I had completely forgotten that I’d planted the last few bean seeds in the gaps between pea plants in one row! Gosh, the red noodle beans germinated fast!
Meanwhile, the Royal Burgundy bush beans I’d plant much earlier, beside the spoon tomatoes, have finally shown signs of life. All of two beans have sprouted. Hopefully, this means more will show up.
I didn’t bother trying to get a photo, but I also saw more corn seedlings showing up in the corn and yellow bush bean bed. Still very few, while the leftover seeds that got planted with the Arikara squash have more sprouting, and the earlier ones are getting quite big!
The Black zucchini has been doing really well. I planted three seeds in three spots, and 8 out of 9 seeds are now sprouted! With so many sprouting, I will probably have several to thin by transplanting, later. Even where the White Scallop square are planted, one seedling has appeared. Last year, those ones took three tries and a much longer time before any germinated, so that makes me very happy.
So far so good! I have to keep reminding myself that I finished planting everything such a short time ago. It just feels so late in the season. Probably because we had that heat wave in May.
On a completely unrelated note…
We seem to be missing three kittens.
Caramel’s tabby, Li’l Rig, and her tortie, Wormy, are nowhere to be seen. Yesterday, I spotted Caramel “luring” Li’l Rig into the maple grove on the north side of the inner yard. I strongly suspect she has taken them across the road. I was really hoping that, after I brought Li’l Rig back to the sun room yesterday evening, she wouldn’t try again. Caramel has been hanging around the house, which seems very strange for her to do, if she took her babies onto the property across the road.
Their brother, Havarti, is the biggest of the litter, is still very much around. He is so active and independent, I doubt he’d follow his mother anywhere right now. The other two are much smaller and were both recovering from oogey eyes. I can’t find them to check if their eyes still need washing.
The third missing kitten is Zipper. He was the sickest and the last on the road to recovery. He did seem much improved but, to be honest, in looking for him, I was looking for a body. No sign of him, anywhere. I do hope he’s okay. I can’t imagine he would have followed Caramel across the road.
I’m probably going to go outside one more time and do a walkabout. Maybe I’ll find him then.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 