Peas, Bees and Sunsets

It was a busy Mother's Day weekend, but we still found time to fight the crowd's at the Garden Center, pick up some plants and actually get them in the ground. We found a flat of six pickling cucumber transplants, one of which is pictured above. Those went into the ground and we want to get another eight plants to be certain we have plenty for making pickles again this year.

In addition to cucumbers, Basil went into the ground, which will be for making pesto and also for pizza on the grill along with Roma tomatoes and homemade mozzarella.

Speaking of Roma Tomatoes, three plants went in the ground.

We also planted Super Chili hot peppers, which some of you may remember from last year. They, too, will be ingredients in our pickles.

New to the garden this year: Cilantro, for use in salsa and guacamole.

And, yet another pickle ingredient, the dill is growing like mad. One problem that's becoming apparent is that a lot of dill has grown over the section where we planted the carrots. We'll need to do some figuring to make sure the carrots can grow well and not get choked out by the dill. I think we'll probably pull the largest and strongest dill plants and transplant them to another location and then pull out the rest and discard it. The longer we spend thinking about it, though, the larger the dill gets and the more I worry about the carrots. Something needs to be done soon.

The Romaine is looking green and healthy.

The peas are about 4" tall and probably need some thinning. That will be tough to do, since the peas, having grown from seed, make me excited about the garden as a whole, but I think it needs to be done for the good of the potential harvest. Come on peas, take one for the team.

The garlic is growing like crazy. The short guy there in the center left of the photo sprouted all of that growth only between last Tuesday morning, when I accidentally snapped off everything it had grown up to the point, and Saturday when I took the photos. That's about 3" of growth in four days, which I attribute to watering in the mornings and a lot of sun over the past week.

The Chives, which we planted last year and came up again on their own (since they're perennials), have small purplish blossoms which will turn into nice looking purple flowers. I think we need to start using the Chives for something, but I'm not sure what. Perhaps I'll make my own cottage cheese and add some chives to it?

Outside of the garden, in Blueberry World, this bee is a good sign that things will be well pollinated this year. Thanks, little guy!

Flowers in the Yard, Tangent One: Bleeding Hearts.

Flowers in the Yard, Tangent Two: Lilacs, all along the borders of the property.

Flowers in the Yard, Tangent Three: A funky looking tulip.

Flowers in the Yard, Tangent Four: Irises.

And finally, as we were wrapping up our planting on Saturday and the sun was beginning to set, I snapped this photo from the back yard.