I know I am way overdue with a vegetable garden update. In fact, I haven’t even posted much of anything about the veg garden this whole spring, even though I started working in there in March. The ensuing three months were taken up with gardening, not writing about gardening, so that means we will just jump right into a lush summer garden and skip all the photos of bare spring dirt.

Starting in the foreground of the shot above, I have various lettuces and flowering arugula growing around the sugar snap pea. supports. Then, up the right side of the path are a row of zinnias, the peas, flowering radishes, Red Russian kale, Lucullus Swiss Chard, some dill, and the entry path. Then come some Dragon’s Tongue beans, then my patch of 11 tomatoes underplanted with various basils, a row of mixed wax, green and purple beans, and finally my Glass Gem corn. Up along the fence on the right side are sunflower and cosmos seedlings, and tucked here and there are tomotillos, hyacinth beans, poppies, and a volunteer squash.

Up the left side of the path are, out of view of this photo, sweet peas at the fence, Victoria rhubarb, another row of zinnias, more sweet peast, radishes, then overwintered spinach that’s about to be ripped out and replanted, cilantro, parsley, borage, thyme, a row of red Swiss Chard, overwintered bok choy and yellow chard, blueberries, strawberries, then a row of mustard, followed by rows of arugula and mache. Then some rogue ruffled kale seedlings, and about eight pepper plants. After that we get into the dahlia forest, interplanted with rows of zinnias, followed by the cucumber trellis, a squash, then even more dahlias, nasturtium seedlings, and my mint patch. Whew!

Let’s get closer. Up above are the various greens. The blue flowering plants are borage, and the mustard is blooming yellow. The radishes on the left have beutiful light pink flowers, and they’ve made “radish beans.”

These radish seed pods are actually more delicious, to me, than the radishes. I am glad I let this crop go to seed and discovered a new treat.

From the top: Peas, radishes, Red Russian Kale, Lucullus Swiss Chard

I find Red Russian kale to be one of the most beautiful plants I grow. Every thing about it, from the shape of the leaves to their color, pleases me. Last year my first seeding was preyed on by some sort of stink bug, but this year that bug has held off long enough for me to get a few leaves of my own. I suspect that it will only be a matter of time until the kale falls victim to some other bug, though. Such is the nature of (my) organic garden.

The snow peas are finally coming on. I am puzzled by snowpeas. The seed packets say to sow here in February or March. Well, February just seemed brutal to try to get something to grow, so I waited and sowed in March. It was a month before seedlings emerged. I didn’t get a great germination rate (they were old seeds), so I interplanted with new seedlings in April. These newer plants quickly caught up to the earlier-seeded siblings, just as of of my favorite gardening books said they would. I think this spring’s weather, which has alternated between highs in the mid-90s and being downright chilly, has the peas in a tizzy. I’ll be lucky to get a few delicious handfuls, and that will be it before I rip them out to plant something else. Central VA just doesn’t have the climate for growing these cool-season crops.

Up next: the rest of the garden…

The average last frost date in Free Union usually occurs between April 11 and 20. This year, however, we’ve had a cool, long spring, and last night were hit with what I suspect will be our last frost of the year.

My only frost victims in the veg garden were a couple of coleus I’d stuck in over the weekend. I like to grow coleus to add to cut flower bouquets. There are the dead plants above, nestled among some oregano, radishes, peas, and a blueberry bush—all of which made it through the night just fine.

Interestingly, the even smaller coleus starts—above, in red—I’d stuck around the house garden escaped frost damage. Of course it makes sense that the south side of the house would be warmer than the exposed garden out in the field, but I continue to enjoy discovering all the different microclimates on this property.

Of course I covered the new tomatoes for the night, and they were okay, as were all the pots of started dahlias and other vegetables I stashed in the well house overnight. I wonder how the local vineyards and orchards and other farmers fared—I read news stories last evening that it was going to be a stressful night as many growers watched the mercury with their livelihood on the line.

Looking at the upcoming forecast, in which temperatures are supposed to shoot up to near 90 degrees tomorrow, I am just going to go ahead and call it. Winter is over, let the (frost-free) growing season begin!

It’s ironic, isn’t it, that a week ago it was sleeting and now we’ve just come through several days of near-90 degree temperatures.

I feel clobbered by summer just when we should, finally, be enjoying spring.

The heat’s brought on the spring flowering trees, it appears to their detriment. My wonderful Yoshino cherry in the front yard flowered yesterday and already this morning its green leaves were pushing through tired-looking white flowers. In one day. With cooler weather one could enjoy the pure-white flowers and grey branches alone for at least a week before the leaves come in to make everything look a bit ragged.

I was out this morning hauling five-gallon buckets of water to the vegetable garden. I haven’t yet set up my hoses, and with this heat I needed to water the new peas and recently sprouted greens. We’ve had so little rain lately that these young plants were wilting like it was July, not early April. I would say this is not a good harbinger for an easy summer, if there is such a thing around here, but the variability demonstrated by last week’s weather compared to this week’s shows that there are no patterns nor useful predictions.

I’ve been chipping away at my spring to-do list, which is dozens of items long. It’s times like these that I really feel my singleness, my two small hands that are solely responsible for making so much happen. Most of the time I enjoy working alone, but I do know how much more can be accomplished with the extra helpers that I don’t have. If I still lived in San Diego, as I used to, I would totally have gone down to the nearest big-box hardware store parking lot and picked up a truck load of day laborers. But this kind of help just isn’t as, shall we say, visible here in central Virginia. So I go it alone.

One of my main focuses right now is to do what needs to be done to make summer maintenance a little less exhausting. To that end, I am working on defining beds around the house in order to keep turf and weeds from encroaching. I am also going to mulch pretty heavily, with straw in the vegetable garden, double-ground hardwood mulch in the ornamental beds, and pine bark around then pasture trees, in hopes that it will keep the weeds down and lessen drought stress (and watering) on plants.

But of course, this being the property it is, and by that I mean still young and undefined, in order to do all these things I must do several other things first. So for the past few weeks I have been hauling boulders out of the woods to edge the beds, shoveling topsoil, shoveling and hand-spreading mulch. All hard work that’s a race between physical exhaustion and the disappearance of daylight, and usually I push myself until the sun goes down.

I try not to look at the ten yards of mulch that was just yesterday dumped in my field and think that I will need to position it all, shovel by shovel, in place. Instead I just pick up the shovel, start up the tractor, and take it one bucket-load at a time.

Tonight, near eight o’clock, I was shoveling mulch on the front bed when I heard a guitar. My neighbor, a young guy who rents the the house just up the road, was sitting on his porch, strumming and singing in the sunset. I’m not going to lie, I had a somewhat bitter flashback to being a young renter, with no better way to spend a warm, dry evening than just sitting. I wish I could say the “joys of home ownership” make losing all sense of idle relaxation worth it, but the jury’s still out on that.

And while they’re debating, there is still the veg garden to lime, fertilize, straw, and oh, plan and plant. All I have in now are peas and greens, but in a couple of weeks it will be time to pound tomato stakes and transplant the dahlias that I potted up inside a few weeks ago. And sow the cut flowers, and set up the cucumber trellis. And there are the water hoses to set up, the chicken house to clean, the roses to prune, and the tools to clean and organize, among many other tasks. We’re officially in the season of nonstop projects, and those short winter days spent reading by the wood stove are but a pleasant memory.

If it sounds like I am complaining, I am not. I love every minute of all of this work, and nothing makes me feel more vital than these tasks. I feel like taking care of this patch of dirt is one of the things I was born to do, but I know enough about the sequence of spring chores to know that certain issues, if not nipped in the bud—literally!—make for larger problems down the road. I am feeling behind and panicky. And I still need to do my taxes!

The pressure is on in part because I have have wonderful out-of-town friends arriving in a week. I am so very much looking forward to their visit, and I’d like to have a good handle on all these things so I can be the relaxed hostess they deserve, without having to conscript them into mulch spreading! And, my green tractor is ailing—leaking oil from its front axle—and going to the tractor hospital on Monday for bit of a stay. I need the tractor for most of my outdoor jobs, so I need to get those done before the tractor is away on convalescence. And tomorrow it’s supposed to rain most of the day, which is a wonderful thing for the drought, but not so great for my plans to mulch. So the variables are stacking up, and there’s nothing to do but make lists, prioritize, and push through the best I can.

Spring has forsaken us.

For the last couple of days the angle of the setting sun has lit up just the grass in the back pasture while everything else is in shadow. It’s a stunning effect, and lasts but a moment before the sun slips behind the mountain.

Seeing the light play in grass is the precise reason why I don’t mow all of my land. Even broomstraw—especially broomstraw—which isn’t good for fodder and is an indicator of poor soil, is gorgeous as it glows.

It continues to be a very long winter here in Central Virginia. With snowstorms all throughout March, one would think that turning the calendar page to April might signify a fresh, warm start. But it’s not to be. It’s still cold and blustery, with temperatures running at least ten degrees below average. Easter was drizzly and chilly. The daffodils are blooming, and were even last month, but the ground around them is still brown and quiet.

Yesterday, one of the guest instructors for my master gardener class told us that he had trouble finding weed examples to bring to class—everything is so delayed. And just last week I was in Washington, D.C., where the metro thronged with tourists come to see the famous cherry blossoms. Well, too bad, as nary a blossom was in sight and the peak bloom prediction has been pushed back to April 5.

The ornamental cherry in my yard, which I planted to remind me of my years in D.C., is no where near blooming. Its buds are still tight to the branch, shivering. The peas I planted March 10 just today stuck one leaf out of the soil. I can only hope that this late, late winter means a fewer sweltering, drought-stricken summer days, but I know better. Around here, anything can happen.

And an hour later, the next band of snow swung through.

Cut flower season has returned. My vases have been so lonely, my windowsills so naked.

These may be the lucky ones. Their companions, outside tonight:

Let’s go back to this, shall we? Isn’t that color a shock to the heart gone dead during winter?

Now that’s better.

Damage control begins in the morning.  I suspect that soon there will be many short-stemmed daffodil arrangements in this house.

Woke to three inches of snow on Monday, yesterday started with socked-in fog and ended with the wind blowing the broom straw in the fields flat to the ground. And today was 62 degrees and sunny with a dusting of snow forecast overnight.

Spring.

Don’t read Annie Proulx in front of the wood stove alone during a power outage while heavy snow blows horizontally outside the window and the wind screams down the chimney. YOU WILL FREAK YOURSELF OUT!

Instead, try Tina Fey’s “Bossypants.” Good for a unexpectedly feminist laugh and a reminder of 21st century luxuries like “30 Rock.” And, oh, t.v. And electricity.

And when you’ve read that straight through, continue on with a healthy dose of Joel Salatin’s “Folks, This Ain’t Normal.” Which will make you feel so wonderfully normal as you get up to fill your wood stove with wood you fed, named, petted, felled, split, stacked and carried in yourself.

P.S. Please do read Annie Proulx at any other time. She is just such a freaking badass in the way she lays down a story, and her writing thrills me in a way few others do.

It’s flurrying under grey skies with peeks of patchy blue. Such appropriate weather to welcome March, which is what I consider to be the last winter month in Central Virginia. March is usually good for a snowstorm around here, though I don’t hold much hope as this winter has been a bust for snow lovers. I haven’t had to break out the snow shovel even once.