Spring Garden Update

   Spring is really, truly here you guys. It is here to stay, at least for a while. We may only have a couple of weeks before Oklahoma Summer 2013 descends on us in all of her hot and humid glory, so I have a lot of green and dirty living to do. Lots to prepare and enjoy before facing that particular seasonal brutality.

   The gardens are filling in their own blanks quite nicely. They require thinning and grooming every day, especially in the radish and carrot beds, but no watering! Our rainfall in Oklahoma has been mercifully consistent.

My Grandpa has always gently scolded me for planting radishes too thickly. The result is having to thin aggressively, but my chickens & geese eat the sprouts. Sometimes I do too, in a green salad. They look like clover & taste peppery, tangy.

   The potatoes are finally multiplying. The spinach, rainbow chard, and myriad lettuces are drop dead gorgeous. And even more delicious than the are pretty. The sweet pea and English pea vines are as tall and fluffy as anything you’ve ever seen in your life. Honestly? This year the actual leaves on the pea vine are ginormous! Like, Jurassic big. Way too big really. I am afraid of how big the peas will be. Bowling ball size? Probably.

Back Seeded Simpson and Romaine lettuce sprouts, photo taken a couple of weeks ago. Imagine they are a million times fuller now. Because they are.

   Last night I discovered my first butter colored cauliflower you guys! She is pale yellow, dense, and perfect. Tucked primly inside the massive green plant she calls home, dreaming calmly of low-carb recipes. Her neighbor, the brussel sprout, is putting on evidence of edibility too. Broccoli, two kinds of cabbage, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, you name it. So far, except for corn and basil, we have a little bit of everything growing somewhere around here. Even chocolate mint which smells like angels in heaven are making York peppermint patties for breakfast while watching Casablanca.

This broccoli bolted on a hot day. But if you pinch off the center blooms and keep yellow leaves cleaned off, the plant will set food peripherally and the results are DELISH.

Colorful green and red (purple) cabbages are tightening up finally, and the spinach fills in beautifully.

   Another sign of spring, Chink-hi the buffalo has begun his annual shed extravaganza  So cute. I need to snap some photos for you, because the way his body releases its winter coat, the patterns in which he gradually achieves his warm weather version of nudity, is so hilarious. Right now his skinny little rump and the wide spaces around his giant liquid eyes are the only bare spots. And they reveal how crazy thick his coat has been all these months! Like an inch of matted, woolly fur all over his strong body. No joke.

   I have had our house windows open for days. Very little wind here except during the nighttime thunderstorms, just cool crisp breezes. And temperatures are looking better and better every day. This is a rare kind of meteorological bliss for us here in Indian Territory.

   I am done substitute teaching for the school year.

   The laundry is caught up.

   The kitchen is stocked.

   And I have that “the world is my oyster” kinda feeling. Can you guess that today and for as many days after as I can manage it, Handsome will find me half-buried in the gardens? Dirt manicures, rolled up jeans, and careless ponytails. These are the days. These are the weeks.

Thornless blackberry vines crawling up our forest-pole arbor. They have set dozens, maybe hundreds of buds already.

   This is the life.

   What’s growing in your garden? Please connect with this blog on Facebook and share photos! So fun to see what people love in different parts of this beautiful world. Happy Spring-slash-Summer you guys.

“Won’t you come into my garden?
 I want my roses to see you.”
 ~Richard Sheridan
18th century Irish playwright & poet
xoxoxoxo