Finally A Posting!

May 4, 2012

May is here and I have done no blog postings for nearly six months.  Well, it is a “Garden Blog” after all…. I will try to bring you all up to date now.  The winter was very mild and there was minimal snow followed by a warm spring so far with little rain. This has prompted early growth generally and little storm damage to anything.  So no complaints from me! I still burned a lot of wood in the stove over the winter but this kept the oil bill down even with the rising prices.  The winter was a nice, quiet time to hunker down, enjoy my new kitchen, soak and cook beans from the garden and enjoy lots of pickles, jam and salsa as well.  Last year was my best year for canning and also for sales of the results, yet the cupboard still has many jars left to take me through the summer until another harvest and canning effort.

My winter and spring had a fair amount of opportunity to be a good POPS to Cotton as he continues to spend stretches of time alone with me when help was needed for Julian and Roxi.  To my great delight, the Brooklyn family is moving to Maine later this year after buying a house in Biddeford, a mere four miles from my place.  Roxi and Julian are going to relocate Angelrox to Maine and jointly run the “family” business together.  See the new look of the website and enjoy:  www.angelrox.com .  Hopefully Maine will prove to be a good base for the business and certainly a great place to raise Cotton and for all to enjoy a much different lifestyle and pace that New York demanded of them.  I couldn’t be happier for now I can see them all the time, share the bounty of my garden and help with the business as well.

Frankly, all the activity mentioned in the last paragraph is probably the biggest reason for my silence on this blog for so long.  A long of family goings on and the pending decision and the house buying process was capturing my attention.  Yet the gardening work continued and continues.  I have already eaten some garden fresh asparagus.  My 200 garlic plants are flourishing and moving toward their July harvest. Seeds are in for early cool weather crops like: peas; turnips; radishes; carrots; kale; chard; broccoli raab and lettuce.  I have many tomato plants, peppers, summer squash, cucumbers and other seedlings growing inside under lights.  The last full moon before June is tomorrow so the gardening world is wondering if we have already seen the last frost.

The dwarf fruit trees are in bloom or nearly so. I think I will actually have a lot more fruit this year than just some pears and a few peaches on those trees. Maybe I will finally get some of my own apples. The blueberry bushes have many, many berry buds and the strawberries are beginning to bloom nicely. When the rain of the last couple of days ends the onions and potatoes will be planted.

Since the snow was not an long enduring factor this year all the flowerbeds received a thorough early cleaning of leaves and debris and now are really looking as good as ever.  The magnolia tree has finished blooming as have the forsythia bushes but soon the lilacs will be in full bloom.  Here are a few pictures but expect more in later postings.