Radish Smadish

Note the lack of radishes, which would not be here even if they had been perfect. Those are homemade sourdough croutons, by the way.

Turns out I didn’t plant very many radishes, because it’s hard to get excited about growing a vegetable that you don’t really like, so no great loss. But if they go after my broccoli, cauliflower, kale and cabbage plants, well, that’s a whole other sadness. I’m spraying with insecticidal soap (likely won’t do much unless I get lucky with a direct hit) and putting diatamaceous earth around the stems (might help). This pest is new to me. Ah, the joys of gardening in a new location.

Otherwise, I’ve been eating a lot of salad with beautiful baby greens thinned out from the garden. Yum.

The lodgepole pines are throwing pollen for all they are worth, and everything, inside the house and out, seems to have a fine dusting on it. Sometimes, it’s quite beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, I have always thought Cedar Waxwings looked like a bird an artist would have made up, right down to their yellow paint dipped tail. They tend to visit in flocks, making a very distinct high-pitched call back and forth. One you’ve heard them a few times, you tend to look up when you hear it.

Not the sharpest picture. I was zoomed in and there wasn’t much light. Got to love the Mafia Boss attitude here. “What chou looking at?”

A group of them descended on the grandaddy apple tree in the yard, and proceeded to eat most of the blossoms that were left. As this is a red delicious, my least favorite apple, I’m happy to make the sacrifice to see these beautiful feathered friends.

The apples are pretty much done blooming now.

The lilacs, however, are still going strong. We had quite a few swallowtail butterflies visiting one weekend, and of course, the big fat bumblebees seem to always be around, in several species, all bigger than my thumb.

The zinnia was the first flower to bloom in the garden, planted from seed inside back in early March. What is most surprising is that these zinnias have mostly looked like they were going to die any minute from the moment I put them outside and I had taken to telling them to piss off, because I was tired of their whiney attitude. Was quite surprised when they won the “first to bloom” race, though the cosmos was only a day behind.

When I say we’ve had a wet spring, I’m not kidding. I have mushrooms coming up in several places in the garden, including the onion patch.

But sometimes the rain makes for some spectacular misty mornings!

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where we’re moving a large pile of rotted hay over to the garden one cartload at a time, and wishing our bathtub (for soaking the sore bits) was larger.