Gardening

Back in April, when we had a week of temperatures in the mid and even high 20's, I began to think that we could put our garden in earlier than usual. The rule of thumb is to wait until the Victoria Day long weekend before planting, so as to avoid the chance of a late frost. So I figured we might be able to plant the weekend of the May 15th and 16th. Then we had 4 inches of snow on May 4!  But the weekend of May 16-16 was pretty nice, and on Monday it was +26 and on Tuesday we hit +31!  Looking good! I had wanted Dave to be up here that weekend, roto-till the garden and we could get it planted. But he had some puttering/jobs to do and wasn't here. Then it started to rain, we dropped to +2 by Friday and the long weekend was lousy and wet. Except for Monday afternoon, when most of us on this block mowed our lawns! Looked nice too! By Wednesday, the garden was dry enough, Dave got here in the morning with the cultivator, worked in 6 bags of sheep maure, and voila the garden was ready to plant. We did that on Thursday.

Tomatoes will be going on the right side of the section closest to the camera and also to the west of the raspberries. The lilacs are in full bloom, but the cherry tree is almost done.

The day got cloudier and cooler and then it rained that night. Rain is good--helps those little seeds to germinate.  It rained hard Saturday afternoon. Then at 6 in the evening it started to snow!

By 7 it looked this and it only got worse! Yuck! We got about an inch by Sunday morning, but they got more down south--4 inches in Olds. And the temperature was +2 again. But nothing froze! Yay!

Do you think we have finally seen the last of the snow?  Will the garden grow with these below normal temperatures? Stay tuned!