It's great to garden in the month of May. Plenty of spring showers keep everything green, and all sorts of surprises can sprout from the soil. You can start to see the fruits of your labor in winter, starting plants indoors, hardening them off, and watering and mulching them. The weeds haven't completely taken hold of the garden, and allergies are slowly but surely subsiding (fruit tree pollen is the bane of my existence).
Primroses (Oenothera)
The
Old Salem primroses (above) have been blooming since the first of April. The ones in the pot are finally starting to show signs of flagging. They've produced many, many seed heads which promise to keep the show going next spring.
Herbs
The
herbs have also been a joy this spring. In a long railing herb pot are
oregano and
lemon balm, both surviving the winter and coming back beautifully. In addition, I planted some basil in there and, rather foolishly, two
tomatoes. I say foolishly because if the tomatoes do well they'll easily crowd everything else out.
The rosemary also wintered over and is nice and green and bushy. I used the herbs, including garlic chives, to make a the veggie bake below.
In addition, what's a Southern garden without a sprig of
mint? We have had it growing by the deck for many years. I'll need to ask my mom who planted it and when. Along with my mother and myself, my grandmother loved to garden, and so did my grandfather, so it could have been any of us. I believe this mint is spearmint, but I couldn't say for sure. I just know that my daughter makes exquisite mint tea with it.
For the Cats
Below is Icy taking an interest in the catnip that I started from seed this winter and then repotted. (Bad wound on back is finally healing nicely after a vet visit and shot of antibiotic!)
After Icy nibbled, along came Eddie (below), who finished the destruction.
So I bought a catmint plant and put that in the garden. Nepeta × faassenii 'Walker's Low' isn't going to reseed, which I think is a bummer, but it looked like a sturdy enough plant to survive the neighborhood cats. Below is Eddie testing this theory.
Experiments
I have a bunch of
experiments going on, so many that in fact I've lost track of what I planted where, which makes for nice serendipity.
I've planted:
Muntingia calabura seeds
Paw paw seeds
A brown turkey fig
A sweet potato started from a water glass
Seeds from naturalized phlox on Hwy 421
Evening scented stock, Matthiola longipetala
Heirloom chocolate tomato
