August 14

I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with this. The only good excuse I have is that it's high garden harvest time and that's what I've been doing in my free time. The garden, and everyone else's gardens nearby is actually about 3 weeks behind because of the cooler summer we've had. There's been no blast of heat in the 90s or 100s at any point. It actually was 45 degrees this morning when I left for work.

These cool temps make some things better and others worse. Tomatoes and peppers are well behind, but some of the greenery crops are doing great, as well as cucumbers. I have never had so many, nor have I had this many squash of all types. They are vining out, and I have several types in abundance - yellow, zucchini, hubbard, patty pan, acorn, pumpkin, and butternut. I have promptly cut a lot of the cucumbers into spears and pickled them, as well as sticking some in the sour fermenting crock. I also started a 3 heads of cabbage batch of sauerkraut that fits neatly in a half gallon jar.

A lot of tomatoes, much more than usual, had blossom end rot and had to get thrown out. I started to get some of these at the beginning of August and only within the past three or four days am I getting rot-free, huge san marzanos. Also in the past few days the cherokee purple beefsteak variety has finally ripened a couple of specimens, which taste amazing. I've had sun gold cherry tomatoes coming out of my ears since the beginning of the month. They have a tendency to split when overripe, however.

The poplar tree in the backyard is starting to drop a couple of leaves. I will write more soon.

July 23

Storms have come back in, dumping a lot of rain, and unlike last year, we haven't had a big heat wave touching 100F. I don't have a lot of corn, but what is there is not very tall and is blowing over in these storms, and I have to go pile dirt around each stalk after each storm. It's marginally annoying. The sweet corn farm up the road has put their signs out and they're selling for six dollars for a baker's dozen. We got some and boiled it up, and it's sweet and wonderful. I like to grill it and put  a little black char to the outside.

Midsummer prairie - aster, black eyed susans, compass plants, and goldenrod.

We have raspberries coming out of our ears. The plants are more productive than I've ever seen. Every day we can go out and pick a nice cereal bowl full of berries. I might need to make jam just to use some of them up. Blackberries, as well, are putting out huge, juicy, acidic clumps of fruit.

The japanese beetles are now starting to slowly show up.

I tried to start some fall cabbage and broccoli again this year, outside in little pots, and the seedlings again either drowned, got nibbled by insects, or baked in the hot sun. I know one year I will accept that I just have to do them indoors, either in the basement or in the shed I want to put up this summer.

I rode past a big fallen branch from a poplar tree yesterday that had been sitting for a while and I could smell the dead leaves. It was the smell of autumn. Of football season, chilly and wet mornings, raking, and crock pots. It was a fragrant glimpse of what's to come soon.

July 21

Haven't posted for three weeks at this point. Things have been busy. I left town for a week on vacation and had a wide variety of stuff to do when I got back. Just to get something up here, I'll give an indication of when I started harvesting some things recently.

I harvested all of the garlic on 7/19. The leaves had yellowed. This year I have only 65 bulbs, about half of what I had last year. Many of the bulbs are smaller as well. I know that a lot of them didn't make it through the winter and never sprouted.

Started harvesting "picklebush" cucumbers on 7/19. Each day I pick a couple. They hit pickle size and stay there.

Yellow squash, zucchini,and patty-pan squash are now pickable, starting this week. The early fruit from each of these had some rotting and didn't get very big.

Peas! Both the snap peas and shelling peas got big enough that they all basically turned into shelling peas. The plants right now are about done but we got two good meals worth of shelling peas out of two rows. There are still some peas developing but the heat has done it in. Once they are completely dead, I will pull them out of the ground and plant a fall crop in the same spot. The plants got about 3 feet high, a foot higher than the fence I put up for them.

Cherry tomatoes developed this week. First couple ripe ones about 2 days ago. There are now starting to ripen some romas as well, none are fully ripe yet, though. No ripening of other beefsteak varieties.

I grew two sorts of potatoes this year and the plants really dried up in the last two weeks. I put the soaker hose on them for a while but one set of plants didn't come back and basically withered, a red new potato variety. I pulled a bunch out of the ground tonight and they look nice, some big, some small. Definitely a better harvest than last year when it was so dry. I only put 10 lbs of taters total in the ground this year, we'll have to see what I get out of it. One of these years I have to try potatoes in an actual raised bed and see what kind of production I get.

I pulled out a spinach patch and arugula patch, and replaced them with more greens.

I can now pick collard greens.

Some corn is starting to tassel. Others in the area have sweet corn ready.

Biked past some lovely summer prairie fields today, filled with purple coneflowers, yellow black-eyed susans, gerber daisies, buttercups, and other flowers depending on how wet the prairie was.

July 2

We are in full summer. The heat has not come yet as expected, lately the high has been near 75 each day which makes for pleasant days.

The peas have really developed in the last couple days and we officially have peas coming out of our ears. The plants have stretched about 3 feet high, a little higher than the fencing I put up for them. Other things we can pick and harvest at liberty - cilantro, lettuce, spinach, radishes, arugula, dill, parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, green onions, chives. We have one large head of broccoli developing.

The cucumbers will start vining soon. The second planting I put in has done well and is catching up to the older plants.
Cherry tomatoes have started to put out green fruit. All tomato plants have flowers now. The peppers in the last two weeks have really sprouted, and some of them have flowers.

Our roses have been blooming for the past week, since my birthday. The raspberry canes are full of small, green, hard berries. A couple of very early ripe ones have shown up here and there. The blackberries are likewise full of white flowers and tiny, hard, seedy green berries.

The plum tree usually has a "junedrop" where it loses a lot of plums, which is a known occurence. For whatever reason this year it has dropped a couple, but has hung onto a lot. I put some fertilizer spikes around it earlier this year, maybe that's made some difference.

The petunia, salvia, etc are all blooming and doing well, as are the butterfly bushes in the front. We have some very dark red cherries, more than we've ever had, in the cherry trees in the front. All of the daisies have opened up as well. The side of the roads are covered in purple aster flowers.

After another planting of corn was nibbled through by animals, I've given up. I'll have two nice plantings of sweet corn, after attempting 4 total. There is another planting of indian corn doing OK.

The beans all have flowers but not fruit yet. The pole beans have found their trellis and are wrapping around up the poles. Some of them are 3 to 4 feet off the ground at this point.

Some potatoes have flowered, but the plants are doing well. Haven't had any need to water yet.

We went to Devil's Lake state park for the weekend. The period of daily thunderstorms has passed. There are many wildflowers present. We also found some wild strawberries which I have not had in a while. You could see the foliage from the bluffs around the top of the lake of the surrounding lands. It was beautiful, all of the trees are green and filled in. You could see patches and groves of pine trees among all of the maple, oak, elm, aspen, and other deciduous species. At one point on top of the bluff a sandhill crane flew overhead.

June 25

I keep seeing new things every day but I am having trouble remembering them by the end when I sit down to write.

Daisies are starting to open.
Almost all tomato plants have flowers on them!
Mosquitos are definitely out, with a vengeance.
I bought a canoe and received it today. Hopefully will get it out this weekend. I noticed the lakes are starting to develop that little green algae all over the place.

June 19

Nothing much new to report. Went for a bike ride late and ended up with a lot of no-see-ums plastered onto my arms.
Some of the potato plants have started to flower. I need to cut the scapes off the garlic.

I bought some windows that will be eventually used in a new garden shed/greenhouse that will be put up in the backyard.

I also bought a canoe online today. I should get it by next week.

June 17

We are hitting temps in the mid-80s today.

The garlic plants are full of scapes as of two days ago. Scapes are the seed heads that are sent up each year. I'll have to cut them all off and make pesto. It's the most garlicky thing I will it, basically raw ground up green garlic with nuts and olive oil. If I allow them to fully form, they make little bulbils at the top of the plant that can be planted again. It's a lot easier to cut them off and then just replant the cloves in the fall, which separate about this time.

I saw a lightning bug the other day. They will be coming soon in waves. They are a great indicator of the general numbers of insects in the air. We went for a bike ride the other day and were getting eaten whenever we stopped.

The peonies are pretty much done, but other flowering trees have taken over. We can now see lots of little green apples on our trees, and very small, very green raspberries starting to form.

Angelica flowers, Queen Anne's lace and Wild Parsnip are all present in wetter areas. There are some irises out there too.

There are a couple of flowers on the pea plants. And the cherry tomatoes have flowered as well. One of the broccoli plants has a small flower on the inside. Last year I picked broccoli a month from today.

Spinach is pickable as "baby spinach" leaves. I will let them get a little larger. Arugula is pickable. The first planting of lettuce (little gem) is just about ready to pick. The first planting of radishes is probably ready to harvest as well. So salads every night for dinner for the next month. I will plant more radishes and lettuce in the spots that are opened up through harvest.

The pole beans are sending out their tendrils, looking for something to hang onto. I've set up trellises that are about 6 feet high.

June 12

You can go out at night now and actually smell summer.. the pine trees and the other blossoms. It's a wonderful odor. Went for a night bike ride and was slapped by insects the entire time.

The peonies opened up three days ago. The ants camp out on the unopened blossoms a week before that.

The pine trees now have the lighter green colored outer branches indicating the new growth.  You don't get a lot of indication from other bigger trees, other than new leaves every year, that they're actually growing. But the conifers do this every year and it's beautiful to see the new tips.

Our lone rhubarb was already subjected to a big picking from which maybe 10 cups of chopped rhubarb stalks were freed. I love raw rhubarb stalks dipped in sugar or with honey poured on top. Part of my love is the funny looks and groans I get from other people when I eat it.

Peas are about a foot and a half tall and about to put flowers out.

I planted a couple more strawberry plants. Tonight I picked three nice, ripe berries from the established june-bearing plants. The berries tasted amazing. They were so fresh they were almost acidic in the mouth which I had never experienced from a strawberry.

The garlic looks like it is just starting to put out scapes.

We are still in thunderstorm times. Maybe 3 nights a week for the past 3 weeks we've had the threat of rain. Some of the farm plantings are behind as a result. I've gotten just about everything in that I want.

June 1st

We have a lot of honey locust trees and they are in full bloom right now. Very fragrant. They are dropping their petals all over everything, blowing all over our deck and yard. In the past week the big sugar maple in the back has blown all of its helicopter seeds off, with the thunderstorms we've had.

The cherry trees, apple trees, and plum tree all have visible, immature fruit.

This is the time of year when it rains a ton, and you have to mow your lawn like crazy, but come July and August things will heat up and dry out and mowing will be simply for the weeds poking through and not the grass.
All the grass seed I spread a month ago is looking great.

Garden update:
The squash and pumpkins all sprouted, 8 days after I planted the seeds.
Rhubarb has a couple of times now sent up seed stalks that I have pinched off.
I planted a bunch of onion sets here, there, everywhere that are now coming up.
Cutworms seem to be impacting the corn again, I hope they don't decimate the entire crop like they did last year.

Summer is coming, time to take advantage.

May 22, #2

Other than the temperature, the other big difference between summer and winter in the atmosphere is the types of storms that come through. Summer is filled with thunderstorms while the rest of the non-snow year tends to have long, cold, slow rainstorms that may last the whole day.

Here is the start of a storm from last Saturday.

May 22

My mother, way off

We took kayaks out last Saturday, and went from a boat launch in Monona, across towards Upper Mud Lake and into the Yahara river, to go up Nine Springs Creek. It was high 70s and cloudy. No real biting insects out to speak of. The water was cool and high. We went about 3 miles upstream, went past the Lussier Heritage Center and through Lake Farm Park. There was a lot of waterfowl out - loons, mallards, canadian geese. They were all paired off. We would follow mallards down the creek, and they would get spooked and fly about 30 yards further down the stream, whereupon we would get up close to them again, they would fly about 30 yards again, over and over. Red-winged blackbirds were the most common land animal we saw.
There were lots of fishing boats out in Upper Mud Lake and the channel that we went through to get to out destination. We saw one other kayaker and a group of canoes near the end of our day. You have to go underneath a low railroad bridge and I had to get into the bottom of my kayak to scrape through.

This past monday I went out again, into the Sugar River in Paoli. I tried to go upstream a ways, but the water was too high and too swift. I reached a small riffled area where the river narrowed and I could not beat the heavy current. I got pushed against a strainer and the boat rocked and filled with water and I bailed out. Thankfully I have a rope attached to the boat so it doesn't float off, but I learned which parts of the boat and my gear are waterproof and which are not. It makes me think that I need some type of shoes that I can weare in the boat that I'm not afraid to get wet. I dragged the boat up on the shore in order to pour all the water out of it. The shore grasses are getting quite high by this point, at least a foot. Then I floated downstream, at one point I thought, I'm not going to make it back up this, am I? Went down a ways, turned around, got stuck on some sand, jumped out of the boat to pull it to another part of the river, and when I stepped back in, I tipped the boat again and got wet. Dragged the boat to someone's yard and poured the water out of it, again. Then the spot I thought I couldn't get back up, I was right, and I had to get out and drag the boat upstream before getting out of the water. In doing this I realized I was a little more vulnerable in this boat than I thought, especially in this high water environment.

We've hit the point where you can tell if a plant from last year is dead or alive. Either it's already started to put some kind of buds out, or the stems are dry and brittle.

Shrubs don't get any respect. We care about trees, big and majestic, we care about sweet-smelling and colorful flowers, and we care about anything we eat. But if you are a shrub and don't have anything more than nice green leaves, you're ignored.

Early beans and grassy weeds

Garden update:
Our rhubarb plant has exploded and has already put out the seed pods.
Asparagus - picking daily.
Beans have all sprouted (green, wax, haricot, kidney, pole.) They were in the ground maybe a week.
First planting of sweet corn has sprouted.
Some lettuce is barely starting to come up.
Onion sets I planted two weeks ago are showing.
Potatoes are doing quite well, much better in actual soil this year rather than in just straw and compost. Most, but not all, have sprouted.
Peas are starting to grab on to the trellises with their tendrils.

May 15

It's getting to the point where the lilac bushes outside are just about ready to pop open and release their aroma. I rode my bike to work today and smelled a hint of lilacs a couple of times, but not the full-blown warmth of their aroma.

Went kayaking yesterday, got the first wood tick of the season. The water on the inland lake was quite cold but not Lake Superior cold.

It's getting to the point with a lot of the trees where the leaves are getting past bud stage, not quite fully grown, but you can see a little deciduous grove and say that it's starting to fill out and not look so barren. Some of the trees are dropping their buds on the sidewalk, leaving a big fluorescent yellow patch. I also saw a little bit of cottonwood seed dust lining the edge of a sidewalk.

Two of our apple trees have leaves and blooms. The third is a different variety that has the closed buds yet. I hope they all pollinate each other this year! Last year a late frost after a big March warm spell wiped out nearly all of the apples in this state. Our plum and cherry trees are also full of flowers right now.

The frost from a couple days ago did in fact affect some of the tomato plants in the back. I am keeping my eye on them. Some look damaged but not fully killed. I am hoping they come back and start to thrive again, because if not, I'll need to replace them pretty quickly.

I planted two varieties of potatoes this year, one of them came up like gangbusters and the other one has been coming in more thinly and a lot slower.

I ate lunch next to a creek. The garlic mustard has come in and already flowered. In our backyard it has come in thick and with a vengeance. I sat under a big tree and watched mallards head downstream.

May 12

Today I planted green beans, yellow wax beans, haricots verts, kidney beans, pole beans, and the first planting of sweet corn. The normal average date of last frost for this area is May 9th, but we might get close tonight. I covered my tomato plants just to be careful with tarps. I have several big tarps specifically for this reason. The san marzano tomato plants look so small right now, about 3-6 inches off the ground level at their crown, but I know they'll soon hit 7 feet by the end of summer. It's amazing every year for me how big they get and how much fruit they put out.

I will have to trellis the peas in the next few days. There are six rows, both shelling peas and snap peas.

I saw two wood thrushes at the birdfeeder today, had not seen them before here and had to look them up.

I saw corn sprouting in a field down the road, starting on Thursday. There's still standing water in the corners of some of the fields, but there were tractors and combines out today, disking, tilling, spraying god-knows-what.

I ran a half-marathon yesterday, it was about 50 at the start of the race but with terrible wind gusts right into our faces for the first half of the run. I was cold for the whole race. The race was up near the Merrimac bluffs area and was one hill after another. There was about 1 mile of straight, flat land in the middle of the race, that was it.

Had to mow the lawn for the first time this year. I do not enjoy this job. There is always social pressure to keep it trimmed, to drive a green-and-yellow way too expensive "lawn tractor" and cut in perfect diagonal weed-free stripes. I would prefer the grass be replaced with prairie, or garden beds. But neighbors would whine and complain, we would get less money for our house when we eventually leave it, and the status quo is always easier. Growing grass is better for the environment, at least, than growing nothing at all.

May 8

The peas are coming up in rows. So are the arugula, spinach, and radishes. I planted them all maybe a week ago. Tomatoes I put in this past monday are well established and thriving.

We're hitting the point where dandelions are taking over. Many plants, some have their yellow flowerheads out, none have hit the point where they are white and have put their seed pods out for the wind to take them. Some of the corners of the untilled corn fields are covered in them.

Alfalfa is growing well in the fields already. Expect a cutting sometime soon. I wonder if they need to reseed that every once in a while, or if it's like grass, just comes up and you cut it like hay?

I've seen a lot of white-crowned sparrows at the bird feeder, they like to peck around at the ground and not really fly up onto the feeding tray. It would be a good idea to get out my hummingbird feeder, even though I haven't seen any around. If they know you have nectar in the past, they will come back to the same location and look for it. I wonder how they find my house after migrating.

May 6

Today I planted green onion, red onion, and leek shoots.

The potatoes are starting to come up a little bit. They are still getting dug up some by the animals, I'm presuming.

The peas I planted a week ago are just barely starting to come up. The grass I planted in patches throughout the yard is coming up through their compost beds.

I saw bats flying around at night a couple days ago. There have been boxelder bugs getting into our windowsills, but no real pests to speak of yet around.

Spring turkey hunting season is over and we haven't seen much of the group that hangs out in the corn field across the street.