Red Stuff and Dirt

It was really the perfect gardening weather today, although I'm sure not everyone would agree. Overcast, slightly cool, easy to work and not get too hot or too cold. It began with a trip to the local home improvement store for six big bags of potting soil for the tater bags. About a month ago, I was quite distressed to see some of the little tater leaves had turned black. None of the ones in the garden had done that, so all we could think was it must have been from a frost we had that got to them because they're sitting above ground. I trimmed off the dead parts and figured the stuff underground was probably OK. Viola! Much of the green has now topped the edges of the bags. You can't see most of that here because they're now all buried up to their necks.

I love to find lacquer-winged Lady Bugs in my garden.

Thinning my vegetables is very difficult for me mentally. It's hard to pull up and discard (compost) more than half of some things, in this case carrots. It's also just a wee bit tedious.

Pea flower a la Georgia O'Keefe.

The triumph of the beets! Hardy little rooters outpaced those doppelganger weeds. Bravo, beets!

At the end of last season, we sprinkled the gardens with crimson clover. Over and over. OK, really only once, but now you have that song in your head, don't you? Anyhoooooooo...it was meant to be a winter cover crop, but it never grew all the way to flower before the new season started, and we plowed it all under. However, a few seeds survived, and just look at this stuff! Crimson, indeed. I so wish we had been able to see the gardens covered in this brilliance. Maybe next year...