May

After several almost cold days, it's warmed up with a vengeance.  Chicago had its first 90 degree day of the year this year.  We didn't get quite that high.

Yesterday, we got some tomatoes, broccoli  and a pepper plant.  It was too hot to plant them.  So, I planted them this morning.  For tomatoes, I looked for "short time to harvest" and found Celebrity and Parks Whopper -- both 65 days -- which may mean nothing here.  We got two of each, but a Celebrity had two plants in one pot.  So, there are now 3 Celebrities. I wasn't planning on getting any broccoli since they did so badly last year, but I couldn't resist the name Packman.  (We have a Ms PacMan in the basement and still enjoy playing it.)  With the newest pepper plant, we now have one each of Jalapeno, Habanero, and Giant Marconi.  (The last one is for me.)  The cucumbers are Boston Pickling.

I changed things around a little.  The cucumbers are where the tomatoes were last year.  The tomatoes are where the broccoli was last year.  And, the broccoli is where the Brussels sprouts were last year.




The lilac bushed are blooming (foreground).  And, the strawberry plants are in the right foreground.  I'll have to move them so they'll get water when I water the garden.  The plastic jugs have lilacs and Filbert nut trees from Arbor Day.  I'll move them from the garden when they get bigger.  That area of the garden also has some asparagus.  None of it is edible, but, at least, it came up.

We also took off about 5" of soil in the garden, put it where we're still trying to get grass to grow, and then added about 6 cu ft of peat moss to the garden.

Along with the fruit cocktail trees (which we've moved to their permanent locations -- one in front of the house, the other in back near the raspberry bush), we got some ground cherry and huckleberry seeds.  They're just in the seedling stage now.  I have no idea what they'll turn out like, buy my DH said his parents used to grow them.  They had a really big Iowa-style garden.  (It was just natural that they would.  They lived in Iowa.)

In knitting news, the last Nerd Wars tournament (Ravelry) has ended, and I didn't suffer from burn out like in the previous tournaments.  I've even started planning a couple of summer pullovers in Knit Picks CotLin.  Sign-ups for the next tournament start today.  (It's 3 months of tournament then 1 month off.)