Dear Friends and Gardeners: April 26, 2010

Dear Dee and Mary Ann and Gardening Friends Everywhere,

I’ll start off by announcing that the “salad days” have begun here at May Dreams Gardens, beginning with the first salad pictured here.

It included mostly spinach and thinnings that I picked on Sunday from the lettuce patch, plus a few slices of those green onions from the garden. I added just the tiniest bit of salad dressing to it because it was all so tender and delicious, it didn’t need to be smothered in dressing.

All it needed to be absolutely perfect was a few sliced radishes from the garden, but those won’t be ready to harvest for another few days, at least.

I checked my garden journal, and noted that last year I didn’t pick the first spinach and lettuce until May 3rd. Based on that, the garden this year is about a week ahead of last year. I didn’t check other years, but did notice that I wrote that last April was one of the wettest in Indianapolis history with 7.25 inches.

This year I think everyone thinks it is a bit dry for April, until yesterday when it rained all day long. I even saw some neighbors running lawn sprinklers earlier in the week, which I think is absolutely ridiculous and wasteful this early in the spring. They are why so many people think that those of us with lawns behave irresponsibly.

Anyway, enough about lawns…

You would think I’d take advantage of a rainy day like yesterday to get caught up on stuff inside the house, like cleaning, which is what gardeners are supposed to do, right? Well, I didn’t. Instead I drove to a garden center clear on the other side of the city to look at their selection of containers.

Rosie’s Garden Center has more containers than you can imagine, and they are big, too. I am looking for one to put in the front garden as a focal point, per the garden designer’s instruction. She also mentioned I could put a specimen plant in that spot, so I’m mulling it over now. Container or plant? Of course, the container will have plants in it, so maybe that’s the way to go? I don’t know. I still have awhile to decide, I think.

I’d love to write more, and tell you all about my trip on Thursday and Friday to Cincinnati for a Garden Writers’ Association regional meeting, but the hour grows late. I did post earlier about visiting Lob’s Wood while touring the Cincinnati Nature Center, and will post some other updates from the visit later in the week. It was a fun meeting and I got to meet up with some people I hadn’t seen in awhile, plus meet some more garden writers.

It’s getting late now, so I’ll close as always with…

Hortifully yours,
Carol

P.S.

Here’s a picture of the garden taken late afternoon on Sunday. It got quite a soaking from the all day rain. The pea vines are about a foot tall and little strawberries are starting to form in the strawberry patch.

I need to do some weeding, I see, and… look down there at the end of the garden on the right – the snowball bush (Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile’) is in full bloom – early, of course.