No cherries for the humans at the mini-farm this year. Doesn't look like the birds really got any either, though. I don't know what happened exactly, there were so many blossoms in the spring, then fewer little cherries, then what few there were just fell to the ground half-heartedly, meager little pale fruits. There's an answer to it, but this isn't the year for me to figure it out. 

The best garden things I've done this year are the bathtub greens garden and the pea trellis. Both are flourishing in a way that the sad little radishes and dormant squash seeds have not. One lesson I did learn from last year was to actually harvest things, as opposed to gazing at them, paralyzed by wonder that anything actually grew. This is how you end up with a lot of bolted plants! Just another reminder to  always use the good stuff. 

Friday evening, we spent the evening outside, weeding and setting up a new bed for pea starts. It was good that we did, since that was the last of the nice weather for the weekend. All weekend it drizzled and the house felt cluttered and crowded. It was Sunday evening before I felt inspired to do anything to remedy that. The day had been spent at the Lucky Dumpster, eating scones and lemon curd with Jess, wandering up to Tweets with our mugs, where James slipped behind the espresso machine and made my latte and Jessica's tea. There was music at Tweets and Jess and David both clowned around in time to it, outdancing each other, David stirring it up with a broom, Jessica doing high frog kicks. I wished I had a video camera. 

Most of gardening is this. The dandelions have all gone to seed already, but there is still creeping buttercup and catchweed bedstraw, vetch, broadleaf dock, horsetail and thistles. Everything tells you a little about what is wrong with the soil, and we chip away at the problem with soil from the compost pile that Tom manages, or the big bags of Harvest Supreme I keep coming home with. The pea vines are doing okay though, and helping the soil as they do. The raspberries are completely out of our control and the onions seem to be flourishing. The artichokes have finally starting to grow and now there are two tiny asparagus stems instead of just one.   

Tom says we can go to the Bellingham farmer's market tomorrow, but I can see that he is thinking about the starts that still need to be transplanted, and the piles of mail around the house that build up over the course of the week, not to mention the fact that there is still no riding lawnmower for the little less than an acre of grass that surrounds the house. I just want to wear sandals and get some breakfast from one of the food stands and maybe one of those mushroom growing kits, but maybe it's a coveralls kind of day instead. 

Everything but the roses

Nearly everything has bloomed in the yard now, the crocus, the daffodils, the tulips, the jasmine, vibernum, snapdragons, all the fruit trees, wisteria, daisies. The peony hasn't bloomed, but I don't expect it to this year, since it was just transplanted last year. First year roots, second year shoots, IIthird year flowers. My radishes are growing and there are microgreens in the old bathtub and peas climbing up the lopsided trellis I put together one night before Sunday music at the Longhorn. The onions and garlic look happy, though the asparagus is, so far, just one lone feathery stalk, smaller than a pencil. 

I feel wilted myself, three days sick with some strange thing that shows up mostly in a kind of light-headedness and exhaustion. Bonus sore throat and headache, but no other symptoms, really. It leaves me feeling confused, like something that I already can't remember just happened and has slipped away from me already. My whole life is throat coat tea, juice of carrots and greens, beans and rice just for something solid to eat, plain except for some shreds of kale, a little salt and pepper. 

There is reading, though, Wrecker by Summer Wood now, and before that Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister, a book I had to put down for a while out of annoyance over some thing or another, which I can't remember any more. In the end, I was happy to have read it, kept telling everyone what I learned about raw milk as a result. Wrecker is just a pleasure, no complaints, the kind of book you get through before you're even better. Halfway through already and still sore-throated and spacey, it looks like I'll do just that.