Eloquent Pedestrian

Here in Minnesota the weather isn't known for its heat. Around here it gets to below freezing around Halloween, just in time to ruin children's costumes, and the thermometer parks there until about Easter, when everything melts and we move into the wet and ugly season. People here are proud of the endurance in the cold. We do stupid things out in the cold like ice fishing and polar bear swims. Our summers are not record breaking by comparison (International Falls is the coldest place in the country, look it up), every Minnesotan is quick to point out that the humidity is truly frightening here. We have more than 10,000 lakes and they turn us into a lovely sauna on the hottest of days. It doesn't get better at night, it doesn't let up in the shade. You just kick up your heels and swim wherever you're going.  I have to say I'm a fairly typical Minnesotan in that the heat makes me as whiney as a contestant on The Bachelor. I hate sweating, I hate humidity, and I...

A week ago I was going to write about pest control, but the idea of reliving picking soft squishy little caterpillars off of my broccoli and then accidentally squishing them and watching  dark green goo go all over the leaves.... makes me gag. Then I was going to write about how wet and cold it's been. But today the sun came out, and so I don't want to think about that anymore either. Instead I want to talk about how this is both my favorite time in gardening, and the most excruciating. You see, this is the time when everything has properly taken off. My tomatoes are turning into bushes (yay! I didn't kill the tomato when I snapped the stem planting it!), my severely pruned chives are coming back, as mom says "the Champlain is more rose than bush", and all of the roses are covered in blossoms, and my beans are looking like they might actually produce something. So it's wonderfully exciting, to see two months(at least) of work and worry starting to pay off....

This is my garden, it says hi.   If you had told me at graduation that I'd be spending ten hours a week playing in the dirt in my backyard, I would not have believed you. We moved into this house when I was four years old. My mother did some gardening the first few years we were here, but I only have vague memories of those. There were two plots permanently marked out in our backyard when we moved in. Since the year that raccoons climbed into the backyard and ate mom's corn, there hasn't been any gardening on our property. We have perennials from those early days left on one side: hostas and peonies. And occasionally our neighbor's plants will grow under the fences and make their way into our yard. Quickly moving through the years, I did not do any yard work growing up beyond helping to bag leaves in the fall. But something got into me last year, and I started harassing my mother ( it is her house) to see if I could do some gardening. She was skeptical that anythi...

Last Monday it was 103 degrees (F) here in Minneapolis (the hottest it's been in the state since the 80's), and today we almost hit 70 in the sun. Dramatic weather is the norm for a Minnesota spring, but this week really pushed the extremes. I, personally, was glad to see the sun on Monday. My garden has been looking a little shrimpy so far this year, and the lovely sun, followed by some rain and more sun, has put everything into overdrive. Some of my plants have doubled in size, and it's starting to look like a proper garden, rather than a row of seedlings. Even better, the flowers have finally come out to play. First, the Champlain red rose: Then the deep pink Winnipeg Parks: And finally the volunteer Irises from our next door neighbor's yard: The peonies were already in bloom: And the dianthus plants (more about them later): In Minnesota, we put up with a lot to get to our beautiful springs. This last winter we had record breaking snows on top of the cold a...