Sunday. Happy Mother's Day.
Although we spend a good bit of time out I did finish getting the pots on the second tower filled, set up, and the area swept up. I will get some more of the plants set out today. We should have nice temps and a goodish amount of sun today and tomorrow.
We went to the open-air market up north of here. It is the only one open for now and the largest in the area. Our own city farm market doesn't open for another three weeks. I found golden lemon thyme and stevia and picked up several plants of each. I hope the stevia this year is sweeter than last year's. I didn't find a replacement for the tomato plant that broke during transplanting. A large number of venders show up each year selling everything from fresh veggies to plants, from baked goods to jellies, jams, honey and maple syrup, and hand made goods of all kinds. The growers selling fresh veggies all use high tunnels in this area. We have seen more of those on the farms around here.
On a different gardening tangent, this article led me to a bit of online searches on the topic of hyper-accumulators--plants that can incorporate large amounts heavy metal without dying themselves. I had never heard that term before though I do remember stories about using some water loving plants in ponds to remove pollutants and purify the water. Wikipedia has an impressive list of such plants and the metals they accumulate.
On the one hand someone has finally had an attack of honesty. The whole notion of selectively paying U.S. creditors in the event of an interruption of government cash flow (via Congressional failure to raise the borrowing limit) was a minor chord in the cacophony over the budget and debt last time around. Of course the major groups who would be shorted were American citizen (active duty military, seniors, whoever) while foreign debt holders (China, et al.) would continue to get paid. On the other hand, I have to wonder why the topic comes up again now. Then I realized that the last agreement runs until March of next year--ten months from now with the mid-term elections in between. Getting ready for another battle??
I can definitely relate to this article. I fee like I am at least two weeks--maybe three behind. I have a friend in Colorado who posted on Facebook that she is facing a winter storm watch and trying to figure out which plants she can save. My first rose came when I still couldn't get a spade into the soil in my containers. The other came when it was still too cold to plant though the soil was (barely) workable. Both started out inside in large pots. I put them out in the containers just last week. I didn't visit the garden centers until late April. In a normal year (whatever the hell that might be anymore) I would have been scoping them out in early April. They are just now getting their usual stocks in. We expect a cool down (to the low 60s) later this week so I will be cutting up milk and vinegar jars for cloches. Strangely enough, I follow a blogger in Texas who has given up on a cool season garden. They have already had temps in the 90s--higher in some places. I hope this spring of discontent will morph into a summer and autumn of abundance.
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