May Day

Two days of thick pea soup fog. But I have been outside and got my bareroot things planted - which means all our snow melted. Will we get some more overnight? We could, but it's May! and it warms quickly when the sun's shining.

The first picture shows some of my little Spring friends. Years ago when I was healing from a hospital surgery, I made cute seasonal reminders - could call them icons (simile, likeness ... I think of icons as windows, or glimpses into a reality or truth). I have some Waldorf books from Europe that have great ideas for children (including me) for celebrating the seasons and rhythms of life.

Do you see from the next picture what they might represent? I pull them out each Spring from my bins of calendar visuals. The little brown thing is a seed pod with a cute face. I so look forward from seemingly dead winter - awaiting the buried seeds to spring to life.

A friend who used to live close by would leave me flowers by my door early in the morning or in my mail box May 1st for May Day. I think of doing it myself, but haven't yet.

I've got some potatoes 'chitting' and others planted. I'm planting all potatoes this year in pots. I talked about doing it earlier and here's the site with info I liked best. I put newspaper in the pot bottom only to keep the dry potting soil from falling through the holes. The site mentions only putting 5 seed potatoes in the pot, I had 12 of one potato variety, so that's why my picture shows 6 in the pot bottom. There's only 4" of soil in there for now, covering the potatoes. Once they grow up about 6-8" I'll cover them with more soil, and continue this process till they've grown to the top of the pot.

My greenhouse is fuller than ever with seedlings. This year I put all my dahlias in pots, rather than digging them up next fall to store over winter - since one pot wintered over in my greenhouse now has a dahlia a foot tall. I put bamboo poles in them and have added gladiola bulbs and some vining sweet pea plants.

In my garden I've planted more asparagus - purple this time, more strawberries, a couple more rhubarb, native plums, elderberry, saskatoon blueberry, patriot blueberry (almost filling the planting hole with peat for an acid soil), carmen cherry and bush cherry, and crab apple, and I'm trying a honeycrisp apple.

The last picture is of a swan gourd I bought at an Amish road-side booth in Wisconsin and dried. I actually brought home 5 and only one dried nice.