“The RoseBouquet”

Yes, my garden is where it is at again. That time of the year, you know.

We had such lovely, warm sunny weather on Saturday and Sunday, but the forecast was for wet snow yesterday. I was not sure if I’d be able to work in the garden after all as I’d planned on the Victoria Day holiday. Besides, even if I toughed it out and sowed my seeds and planted my potatoes, some of them might freeze and I’d have to sow those rows all over again some weeks later.

When I went out to size up the work at 10 a.m. it was so windy and cold just to handle the rakes, with their steel handles that I went back inside and put on an old parka, my knitted toque, and hunted up my old leather driving gloves.

The old west-side of the path garden just needed smoothing out with a rake and it was ready. The east-side garden was a different story. Spying a bale of farm straw beside my fridge-planter I broke most of that up and scattered it all over the east garden. Then I dragged what was left in the big plastic bag of peat moss over and dumped it on the garden too and spread that out.

I have another bale of peat moss in the shed, and I managed to drag it out, but decided by then, that I would spread that another day.

My neighbours, Joe and Penny, are away for the weekend, but the woman who comes to feed and check on their dogs came out and we had a nice chat over the fence.

When done, I saw it was 11 a.m. and I decided to at least plant that one pail of purple potatoes I had saved in my basement from last fall. They had long stems on them already - nearly two feet long! I am ready to go buy some seed potatoes, but went at planting these for now. Because someone had said last week that you could leave those stems on, even sticking up out of the ground, I tried that. In no time I had three rows of potatoes planted on each side of the path at the end of the garden nearest my car.

Now the desire to sow some seeds too came over me stronger, and I concluded that it wouldn’t hurt the radishes, lettuce and spinach if there were a snow fall yet later in the day, so I sowed a row each of those. Then a row of sweet peas, and finally a row of onion sets for Spanish onions. I drew lines for more rows so I could plan inside what is to go where. Turns out I have room for 11 more rows on the west side garden.

When I went inside at noon, my sister Elsie called from Chilliwack, B.C., to ask if I’d be home the first weekend of June. She’s planning to come that weekend to visit me. As we got talking about gardens, she told me she would show me three-sister-planting. I’ve read a bit about companion planting, but her current job is with the Dept. of Agriculture in B.C., and she writes manuals and instruction guides for gardeners and farmers, so Elsie knows the latest and best in that area. Whoa! I’ll have the expert herself come to show me this!

Now I’m extra glad that I had Joe dig up this new garden plot. I’ll try to get that bale of peat moss worked into that soil before she comes and then I’ll have some new adventures in gardening.

Incidentally, no snow came yesterday, but there’s still threat of it today. (Shrug). I bundled up in winter clothes for my walk to the office today. Burr-r-r-r!

I do have tulip leaves shooting up in the front flowerbeds. See?

That’s only the first 10 or 12. I’m watching for 45 of them, but I think the soil has to warm up first.