My favorite time of year.

This month marks my favorite time of year, when the winged elm in our back yard blooms. The blossoms open at night, and the smell can literally stun you. The only problem is watching out for all the bees! It's a beautiful tree, the shade it provides is fantastic, and the smell puts roses to shame.

Timmy's Garden update

Today is the last day of June, and I thought I'd catch everyone that's interested up to speed on how Timmy's garden is doing. The whole idea of the garden was hopefully to get him to eat more vegetables, as well as for him to know where vegetables came from. We haven't started harvesting anything, so I can't say it's a success yet.

We now have pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupes, zucchini, and acorn squash up. Some are doing very well, some (most notably the acorn squash) are just breaking ground. We have corn growing everywhere. The two biggest cornstalks (knee high) aren't in the garden, but elsewhere. We think some of these were planted by Timmy, and some by a squirrel that lives next door. The corn we planted in a specific spot isn't doing very well at all. The first beans we planted are growing, but only seven hills out of 24 came up. The second planting, 16 hills, have 15 growing. The sweet peas are growing in several places, and the radishes are growing like weeds (so are the weeds). The sunflowers we planted on the south side of the house aren't doing well, while the ones we planted next to the fence (on the south side) are doing great! Timmy has two cauliflower plants up, but they're barely two inches high. The tomatoes are beginning to have more blooms on them, and we may be eating tomatoes from our garden by mid-July -- if the squirrel leaves them alone.

I found a dozen or more packets of seeds around the house and the garage, left over from attempts at gardening in 1996 and 2001. We planted all of those in one small area about 18" wide and 7' long. You wouldn't believe how many of those seeds have sprouted, and are growing - sometimes better than the ones we planted in Timmy's garden.

One thing we planted from seeds dated 2001 were "Birdhouse" gourds. We planted ten seeds in two areas, hoping at least one of them would germinate. So far, nine have started growing. We'll probably try to transplant a few of those plants elsewhere, but at the moment we're letting them grow where they are. Those, as well as most of the other "old" seeds we planted and that are growing, were all from Ferry-Morse. I guess their "guaranteed to grow" label is true.

Hopefully we'll get some rain this week. While I water the plants every other day, a good soaking rain would do far more good.