After a week on vacation, I was eager to get back to the garden but one of the wettest rainstorms we’d ever experienced kept us inside. During a weather break, I went to check on everything in the garden. This is essentially another May garden tour, just after the vacation.

Note: The video version of this post gets released on Wednesday, June 19.

We arrived home from our trip to one of the wettest storms I’ve ever experienced.

Okay, let’s check on the garden. I haven’t been here since before the hiking trip, and I can already tell you things have grown a lot. Oh, there’s a chicken out again. I’ve got to put in the chicken and then check on my garden.

Despite my neighbor trimming most of the grass, plants were taking over everywhere in the garden. Except for the encroaching chamomile and thistles, the potatoes are looking great.

I mean, they are growing so fast. And at least the first bit is ground-covered by now.

Look at that.

I’ll have to see what this is, but I don’t know what that is. But the potatoes are looking good.

There are insects everywhere, but the good kind. Everything is looking great. There are some weeds that I need to pull, but mostly it’s looking really, really good.

And then, the final one. There we go. And here we even have some peas. There’s peas here, and there’s peas over there. There’s a second pea right here, and supposedly these don’t need a trellis, we’re going to see.

And here are the beds that I did later. Also looking good, but we need to do something about the grass.

The storm of the night before had brought hundreds of liters of water. My collecting barrels were full to the rim. This barrel will get moved soon, but for now I had to put the water somewhere.

Mosquitoes were still everywhere in the garden, especially on the overgrown plot.

The strawberries were growing in nicely. I’ll be able to take a lot of little plantlings out of here for next year. The first fruit were showing up everywhere.

And over here one lavender is doing good, one seems to be dead, but there’s thyme. And some of it has new growth, so it’s going to make it. And then the other lavender also is still doing good.

Over here we have the raspberry I planted, but we’re going to see because of some growth in a few days. Just let it be for now.

Okay, let’s get the seedlings watered in the greenhouse and check on everything I planted before I left. After those water adventures, I’m sweaty.

Garlic and onions are looking good. Well, they are a bit yellow, but nothing that I could have changed if I was here. There’s some weeding I need to do, but nothing major.

Horsetail is a resilient little weed. It spreads underground, and if you break it in the wrong place, it regrows.
But the tomatoes I’d rescued were looking great.

Yes, this is me weeding with my injured hand. I’m down to some tape and a lot of paying attention.

Like the apartment, the garden has turned into walk-in to-do list. Things to get done everywhere. As I edit this, I can tell you this bed will look very different soon.

I’d been worried about the garden. I’d planned for heat and gotten rain.

Seeing everything grow in well and not yet overtaken by weeds was a huge relief.

I’d need to get a whole lot of weeding done in the next days, but I didn’t mind. Weeding is one of my favorite activities in the garden. I know most people hate it.

Leaving for a week only lost us three plants. Even the rescues were recovering nicely.

But there were certainly parts of the beds that looked more like lawn than garden beds.

In some places, the wanted plants were hard to see between the weeds and volunteers.

Most things seemed to have made it. There are some melons that didn’t make it, but that’s okay. They were rescue plants anyway, so they didn’t have the best chance to start with. One of my Malabar spinaches died. And a few of the tomatoes aren’t looking too good. But all in all, I’m very happy.

Everything seems to have survived the very strong storms… that we totally missed but they were here. And even some of the raspberries seem to be recovering, so… I think we’re going to make it.

Grass was poking through everywhere between the cardboard, but the plants were looking great. Well, most of them.

I’m going to be back in the next few days to clean up a bit, to get everything planted that needs planting.

But right now, I need to get going because I need to pick up some groceries and my medication. And then I need to go back to the couch and recover from hiking.

I picked some sting relief because the mosquitoes definitely arrived in the garden. I was so happy that there were a lot fewer here than there are at the apartment. But they have arrived. And while I was unable to move enough, refilling the water barrels and moving the water around, I got stung a dozen times.

So I have some sting relief. And what you do is you just take these and you chew them up and you make a little salve. And then you put that on the sting and it pulls out the toxin and then it stops being all itchy.

At home, I may do with a few organic options at the grocery store. We live in an area with limited choice. Three or four vegetable options, mushrooms, lemons and sometimes a seasonal option like asparagus. All wrapped in plastic.

Soon we’ll eat what we grow. For now, we’ll make it work.

So long and thanks for being here.