Things are going pretty well in the seed department.

The snails have mostly survived the bulking of their soils.

The Dahlias were DEFINITELY doing well. They’d outgrown their spot so it was time to move them. They are now on the catio porch. They can take the cold nights, just not frost – so the porch will protect them from that for a couple more weeks. Then it will be safe enough to put them in the ground.

Also on the catio porch…

TWO more trays of freshly planted seeds. The top tray is a mix of different sunflowers, since none of my sunflowers in snails made it (I’m still salty about that). The bottom tray is a mix of my last seed order, which just arrived on Thursday – Cosmos (yes, more), Nasturtiums, Scabiosa, Queen Annes Lace, and more Foxglove.

And I’m VERY excited …

We have Sweet Pea seedlings! The plan is to plant these in a pot with a trellis, so even if I only get a third of the seedlings going it will be enough. The seedlings on the far right, last row should be the Mini Mike melons. But Dave was moving things around the other day and I’m a little worried he moved the tray. Mini Mike could be in the very back row which isn’t sprouting at all. I hope I’m wrong.

The other trays, both planted two weeks ago are all seeing sprouts too. The top row of pics is a mix… cosmos, snapdragons, foxglove etc. The bottom pic are marigolds – Eskimo and Strawberry Blonde.

Outside…

Peanut service at Squirrelington’s has been temporarily suspended.

At least until the seedlings are strong enough to take some digging in the beds. The second pic is all Foxglove. Foxglove must be surface sown, so any digging around them is a real problem. I doubt I’ll get anything in this bed now, but I’ll give it a couple weeks just to be sure.

The lettuces and spinach are starting to look good, with true leaves appearing.

I can’t remember if I told you that I picked up some Red Cabbage seedlings at the nursery – but I did. And the White Cabbage Butterflies have already laid eggs on them. I’m going to have to keep a close eye on these!

Furby has offerd to do garden patrol but I’m not sure he’s much of a defence against cabbage worm.

And the Cornflowers are sprouting!

I said this year was going to be all about seeds over ready-to-plant… and it’s looking like that…. of course, I haven’t really hit the nurseries yet… nor have several of the pre-order plants I bought earlier in the year shipped yet….

I guess I better work on expanding some garden beds!

The May Garden begins with the slow decline of the daffodils. That said, there are still many blooming – as I said, I have quite the collection

I bought a large mix of bulbs a few years back so I don’t know the name of many of them. But there are others that I do.

This one is called Mount Hood. It’s the biggest daffodil in the garden. It starts off with a light yellow trumpet, but then it fades to this perfect creamy white. It’s one of the longest lasting daffodils too. It started blooming almost two full weeks ago.

From the larfest, we go to the smallest. And my absolute favourite. It’s called Minnow. It’s taller than Arctic Bells and Rip Van Winkles, but the size of it’s blooms are on par. You can see by my hands, they are teeny!

And last – the most fragrant. This one is called Pipit. As you can see it’s a soft, creamy yellow and it has the most wonderful perfume. Most of the daffodils don’t seem to have any scent at all, so this one really shines! It’s go mid-sized blooms.

There’s still a few late-blooming daffies to come, but the garden is definitely giving way to the tulips.

Now I don’t know about you, but I kind of prefer the tulips when it’s a little grey and cloudy, and they are closed up tight.

Now, I did say that most of my tulips were Darwin and Triumph Tulips because they last longer… but there are a few outliers.

I bought a mix in 2024 that had a bunch of fringed tulips in different colours. So far this year, this is the only one that’s appeared, so I expect this will be the last year for them.

This funky one was bought as part of another mix in 2023. Again, so far, this is the only one that has appeared. But still – three years is good for a fancy tulip!

My absolute favouite tulip, I didn’t plant at all. It was here when we got here.

It starts off as a yellow with just a touch of red along the edge, and a dusting of blush across each petal. But as the blooms get older, they gain more and more of that blush.

We know that Ruby, the lady who owned our house lived here with her son Robert. She passed in 2013. Robert died in 2020, and we bought the house in 2021. Our understanding is that Robert wasn’t much of a gardener, so they must have been planted by Ruby. That means they are at least 13 years old!

There’s quite the little patch of them. I say every year that I’m going to dig them up and spread them around, but I never do. In truth, I’m a little afraid to. What if I move them and they don’t come back. Probably best not to mess with a good thing.

I’ve also more of those species tulips I told you about…

This one is called peppermint stick. Don’t you just love that dark pink underpetal?

And this one is called Little Beauty! Such pretty, bright cerise blooms.

And there’s much, much more on the horizon.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve awoken to find Burton in the bed, staring at me. As soon as he realizes I’m awake, he moves in for a snuggle – but that’s not what he really wants.

He wants me to get up and open the bedroom curtain.

From 8 am to about 10 am, the bedroom floor is the perfect place to catch a sunbeam.

Spring has brought the return of my favourite gardening companions…

Yup! The toads are back!

Garden pest control is back on duty!

The first mossy sock is done, and I have a VERY small start on the second sock. In theory, I could probably finish this pair by the weekend. But realistically, it won’t happen. I might get some time to work on them tonight, but Thursday night is grocery night, and Friday Mom comes. I think these will be a next week finish for sure.

Because the weekend was a write-off, there was no tiny needle plying. So instead I’ll share a little treat Dave got me last week.

You may recall that I have a rather silly, rather large squishmallow collection. What I’m not sure I’ve shared is that about 1/4 of them are sharks (1/4 are cats, 1/4 are dragons, and the last 1/4 are random ones that made me laugh)

Don’t ask my why… but I LOVE sharks. Always have. And the squishmallow sharks… well they just absolutely delight me! So when we stumbled across this….

Dave insisted I had to have it. It’s actually a “Snackle”… made by the same company that makes Squishmallows. They are essentially squishmallows hold snacks. Most are holding a real brand – like a bag of Doritos or a roll of Mentos…. (I have a shrimp holding a can of Pringles).

But yep… this guy’s snack….

Is a human foot!

Is that hilarious or what????

Or wasn’t depending on how you look at it.

You’ll recall that I had my sleep study this weekend. I had to be there at 9 pm Saturday night. And since Saturday was cold and rainy, there wasn’t much to get up to in the garden during the day. I opted to do some overdue cleaning of my bedroom and office. Floors got vaccummed, things got dusted, clothes got washed, and I even got three large bags of items together and in the car ready to be donated to Goodwill.

Then came the sleep study. They advise you to bring something to do before lights out (there’s no TV or internet) so naturally I brought some knitting.

Remember these?

A purple sock of my own design that got started last year, set aside and completely forgotten about. Seemed like a good time to pick it back up and give it some love.

Only it wasn’t. I got a few rows in an realized I’d mis-crossed cable. I was up to pulling back several rows, so tucked it away and pulled out a book I’d brought with me just in case.

But I didn’t get more than a few pages read before the nurse came in to hook me up to eleventy billion sensors and wires.

Okay… it was about 20. But it felt like a lot more. Then it was time for lights out. And I proceeded to have the WORST sleep I have ever had in my life. I normally sleep on my left side, but the wires weren’t long enough for me to roll over that way. The mattress felt like an under-inflated air mattress, and while I had two pillows, they were both hard as rocks. I think I slept maybe 4 hours total between 10 pm and 5 am when they unhooked me and sent me on my way. I hope it was enough for the doctors to diagnose!

Because I was up so early, I woke Dave up when I got home (about 6:30 am) and took him for breakfast.

Dave LOVES going for breakfast, but we don’t do it often because neither of us enjoy the crowds. But we were early enough that it was just us and three other sets of diners. Our waitress told us that on Sundays it doesn’t really start to get crowded until 8:30 am. So we have a nice little window between 7 and then if we decide to do it again.

After that we came back home. Dave tackled the mowing and weedwhacking.

Although I was running on auxiliary power – I knew if I went down for a nap, I’d have another night of bad sleep. I can’t nap for a short window. If I fall asleep during the day, I’m out for several hours. So instead I unwrapped the catio windows! Every fall, after I bring my house plants in, Dave puts up some heavy plastic over the screens of the catio porch. It helps keep a lot of the cold wind off the kitchen, and gives us a dry place to store things. That means every spring it has to come down and that’s usually my job. It’s held to the window frames with eleventy billion screws.

Happily, Dave thrifted this diminutive drill that fits my hand much better than his big drill does. It’s also lighter and much easier for me to handle. I still took a long time – it was A LOT of screws, and Dave can hear a screw being stripped from across the yard – so I had to take my time and do it right. I also had to move a lot of the stuff we had stored there. But by mid-afternoon, it was done and there was a nice, fresh breeze blowing through the porch.

I still have to clear out a lot of the stuff stored there over winter, so no pictures yet.

But the boys can at least enjoy some fresh air from the comfort of the cat tree, even on rainy days.

In a couple more weekends, I’ll get the mess cleared out, take some house plants up for the summer, and my happy place will be cozy and comfy once again!

That said, the rest of the day was pretty much a write off. I was completely out of steam. We went out and got some more paint, grabbed dinner, and I spent the rest of the evening vegging in my chair before an early bed! And boy was is nice to sleep in my own bed again!

Buckle up -we’ve got lots of seedy news this Sunday!

Seems I’m not even close to being done planting seeds. These one came in the mail last week.

The Swiss Chard and Corn Flowers got planted directly, but the watermelon and sweet peas needed to be started inside. I didn’t have any more pans for seed snails, but I did still have some of these seed starter kits.

Since the sweet peas don’t like their roots disturbed ,they are probably a better choice anyway. And those watermelon… they are called Mini Mike… like the Sugar Babies I planted last year, they are a small “personal-sized” watermelon. But these Mini Mikes are supposed to have much smaller seeds. But that pack… only FIVE seeds! I certainly wasn’t going to do a whole snail for five seeds.

So, I did five little pods with melons and filled the rest with sweet peas.

Though I’ve tried many times, I’ve only once been able to get decent sweet peas once. It was our first year at the townhouse… but then bunbun came and ate them all.

And those seed snails…. well, it was time to give them some attention. One of the advantages of snails is that you can plant many seeds in a small space. And… you don’t have to pot them on. You just have to unroll and pack in a little more soil every so often. This is only my second time trying seed snails. And last year, I started the seeds late so I didn’t bother with this step since everything was outside. I just put the seedlings in big pots outside.

That’s not an option yet. And several seedlings had started to wither. They needed some attention.

Now unrolling is easier said than done, as the seedlings tend to tangle quite a bit. And once you pack in more dirt, the snails are bigger, and take up more room. I got rid of any snails that hadn’t germinated/died off and managed to fit all the repacked snails in two trays.

While I am only half way through this experiment, I think I’ve concluded that seed snails work best for robust seeds/seedlings.

These pumpkin seedlings look FABULOUS! But more delicate ones, like the marigolds, foxglove and grass have not faired so well. Happily, I had more seed for all of those, so I planted some foxglove direct, and then used a few more of those seed starter kits to plant some back up for the rest.

The biggest disappointment was that all of my sunflowers planted in snails died off. That really surprised me, as they did well last year. I don’y have any back up sunflower seeds at all – so they’ve gone on the to buy list. I MUST have sunflowers in the garden.

In happier seed news, things are happening with the other seeds I planted directly.

We’ve got tiny lettuce and spinach sprouts.

And they we’re wrong about radishes…

They are growing fast! Apparently I could be harvesting radishes before the end of May!

And after weeks and weeks and WEEKS of nothing…

We’ve finally got signs of life in the Winter Sow jugs. If you recall, these were planted with native seeds from the Ottawa Seed Library. These are Joe Pye Weed, Pearly Everlasting and St. John’s Wort. I also have a jug of Hairy Beardtongue, but so far, nothing is happening there.

So that’s it for this week… but another order of seeds just arrived… and I’ve got to get some carrots and potatoes planted. It’s certainly exciting times around here!

This time of year, the garden changes so fast. Many of the daffodils I showed you last week are done. In fact, the catio is almost completely green again.

It’s really only the Snakehead Fritillary giving it any colour right now.

But they are stunning. They’ve been growing for three years or so now, and this is the best they’ve ever looked.

Outside of the catio, there are other daffodils just getting started.

Have I told you just how much I love daffodils???

I didn’t plant any additional tulip bulbs last fall, so I wasn’t sure how the showing would be. You may not realize, but many tulips aren’t perrenials – you get one or two years of them at most. For that reason, the last few times I’ve planted tulips, I’ve tried to stick with Darwin tulips, as they come back more reliably.

And so far, it’s been a good choice. We’ve got quite a selection so far, with many more coming.

They are such a happy sight!

One thing that is reliable…

The Grape Hyacinths! I have them in multiple colours, and as you can see, they are looking fabulous! I’ve got several clumps I can split up and spread around. (Not that they don’t do that on their own!)

And last…

The crocuses and irises I planted in the porch boxes were beyond done – so I hit up Walmart again.

They didn’t have any more of those stunning burgundy pansies I showed last week, but they did have a nice mixed bowl with yellow, purple and blue. It should be good enough to keep the front boxes looking tidy and respectable until the real hot weather hits. Then I can replant them with something that can take the heat better.

Another Friday Felines focusing on the catio. While Saturday was rainy, Sunday was dry enough (at first) to get some more work done in the catio.

I got another load of rocks, and finished off the biggest corner.

While it’s definitely costing more than I planned (and taking longer), it does look really good. And I don’t think I showed you my thrifted bistro set.

Every since we built the catio, I’ve wanted a bistro set for it. While there’s lots of cat seating, the only place for me to sit was on the steps. We found this one about month ago. It was a little rusty but..

Dave worked his magic on it and now it’s as good as new. I picked up some inexpensive cushions at Giant Tiger, and now I have a nice spot to take a break!

Of course, I can’t take a break for long – I’ve got to go buy and spread more rocks. There’s still the rest of the paths to cover. It’s going to take a while though – I’m buying $200 worth each week – because that’s all I can afford at the moment, and all the jeep can carry. (We learned our lesson with the Escape not to overload on weight)

So in the meantime, I’ve been weeding and moving things around. Because I’ve now got the bistro set in the corner, I needed to find a spot for their wicker and adirondack chairs. I’m still working on ideas for the adirondack, but I found the perfect spot for the wicker one.

Right in the far corner, under the Honey Suckle. Technically, it’s in the garden space. But that corner was one of Burton’s favorite nap spots, so nothing I put there ever lived long anyway. I just had a to move some daffodils to make enough space. I think it’s going to look so cozy when the plants grow up beside it.

So far, it seems like the change is accepted!