LAZY SUNDAY

Decided to take the day off and do almost nothing, since it's not much of a gardening day and I'm still tired from two days in a row of some heavy digging through a lot of tree roots to plant a few things and other garden chores.

Early this morning I retrieved some of my Bolognese sauce from the freezer in the barn section of the garage for an easy dinner tonight.

Other than seedling and animal care, tending to my self with lots of vitamins, rest, eating and kitchen cleanup, answering some emails and reading the Sunday paper and doing the crossword puzzle, my time today will be for some computer work and watching lot of saccharine Hallmark, made for TV movies - aka "Junk food for the soul!".

My beautiful daughter called from Germany earlier and we must have been on the phone for close to an hour, if not longer talking about our garden and other plans this spring and as always talking about what we've been cooking lately. I was intrigued by her telling me she use barley to make risotto, which surprised me since she also said she never liked the beef, barley, vegetable soup I made regularly when my children were growing up. Who knew, since she always ate it; but then she was never a fussy eater except for beets which she despised, as did my husband.

I just had a delicious, long, very hot soaking bath and afterwards got right back into my PJ's for the rest of the day. I think I might do more of these lovely, lazy Sundays in the future. It feels too good not to repeat this, and often!

EARLY PLANTED POTATOES ARE UP !

My early planted potatoes are up, the neighborhood lilacs are blooming and my Japanese Maples are all in full leaf. The strawberries are full of flowers and this year I hope the birds and other critters leave some for me!

This is the first sunny day we've had for a while. It was 75 degrees by mid afternoon. I only got a bit of garden time today. It took me almost two hours to plant a six pack of snapdragons and one packaged blue hydrangea due to all the tree and other roots I had to struggle through to get those planted.

I was very disappointed to find out the larger San Marzano tomatoes I bought are not San Marzanos. They were behind the sign that said Sand Marzanos so I never bothered to check the small tlabels in the pots until I got them home and found out they're Sun Golds. So I'll keep one of them and give the other one away, It looks like a small orange tomato if the picture on the little label is correct. Now I have to get back to the store and pick up a couple of San Marzanos.

Tomorrow the temperature drops down quite a bit and rain is in the forecast, so I doubt it I will get garden time. After breakfast I want to make a pot of mushroom bisque, so if there's any garden time to be had  it will have to be after lunch, if there's no rain. I'd like to pop in some of my cold weather veggies starts that I didn't get around to planting today, and maybe tame my wild raspberry plants.

I installed several metal fence posts and have some wire I need to attach to them to keep the raspberries from flopping into my raised vegetable beds. There are also a few raspberry volunteers  that have made their way into and near the raised beds that I want to dig up and move.

Since the weather has been so cold and wet, I'm very behind my garden chores this year. I can catch up pretty quickly if I get a few days of decent weather.  With the rain expected tomorrow, I can probably work on my back porch and get my hanging planters planted and watered. I'll put off hanging them until I turn on the automatic watering system. Either that or I have to buy a new, long, watering wand to be able to reach them. 

ASPARAGUS ON TOAST WITH HARD BOILED EGG BACON AND LEMON BUTTER

My dinner tonight was my Asparagus on toast, topped with a chopped hard boiled egg and fresh bacon bits and lemon butter. This would also make a lovely brunch or lunch or appetizer if scaled down.

For each piece of bread I cooked 6 large asparagus, 2 1/2 slices of bacon and one hard boiled egg. It was served on a piece of toasted, buttered honey wheat bread. After topping it with the asparagus, chopped hard boiled egg and bacon bits, and some fresh ground black pepper, I poured a generous amount of melted lemon butter over it all. Delicious!

My plan for the day was to do some planting but with cold temperatures and and rain putting a stop to that and the same weather expected tomorrow, it looks like it will have to wait till Friday when it's supposed to be 70F in the afternoon. I have a packaged hydrangea that need planting as well as some snapdragons and the rest of my cool weather vegetable starts.

There are many more other garden chores on my list and I just hope we get a few days from now on for me to get all these things done. My raspberries are looking pretty wild and I have some metal fence posts to install with some wire to contain these wild beasts, Right now they're flopping over half of my raised beds.

A new discovery I made after my nice, healthy cherry tomato plant broke off near the base, is that you can remove some of the lower leaves, put the broken stem in water and it will root. Now I have to get it planted and hope it will thrive  in the potting soil as much as it is in its temporary water environment.

Morels have arrived.

A friend just sent me a photo of some morels they just found on their property here in the Rogue valley in Southern Oregon. I haven't had time to look for them since I'm still trying to get my cold weather crops in,  clean up my flower beds and pull the abundance of weeds thanks to the almost non stop rain we've had the past two months.

The only things I planted today were some sweet peas to grow up part of my secret garden fence. I have a lot of volunteer borage so I dug one up and put it in my secret veggie garden. I'll have to move a couple of more in there. They're supposed to be good to plant near members of the cabbage family, I think. I love putting the pretty blue flowers in salad, after removing the little inedible, black centers. The flowers have a pleasant peppery taste, and look lovely in a tossed salad.

It's supposed to go down to the low thirties tonight and I didn't want to take a chance that it could hit freezing, so I covered the lettuce with remay. I ran out of planting space in the veggie garden for the latest lettuce starts so I planted them in my flower bed behind the house. I only have one empty raised bed left in the veggie garden and that's going to be for zucchini, summer squash and melons.

My tomatoes are going in the ground and in large containers along with the serrano chiles, bell peppers. I have one tiny area near the back fence that I'm saving for a small block of corn and winter squash. Even my bush beans will have to go in planters.

Last summer I planted a lot of garlic. I won't plant as much this year because I'm lacking space for carrots and other veggies like turnips and rutabagas that I want to plant.

I put my little tomato seedlings and marigold seedlings outdoors in the sun. And I'll bring them in before dinner. To my surprise, yesterday, I saw a whole cluster of newly sprouted tomato seedlings in the garden. that was a big surprise to see those this time of year. I think tomorrow, if they survive tonight's cold, I'll separate a few of them. I think they may be Brandywines which were in that bed last year; but I can't be sure until the leaves get bigger. I also had Opalka plum tomatoes andBig Zac, a hybrid beefsteak in there, so it will take a while to figure out what they are.

Overnight some marauder came in my secret veggie garden and ate the tops of all my beets that I had growing in containers. My neighbor thinks it may be a possum. I wish I knew what it was. These were last years beets that I kept in the container to harvest the greens and I was jjust about ready to harvest those tops for greens. Wish I had a secret night vision camera to ID the culprit! Guess I will now have to put some bird netting on the next beet crop!

I don't think a bunny could jump up 18 inches to get into the planter. Could it be rats, or racoons or the possum???? No deer can climb that 7 foot fence, so I assume it's something smaller that than either squeeze through, climb over or dig under?????