the rain gives me time to post

The best news is that I have tiny green tomatoes on the plants--yea! I just this morning tore out my snow peas, tired of them, and harvested two head lettuces that were starting to bolt. I planted cucumbers where the peas were. Will plant beans later where the lettuces were.

In the front, flowers are/were pretty. Irises for about 4 days in May, then Asiatic lilies in June. And petunias from my 25-cent seed packets going strong still.

I'm frustrated because of a renter across the way who has four-wheelers and dirt bikes for his teenaged boys, and between that and them letting their pit bull roam the neighborhood (yes, it is against the law), I really am not happy with them being over there. And did I mention the domestic violence police visits? Sigh. If that house ends up on fire, expect to hear of my being arrested for tackling firefighters and refusing to let them do their jobs of putting it out. The only positive is the bad neighbors don't party until the wee hours. And they're friendly enough--just terribly trashy people who don't really belong in this tidy village neighborhood of careful gardens and quiet oldsters.

So I sit around with earplugs in nearly all the time. I miss my RV. Bad neighbors? You drive it away from them. I'm tellin' you; that's the life.

But back to the garden. I finally got ahead of the weeds and now 10 minutes per day is all the weeding I need to do. It'll get hot now, and the next 2 months of mowing will be what I whine about instead of the weeds. ha!

I've preserved some peas (both snow- and English). I don't think I'll grow them again next year. I didn't love the taste of the snowpeas (not in this soil/climate) and the shelling of the regular peas was work, and not so much better than frozen packages at Walmart that the work seemed worth it. The bonus of nitrogen-fixing in that bed is nice, but not enough of a selling point.

On the other hand, preserving tomatoes is 100% worth it, both for the vastly superior taste and for the saving of money. Leaf lettuce is great--it worked well here until just this week when a few started to show signs of a flower stalk, and the delicate and sweet leaves aren't available at the store. If they were available, it'd be $10 a pound or more, so growing it myself is definitely worth the tiny effort (toss seeds down, water if it doesn't rain, eat. Not much effort!) Sweet peppers are expensive here, so they are worth doing, though the taste isn't a lot better than store-bought peppers. Also, peppers are easy to preserve--freezing, canned in salsa, or dehydrating. They're resistant to pests, so I'll keep growing them.

Chard works well here. I have pumpkins, winter squash, spaghetti squash, and summer squash going, but three kinds of bugs will attack it, so I'll reserve judgment on if they are worth doing after this year. Next year, I may only grow lettuces and green onions in spring, and chard, cukes, tomatoes, and peppers in summer. That's a lot fewer veg than I tried this year so far. I tried everything I even slightly like, and what didn't work, or made me think "more trouble than it's worth," I've crossed off my list.

Next time, pix of veg.