April 22

What a downpour, 3 inches in 2 hours. Luckily I had my tent covered with a 12' x 20' tarp and enjoyed watching the show. It was good for all the seeds and plants I put in the ground earlier.

Seeds: Golden Midget Watermelon, Sweet Dumpling Squash, Oregon Giant Snowpeas, My Lime Basil, My Mixed Parsley, Bouquet dill, Cherokee popcorn. (My = from saved seeds)

Plants: Malabar spinach, Popping sorghum, Broom Corn, My Lemon Drop Hot Pepper, My Giant Cape Gooseberry, Partridge berry, Sarian Strawberry,

Sarian and Tribute strawberries blooming; Pretty-n-Pink and Ozark Beauty setting fruit.

April 16

The frost on April 12 killed all my tomato, pepper, giant cape gooseberries, egg plant, marigolds, nasturtiums, morning glories, and tithonias. The chichiquelites were damaged but will survive. The Litchee Berries were unharmed.

Violets, strawberries, and huckleberries blooming.

Planted: Goji Berry, Welsh onions, Partridge berry, naranjilla, broom corn, popping sorghum, and Cherokee popcorn.

April 6

Looking SW, up slope.


Last year at this time everything was green and growing including my pepper and tomato plants. Then The Great Easter Freeze blackened everything. This year things are a bit delayed. I planted my first tomato and pepper plants and many others. I planted out several spring greens patches and rows of Oregon Giant Snowpeas along with my first patch of Cherokee popcorn.

There are some little downy woodpeckers that feed at my finch feeder and big pileated woodpeckers the seem to become less shy of me each year. The wild plums are flowering with a wonderful fragrance. They fruit reliably even when horticultural Prunus crops fail as they did last year.