No triumphant return. Sigh!

As promised, I dragged my two boys away from their video games and we went to the Mega Store to buy some plants. We picked up some tomato and peppers and bought cucumber and watermelon seeds (my boys picked the seeds of what they wanted to grow)

Knowing the unpredictable Kansas weather, I waited until the 21st of April to plant the young vegetable plants. Alas!, it was not to be. On Monday, we got a torrential downpour with plant-destroying hail; then, on Tuesday, the overnight temperature dropped to 25 degrees.

As I’ve said before, the motto for Kansas gardeners should be “Resistance Is Futile”.

And of course, my fruit trees lost all their blooms. So no fruit either.

I can only hope the cucumbers and the watermelons do well so I can have something to post here.

Lots of rain, no rain water

The rain began falling right around 3:00 pm yesterday. Watching the water rush out of the water spouts with some force, a little voice told me to go check my rain barrel, but I did not. The rain continued to fall almost continuously until around 5:00 am today. When I let Lexie out this morning, I checked on the rain barrel and sure enough, the force of the water stream had knocked it over and I collected zero rain water.
The storm that dropped all this water –3 inches reported on the radio, was a strong one but none of my plants received any damage. My area is somewhat protected by many mature trees and there are wooden fences everywhere to baffle the winds. Mercifully, there was no hail.
The tornado sirens kept going off throughout the evening and this had Dominic worried. Ronan of course had to come and sleep in our bed because he is terrified of thunder and lighting. Curiously, Dominic never was.
The tornadoes that touched down did not even come close to our part of the county.
Today I will go look at the rain barrels at Lowe’s again.

A giant global garden

I am reading a book called Second Nature by Michael Pollan. Michael talks about the continuous front lawn in the suburbs, meaning that the front lawns in the suburbs blend with each other forming a huge park-like lawn. Well, I thought of something: blogs about gardening extend our gardens in an abstract way making a gigantic garden extending the breadth of the world. I go outside and check my garden. I visit my baby radishes and rejoice at their vibrant little leaves, I check my Rose of Sharon bushes, still dormant. Then I come inside and start reading gardening blogs. I see the pictures and read the words and I rejoice at the progress being made there as well, almost as if I was there, visiting another section of my garden.
You see?

It is April 6 and the low was 25 last night. My veggies had just recovered from last week’s ice/snow storm and here we are again. I’ve only lost one tomato, a Brandywine, killed by wind gusts of 40+ miles an hour.
Tomorrow we are expecting the same, and we are not out of the woods yet. I have seen hard freezes up to April 15.
Because the peach tree and the nectarine tree bloomed so early, the freezes killed all the blooms before they got a chance to get pollinated so we get no peaches nor nectarines this year. Oh, and the plum tree bloomed as well and lost all the blooms. That leaves the apple trees.
The garden is Hope.