Poor Richard’s Almanac

Shock surprise (in the immortal words of Ruby Ann Boxcar), it’s been raining here at Hawk’s Haven. It’s been raining pretty much every day. This is good and bad.

It’s good because our friend Ben and Silence Dogood have only had to haul milk jugs of water out to the greenhouse instead of to the greenhouse, the veggie gardens, and the bazillion container plants on the deck, not to mention topping up the water gardens. This means that for once, the veggie gardens have gotten enough water and are looking lush and gorgeous like they do in pictures (but seldom do here once our spring rains dry up).

Most of the container herbs don’t appreciate swimming, but the other container plants, especially the water-lovers like the cannas, are thriving. And our little stream, Hawk Run, is burbling happily and is full of fish and even a water snake or two. Our friend Ben has even seen a couple of toads hanging around the deck (they apparently love the water-filled plant saucers under the pots), and the frog chorus from the neighbor’s water garden is practically deafening. It’s looking like a great year for fruit as well, or at least, for our apples, peaches, pears, grapes, blueberries, and raspberries. (No pluots or pawpaws this year, sadly, and never enough strawberries!)

So much for good news. The bad news is that our backyard has turned into a mushy, treacherous morass that reminds our friend Ben of the quicksand-filled marshes in The Hound of the Baskervilles. And what’s good for the garden is also good for the weeds, especially the jewelweed, which is doing its damndest to engulf our beautiful creekside shade garden. (On the plus side, at least it’s easy to pull, unlike so many weeds.) There’s also been a proliferation of plain green hostas in the border behind the house which will be much harder to deal with.

Poor Shiloh has suffered from the rains as well, since it’s been pretty tough to find a dry hour for her daily walk in one of the local parks. And after her morning inspection of the greenhouse and gardens, she looks like a sodden wreck. (But, being short-coated, at least she doesn’t then turn into a dreadlocked Rastafarian like our golden retriever Molly.) We’ve had to put down bale upon bale of straw in the chickens’ yard to keep them from becoming mired in mud as well, and of course, when it’s this mucky outside, their eggs are, let’s say, not nearly as pristine and lovely as they are in dry weather.

[A brief digression before we get back to the veggie garden: Thinking of Rastafarians reminds our friend Ben of Pastafarians, the followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Loving both reggae and pasta as we do, Silence and I love the concept of Pastafarians. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for what happened the last time I stopped for gas. Our brave but battered little vehicle, the piratical Red Rogue, a ca. 1991 Volkswagen Golf/GTI/whatever, sports quite a few bumper stickers and the like proclaiming its (and our) personality. There's a pirate fish, and a sticker that says "AAAARRRR!!!" There are bumper stickers that say "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" and "No Farms, No Food." There's a hot-pink peace sign with a pattern of green fir trees. And---our friend Ben's favorite---there is also a bumper sticker proclaiming "Boldly Going Nowhere" against a background of stars. So our friend Ben was surprised when I was pumping gas and someone at another pump caught sight of the Red Rogue's backside and shouted "The Flying Spaghetti Monster!!!" Our friend Ben, ahem, assumes he was referring to the vehicle rather than mistaking me for the FSM. Though I do consume a fair amount of pasta on a regular basis, I have yet to note any spaghetti tentacles appearing on my person. Whoever you are, whatever prompted your cri de coeur, I can only say, "Pastafari!!!"]

But I digress. Getting back to the veggie garden, here’s what’s happening: Both container-gardening experiments are going well so far. The ‘Yukon Gold’ potatoes have reached the top of the potato bin and are continuing their skyward climb. I potted the container tomato varieties up into 5-gallon pots with good soil and more mushroom compost, as well as regular compost, a couple of weeks ago, and they’re all looking great and flowering like mad. The in-ground tomatoes have set fruit (so has the ‘Sungold’ cherry tomato in its pot on the deck), which are getting sizeable, our earliest yet. The two tomato plants in the greenhouse bed are also flowering but have yet to set fruit.

Our yellow-podded snow peas, ‘Golden Sweet’, are setting gorgeous pods aplenty. They’re later than we expected, but are living up to the description in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalogue (www.rareseeds.com): “More than a novelty, this variety produces flat pods that are a beautiful, bright lemon-yellow, great in stir-fries. Tall 6′ vines with purple flowers. Collected from a market in India; rare and tasty.” (Our friend Ben wishes I had recalled that “tall 6′ vines” part before growing them on a 3-foot trellis; next year I’ll use a taller one.) We’ve used them to brighten salads and cooked them, alone and with sugar snap peas. With green-podded peas (either green-podded snow peas or sugar snaps), they create that eye-pleasing green-and-yellow combo that we also love later in the season with green and yellow wax beans. We’ll definitely be growing these again next year.

Our alliums (shallots, walking onions, garlic, chives, garlic chives, and yellow and white storage onions) have also thrived, though the garlic now seems to have lodged. (We suspect this may have something to do with our cat Simon lying in the midst of them rather than their spontaneously falling over.) And of course our lettuce and mesclun mixes have responded well to the cool, wet weather; we’re now on our second crop.

Heat-lovers are coming along, too; our golden zucchini and summer squash are setting blooms, and the cukes are growing well. I’ve already talked about the tomatoes, so I guess I should say a few words about the peppers. Our Bhut Jalokias (the world’s hottest pepper by a factor of about three) and Silence’s gorgeous ornamental purple-leaved pepper are thriving in containers, tucked in with the container tomato trial. The purple pepper (also a hot variety) is blooming like mad, with gorgeous deep purple flowers. But our other peppers are being shaded out by the tomatoes, alliums, and herbs, so we’ll probably dig them this weekend and transfer them to containers as well. The added bonus here is that we can move some of them into the greenhouse when it gets cold this fall, and share plants with heat-loving friends like our fellow blog contributor Richard Saunders.

Oops, almost forgot those amazing potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine (www.woodprairie.com) that overwintered in the ground. They, too, are growing strongly, and we hope to get a great crop of potatoes from them this fall. Once they bloom, we should be able to identify them from last year’s records! We’re looking forward to this, sort of like a treasure hunt. And any potatoes we harvest from this unexpected crop will be as welcome as pirates’ gold!

No doubt there’s more to be said, but that’s enough for now. How are you surviving the rain? What’s going on in your gardens? And has anyone mistaken you for the Flying Spaghetti Monster lately?