Planting completed

Alright, after a fairly chaotic spring, we're back in the yard and pretty much everything is planted out.

While this is a time of hard work, let's start with the fun stuff: all of the spring blossoms. Above, we have plums and below some small tulips.

The saskatoon bushes are also in full bloom.

And the cherries have just started. The cherry tree has a crazy number of blossoms this year so I am hopeful for a bigger crop.

The haskap bushes are still flowering but we also have the start of berries.

The front yard is also full of tulips.

I've spent several hours each day on various projects, including some soil amendments, weeding and seeding. I did stumble across the first of the potatoes to push up a shoot.

I'm also almost done removing the dead canes from the raspberry bushes and burning them. I hope to have the energy tonight to fire the last of them. Then I can get to weeding around the base of them.

I suspect, over the next few days we'll see some more seeds begin to emerge (the kale has just come up). We did have a touch of frost last week and a few of the tomatoes, a basil plant, and some marigolds look slightly scarred. Hopefully, they will come back.

Back yard progress: so many potatoes.

Okay, after several months of disruption, I'm back at home and going hard in the yard. Happily, much of the yard has managed to just just fine without me. As always, the rhubarb out front was among the first things up.

In the back, the garlic that we planted in the new raised beds has also almost all come up. I collected some compost from the city this week and top dressed these beds before planting the rest of them.

The bulbs are up, with the dafs being first. This little bee was tuckered out and was having a nap in one of the flowers.

I usually do some stunt gardening each year, such as melons or or weird variety of corn. Given the state o fthe world this year, I decided instead to put in 50 potato plants. They are a mix of Prince of Orange (which did amazing last year) and blue caribe (of which I had some left over seed).

Clearly the seed potatoes were good and ready to go into the ground! I also put the rest of the back yard (peas, carrots, onions, beets, some cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, butternut squash and lots of basil. The remaining tasks are just some flowers and more tidying up.

I can now turn my attention to the front yard. It will be a mix of greens, yellow bush beans, maybe some more carrots and beets, and flowers.