The “May Gray” weather gave way to enough sunshine that I was able to make a lot of progress in taking the garden back from the weeds.  But now we appear to be in for a spell of “June Gloom”.  Yesterday the fog was thick enough to register .02 inches on the rain gauge.

The cool weather crops seem to be doing well.  I have been harvesting peas and lettuce as well as berries.  This is the first year I have tried broccoli and it appears it may soon be ready for the dinner table.

The first crop of corn is starting to put out tassels and silks — but it is not very tall.

It looked as if we might finally have a bunch of cherries.  (Getting the pollinators in sync has not been working well.) But before they were really ripe enough to harvest, the red house finches found them so I was only able to pick about six that had not been bird food.  They are also feasting on the blueberries as they ripen.  We need to make a frame for a bird net cover as well as trimming the cherry tree down so we can net that next spring.  It is about time to cover the stone fruit with individual net bags.  I tried that last year and it was really nice to be able to have peaches, plums and pluots which had not had huge spots pecked away.  I don’t mind sharing, but birds tend to take it all.

Another new item this year is a short day onion.  In the past years I have had day neutral varieties and they are very slow at producing bulbs and often are still growing as the holiday season approaches.  I was surprised to see bulbs already forming.

Hopefully sunny days will be returning soon.

So with the broken shoulder, the garden did not get weeded since at least mid-August.  By the usual time to prepare for the spring planting (late February, early March in these parts) the weeds had taken over.  Of course the weather did not cooperate, so getting days when things weren’t too wet and / or cold to pull weeds, meant that it was the beginning of April before the  raised beds were ready.  There was a spell of nice weather then and I planted seeds and seedlings.

 But then the May Gray came weeks early.  It was too cold and wet to weed or do  much else.  The veggies did nothing while another crop of weeds took over.  A large percentage of the seeds failed to germinate.  For weeks it seemed the soil was too wet to weed.  We even had some late April rain.

It took several passes to get the majority of the weeds out and it will require another pass or two to deal with the ones that escaped.  At least now I can see the veggies and was able to plant additional seedlings.

Meanwhile, mice were getting to the strawberries as they ripened. The owls and hawks have not been doing a good job.  In the past week I had 15 caught with a live trap and removed them to the far corner of the property.   Dealing with the gophers will have to wait a bit.  We put hardware cloth at the base of the raised beds to keep them out and have bird netting to protect seedlings from becoming bird food.

Anyway, lots more to do.   Borders along paths and fence need weeding and trimming, stone fruit needs to be thinned and general maintenance is needed.  Maybe by Memorial day weekend it will look more like a garden than a weed patch.