What a Difference a Week Makes

Or, maybe it's really a month that makes the difference.  Our main garden bed is now 2000 square feet.  Potatoes and garlic are planted elsewhere, and there's another bed for the three sisters.  This bed is mainly just for annual vegetable crops with a few flowers and perennial herbs tucked in.  Every time I visit the garden, I see something new.  It's not always something very welcome: more weeds, beets nibbled down by rabbits, corn or onions pulled wantonly out of the ground by crows.  But there are happy events too.  The bean tendrils grown long enough to twine up the supports I put in for them.  The first baby zucchini of the year.  A hummingbird moth at the sage blooms.

But despite the daily evidence of change, I find it hard to see things really changing over the larger scale, even when I know that monumental work has gone into those 2000 square feet.  So I decided to do a little time lapse photography.  I've been taking a picture of the garden each Thursday.  At first even the photographs didn't show me much.  But lately the changes are becoming more obvious.  (Click any of the images below to embiggen.)

May 20th - Bean poles are in at the back, but major cleanup and planting remains to be done.  Notice all the weeds and lack of anything planted on most of the right side.

May 27th - Weeds seriously knocked back, significant mulching done, tomatoes planted but still small.

week 3 - June 3rd - Tomatoes hard to see but beginning to ramp up, eggplants and peppers in the back still small.  Unloved brassicas from last year are cleared out of the center aisle as the bees finish with the blossoms.

Week 4 - June 10th.  Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini are up towards the back.  The comfrey (front left) has gotten a severe hack back and is already regrowing.  The lettuce and spinach now have a covered row (that white thing in the back on the left, it's open on the north side) to grow in. With some luck, the soil under there will stay cool enough to let us enjoy the greens through the summer.  This year's kale (just right of the entrance) is looking ready for harvest already. I'm not holding out much hope for the parsnip seeds due to the unseasonably hot weather we had in late May-early June.  I expect by next week the beans at the far end of the garden may have done enough climbing to be visible from where the picture is taken.

If I keep up with the Thursday picture taking, I'll try to update these observations from time to time.

Oh, and this is for absolutely no other reason than my cat cracks me up. I thought I'd share.  Mojo during the heat wave about ten days ago.  He's such a doofus.

That's probably all I got for this week. It's been pillar to post with house and garden work lately.