I’m doing a ”No mow May” mainly because I’m preoccupied with other things…and lazy. Looks like I’ll be doing a ”Bale the lawn June”.

tj

Just trying to get my garden in order :-) The older I get, the more of a "fair weather" gardener I have become and this spring has been significantly cooler and wetter than typical. But while the weather has slowed my outdoor activities and the early season development of many of my plants (2-4 weeks behind schedule), it has not slowed down the weeds at all!! In fact, they have thrived and are threatening to take over. I have been pulling and cutting back like crazy!! Still a lot to do before I can begin to think about adding anything new!

Taking bolted chard and brassicas to the compost heap. Sowing more peas. Planting summer veggies. Eating asparagus. Hunting snails. Mulching, mulching, mulching.

Bolted chard! When did it go in?

Yes, regarding aging. I'm trying to get to a mostly native, low maintenance yard. I quit mowing in the early 90s, but that made my life less, not more, maintenance-free. Nothing charming wanted to move in where the lawn had been, so the entire back yard consists, instead, of poorly planned flower beds, paths, and weeds I am constantly beatinnng back---but, which, nevertheless, mostly please me. I have buttercups, and bindweed from garden refuse I brought home---and, worse, two things I planted myself: centaurea and sweet woodruff. I've discouraged the bindweed greatly and I've been able to push the sweet woodruff along to another area where I intend to head it off at the pass someday.

To justify non-native gardening next to a lake, I try to grow a little bit of food, but my vegetable area gets reduced every year. Also, to assuage my guilt, I've been buying three native shrubs for the birds every year---mostly native elderberries, but also three native winterberries this year.

What I was thinking about yesterday was a woman on here once who made woodchipped paths through her gardens, and, who, every few years moved the paths about, sometimes only a foot or two, leaving enriched soil behind to plant in. I was enamoured of that idea, and did revert one leg of my accidental peace sign paths to garden after that.

Last fall, I bought woodchips from a guy who didn't bring them until the day before our first snowfall of the year. I was able to get some of them spread, but not much. Now, they are the only thing that stands between me and my boat, which NEEDS to go in the water. I've been spreading them all week really, really unnecessarily deep (10" or more) on the paths because I've got a ton of them. I kept thinking, "boy, these old paths are black, rich, and nice-appearing" as I covered them up with the glaringly fresh wood chips. Today, I'm kicking myself wondering why I didn't dig out some of that broken down woodchip soil and transfer it to my gardens, since I have an excess of wood chips.

I'm getting my vegetable garden ready and fertizing and mulching the asparagus bed after having 5 great weeks of harvesting.

The chard self sows all over my allotment. What is bolting now grew from last year's bolted plants and has overwintered. I just leave some of the bigger plants and they give me a never ending supply of chard year after year. The brassicas have also overwintered. They were planted last June. Sadly, they are not such reliable self sowers as the chard. You can see bolting ruby chard behind the broad beans.