Late May in Richmond smelled wonderful. Short pasture, no obvious flowers, maybe some trees blooming that would torture allergy sufferers, but whatever was going on, it more than made up for the skunks of February and April.
To walk into late June pasture is like inhaling atomized clover honey. The vetch is waist-high, mixed with red clover, Dutch white clover, and daisies. These fantastic daisies seem to favor the ground that I have disturbed since moving here. Thunderstorms roll through at almost perfect watering intervals. I finally cleaned the chicken coop last weekend.
I have already harvested some garlic scapes. The tomatoes are all jungley, and Glacier is setting fruit. My one Purple Tomatillo plant is magnificent, and is attracting all the Three-Lined Potato Beetles in the vicinity. The Negreta favas are already beset with aphids and chocolate spot, but somehow seem to be doing better than the Broad Windsor favas did at this point. Enough cucumber and squash seedlings survived the slug pressure in th North bed, along with one sunflower plant.
My one concern is that I may have planted my hot peppers out too early. I set them out about a month ago, and still the plants look stunted. There were a few nights that dipped into the 40s in late May and early June. Fortunately I gave a couple of the seedlings from this batch to my friend Anne, who is raising them in her sunroom. If they do well there and not here, I will know that the cold spring nights were the problem.
