Wet, wet, and cloudy and dreary!

My little corner of the world is very wet.....and dark and drear. Oh, did I mention cool......50° this morning.

No rain yet to day, but no sun and intermittent thunder and very breezy. I am betting rain is in our near future.

DH has the 'helper' of the barn crew helping him cut up a larger tree down somewhere on the farm....then I think they have some fence mending to do. I hope they get it done. 40 head of the neighbor's cows have been getting some free grass from us and I am not pleased! They don't take care of or feed anything so the animals are half starved and will push down or jump a low fence to get to grass. Also the helper needs gas money so this will help him out.

I planned to mow but it is much too wet so I transplanted tomatoes and basil. The tomatoes had the least roots I have seen. Don't know what that is about. I have enough basil to supply Greene County. I plan to plant it all and try drying some. Basil is my main herb in cooking.
So one flat became three I still have space for 3 or 4 more flats on the light stand and don't think I will need them.

DH requested oatmeal cookies yesterday so I made anther batch of Flower Lady's Create a Cookie recipe. I used, coconut, English walnuts, craisin and some raisins. Just took the last ones out.

I milked Willow for the first time in two weeks yesterday morning. I figured it would be a three-ring circus, but she went into the barn with a little prompting and began eating immediately. She let her milk down and I got two gallons very quickly. She cleaned up her feed; a first for us in the barn. I am now going to just milk when I need milk and let the calf nurse her once a day until dry up time of May 29. I made 9 cups of yogurt with part of the milk yesterday so now I am supplied again.

Garden Pictures

Over the years due mostly to mowing and trimming, I have almost lost my purple hesperis matronalis. I still have a few in the front ditch area. I am no longer mowing that ditch since the new road so will let it all go to seed. I want to get it started all along the front ditches and just let the flowers mix with the weeds and see who wins!


The Grass Bed has fully recovered from my 'burn-off'. A few of Barb's iris are blooming,



and the salvia Black and Blue in the middle that was started from a tiny rooted piece that I broke off and just stuck here has spread to about 3x3 feet.


The recovered scorched sedum,


This is a clematis that I didn't get trellised quick enough so it has become a ground cover clem. This is in the Kitchen Window/Foundation Bed.



Clematis Nelly Moser has never quite recovered from a severe pruning I did a couple of years ago, but the flowers are huge
.I took a picture with my hand to give you some idea of the size.



I wish I knew how to remove the unattractive fly, but don't. I never notice these things until I download the pictures.

I didn't get it tied up properly this year so it is lopsided on the trellis,


If we can just get some warm sunshine, the iris and clematis will be popping. This is the first year all the peonies are loaded with buds but it seems to take a long time for them to open....usually around Decoration Day.

Roses are budded, white hesperis is opening and the weigela is almost fully opened.
The heavy rains are not helping blooms.