Remembering my beautiful nephew, Eric James, today and always. His blue eyes are reflected in today’s blue sky and sea, and that blue poppy, too. We all miss you, Eric.

Vegetables and fruits are growing by leaps and bounds in May’s sunshine. Besides harvesting lots of asparagus, we’ve begun enjoying baby spinach and arugula, and I’ve frozen rhubarb for later use.

Almost all the greenhouse seedlings are successfully transplanted into raised beds and other areas of the fenced vegetable garden.  It’s exciting to see every area filled with varieties of yummy goodness.

The two strawberry beds are vigorous and filled with flowers. I’ve promised to have a teenage friend up here to help pick them next month. Some of their flowers have begun to fade, so I’ve purchased simple netting to drape and tack over the beds while berries ripen. I don’t want the birds to beat us to the treats, and I’ve heard they attack right before you think they might.

I’ve transplanted plenty of basil and dill into pots for the deck. The only plants I’m keeping in the greenhouse are tomatoes and peppers. I’ve been moving those into their final, large pots that I can transport into the sunshine — just alongside the greenhouse on a flat area of gravel.

There were only three duds of the many packets of seeds I started: rouge d’Iver lettuce, a bush variety of green beans, and Italian flat leaf parsley. The rouge lettuce did not germinate, so perhaps I sowed it too early directly into a bed at the very end of March, although we had no frost after I sowed. Romaine and buttercrunch lettuces, plus arugula are all doing great. The mistake we made with the bush beans was to plant them in rows where the soil isn’t optimal. I’ve never had trouble with green beans and didn’t think the iffy soil would matter, but only three beans sprouted. I’m glad to have a long row of healthy runner beans planted as well. The parsley failure is a mystery since I kept it in the greenhouse and just 1 seed (ONE SEED!) germinated. I’d read that parsley is most reliably grown from seedlings, and now I understand that.

Below is the raspberry row about two months ago, and today. The bees are busy at work on the buds.

Heading indoors for a break, I paused and relished the colorful blooms. These photos are absolutely unedited!

Update on September 13 — Today, over four months after seeding, while working in the greenhouse I spotted a healthy parsley seedling in the gravel beneath my feet!