It's garden time again...

 Exciting things are happening right outside my back door!   

The last of the asparagus and the first of the strawberries got picked today. Strawberries usually come ripe here at end of May/beginning of June, but look at those beauties on May 11th!  We'll be eating strawberries with ice cream next week, I betcha!

And the Egyptians Walking Onions are putting on their show:

The walking onions are growing fat stalks, and starting to do their "walking" thing.  In case you've forgotten (or are unacquainted with these plants), indulge me as I tell once again how these little wonders work.  

At the top of each stalk, starts a sac with little bulbils in it (middle picture above), then the sac bursts open (bottom picture) and out pops tendril-like stalks ready to grow their own sacs, then the whole stalk will eventually bend over from the weight and plant new bulbils in the soil - all summer, onions "walk" across the garden as they plant themselves.   

If someday in the future I find myself without a garden again, I hope to be able to grow some walking onions.  They are worth their keep in entertainment value alone.

And slowly over these last two weeks, I have been getting this year's garden put in.  Bush beans are growing in the foreground (center of picture), zucchini further down the row.  Yesterday, in the next two rows over, pole beans got planted at the base of a number of round trellises (6, I think), then a small square of kohlrabi, and further down zinnias and sunflowers are seeded:

I'm trying an experiment this year.  On some of the garden, I'm putting broken-down cardboard boxes between rows to minimize weeds, then covering the cardboard with leaves, old hay, and grass (just using what we have).  The logs are only to hold the cardboard down until it starts to decompose and become one with the soil.  Soon, they'll be tossed back on the woodpile, leaving the walkways clear.

Today, had me preparing more soil for planting tomatoes and pepper plants.  Most did great, but two peppers and one tomato plant withered like this within minutes of being planted:  

As of this evening, they still haven't revived.  I don't know if the roots took a shock from transplanting, or if the wind simply beat them limp.  It was exceedingly windy, and in retrospect it was possibly not the best day to transplant seedlings.  I'm not overly worried as I have plenty, but it makes me sad to see them looking so poorly so quickly.   I watered them and put open plastic containers around them to protect them from more wind tonight.  We'll see if they look any better tomorrow.

I may give the garden a rest tomorrow.  Or maybe I'll not be able to help myself from finishing the planting.  I'm about two-thirds of the way finished.  The end of pushing myself on getting a garden in is so close...

While I started out feeling great a couple of weeks ago, all this physical labor makes me realize I am not 100% recovered from all that last year held.  It certainly doesn't help that I got a respiratory illness nearly two weeks ago, but still...  I can now tell that my stamina isn't quite what it was a year ago when I was tilling this same garden.  Every day I work in the garden, I end physically whipped, but at the same time, it feels so good.  The exercise and fresh air have to be doing me some good, and thinking about fresh veggies for eating and canning later in the summer makes me really happy.  That's worth a lot.  My full strength will come in due time.  For now, I am pacing myself, trying to make the most of the days, and that is very good.

Are you putting a garden in?  Whether you garden or not, what are some of your favorite summer veggies?