Sunday sunrise

I was outside with the camera right around sunrise on Sunday taking pictures of the zucchini blossom. The sky was partly cloudy and the sun was painting pink light on the clouds. So, naturally, I pointed the camera skyward.

Looking west at sunrise from our yard toward the vineyards.

Two weeks from today is the summer solstice. We're still gaining about a minute of daylight each day, but that will slow down and reverse as June ends. Our weather hasn't been very summery so far. I hope that changes.

Our first zuke blossom

I just put the plants into the ground a week ago. Now we have the first zucchini blossom. I don't expect an actual zucchini yet. The first blossoms frequently whither and die while the plant continues to produce leaves, but it's exciting to see nonetheless.

One of two zucchini plants in this year's vegetable garden.

It looks like the rain is over and we may get a few sunny days. The garden will like that a lot. I will spray the toms with bouillie bordelaise again today or tomorrow to keep them safe from fungus. This week I also plan to prepare a calcium treatment to help prevent blossom end rot when the fruit starts to set. Calcium carbonate is dissolved in a solution that gets watered in. When I did that last year, the rot stopped almost immediately. This time I'm hopeful that it will be prevented altogether. Fingers crossed!

Market day

As most regular readers know, Saturday is market day in Saint-Aignan. When covid struck last year, the market was shut down for a while. When it re-opened, it was moved from a square in the center of the old town to a bigger place on the edge to allow the vendors and shoppers to spread out. Over time, most of the old vendors reappeared along with some new ones and more and more shoppers got comfortable distancing and wearing masks at the market. Over the past couple of weeks, people are still masked, but otherwise the market seems to be back to its old self, animated and bustling.

The fish monger at the old Saint-Aignan market, summer 2009. She has since retired and another fish monger has taken her place.

I don't think Ken has been to the market in a while, maybe not since it re-opened last year. He does go to the supermarkets regularly. Today, however, he's going to the Saturday market. In addition to the regular food vendors, there's a new wine shop in town that he wants to check out. It's an outlet for one of our local wineries and they make a chardonnay that we'd like to try. Chardonnay is grown in our region, but it's usually used to blend into sparkling wines. Still chardonnays are not common around us.

Roses

Here's today's glamour shot: our garbage bin. Dressing it up a little is a rose that we transplanted to this spot many years ago. It's pretty much the only thing we can get to grow in this "wild" corner next to the driveway. The previous owner had two of these growing on either end of the clothesline. We dug them up and put one here and another out along the north side fence (the one that was damaged by falling birch limbs in December). One of the clothesline plants re-sprouted from roots, so now there are three of these.

Roses with garbage can. Klassy.

Thunder storms and rain moved through and around us over night, starting at around 0h30. They kept me awake until close to 04h00. I was counting "Mississippis" between lightning and thunder to tell how far away the storms were. One was close to five Mississippis, others were between ten and twenty. As the storms moved away north, I fell asleep for another three hours or so. I won't have to water the vegetable garden today.

I got both the west and north forties cut on Thursday. I was motivated by the coming rain, wanting the grass to be cut before it got wet.

Mowing between the drops

I mowed the south forty on Wednesday morning, including the strips alongside the road outside our hedges. I also do one of our neighbors' strip just because I'm out there. She asked me once to do it because she hadn't found someone to hire to cut her grass after her regular guy retired. She wanted the outside strip to look nice even if her yard (not visible from the road) was still not done. I was happy to help her out and I've been doing it ever since. She's moving down south this summer, so I'll stop once she moves out. The new owners will have to take care of it.

Buttercups among the tall grasses on the border of a vineyard parcel. The grasses are home to ticks, so we try to steer clear when walking.

Right after I finished, we had a rain shower. Good timing. Later this afternoon, we're expecting thunder storms and some more rain, so I plan to work on the west forty this morning. I may or may not get the north forty done before the rain starts.

Industrious

I hope I can be as productive as these little ants today. I want to get some grass cut ahead of the predicted thunderstorms/rain this afternoon. Not that I spend my time lying around watching soaps and eating bon-bons. I did watch some tennis and ate some cookies. Otherwise, yesterday, I planted out a few more seedlings: eggplant and jalapeño peppers. I did some edge trimming. I turned the garden water on and then off. I checked on some drying oregano. And I made pizzas for lunch. Ken did a good cleanup job outside the greenhouse where empty plant pots and saucers were piling up.

There are hundreds of anthills like this in the dirt road through the vineyards.

The next seedlings to go out into the garden will be some nasturtiums that are sprouting now. They need to get a little bigger first.

Green at last

Our chilly month of May really slowed down the growth of leaves on the grape vines in the vineyards around us. But now that the weather has started to warm up again, the vineyards are getting greener. The growers out back have spent the last day or so spraying what I'm assuming is a variant of bouillie bordelaise, a copper sulfate solution that helps prevent fungus from damaging the leaves and grapes. The solution is available to home gardeners, too, and I will soon be spraying my own tomato plants to help keep fungus away.

Summer is on its way. Little grape flowers have started to form.

The soaker hose experiment was a success on Monday. I let the hose drip for about an hour and the ground beneath it was wet a good four inches down. Now I'm thinking that a half-hour to forty-five minutes might be enough. I'll keep experimenting, but I'm already happy about not having to water by hand.