My tomato plants face the wind and rain in their pink plastic bonnets

May 28,2016

I've lost some perennials and drowned a lot of innocent seeds by planting too early. This year, after an unfortunate no-show, no-grow result in the pea patch, I reined myself in and waited for May to set in most of my vegetables and flowering plants. I bought six bushy, healthy tomato plants and gave them new homes on our south-facing patio, and set pink plastic, ventilated cylinders over six smaller tomato plants to boost their growth. The plastic-wrapped pots looked like pale pink Easter bonnets with ruffled topknots, which I created to tie them off. Then I planted broccoli, carrots, salad greens in our raised beds, and smiled with a wee bit of smugness during their first weeks. All the plants and seedlings thrived in the warm May sunshine. I even got cocky and added three pumpkin plants to the under-performing asparagus patch. By then – late May – the calendar had caught up with my impetuous nature. I felt proud that I'd waited patiently to start my summer vegetables until consistently warm weather had arrived.

Can you hear the Garden Goddess snorting with laughter? It's been raining and chilly here on the Palouse for a whole lot of days. Windy, too. The pink plastic cylinders have protected the more delicate tomatoes' roots from drowning, by limiting the amount of rainwater that could enter their pots. But – there always seems to be a “but” when I try a new gardening gimmick – the plastic, which encircled the pots and was held aloft by their tomato cages, also turned the poor little guys into pink-sailed schooners. Strong gusts from earlier this week toppled all six and sent one of the full-rigged pots sailing over the side of the patio and running aground in the peony bed below. When the wind died, my husband tried to rescue all the shipwrecked pots. He saved five. The sixth pot yielded its soil, wire cage and intact pink plastic sail, but not its small tomato plant, which rests now, somewhere in the depths, among the peonies.

The pumpkin plants are still alive, but some of their leaves are turning a sickly shade of pistachio. I'm considering temporarily transferring three of the pink plastic cylinders to the pumpkin patch, and anchoring them around the plants with tomato-turned-pumpkin cages. No matter how this brainstorm turns out, it will still seem more logical than draping banana peels on the canes of our beautiful rose bushes, in a daft effort to outsmart the aphids. (I actually did that several summers ago, and realized I'd been had when the little green bugs sent an emissary to our kitchen, asking for ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate syrup and maraschino cherries for their banana-split party.)

I'd had great affection for the asparagus bed early this spring, because we tried to eliminated their roots last fall, after they had gone to seed so fast. When slender stalks appeared by surprise last month, guilt haunted me for trying to snuff them out. But when the new growth immediately sent up plumes,too, I decided we'd wasted a raised bed. So I used a spading fork to dig up as many remaining asparagus roots as I could find, and planted pumpkins for our grandchildren. Faithful readers already know there almost certainly will be a major pumpkin pratfall by October, but for now, my imagination sees jack-o-lanterns.

After his recent reinstatement as chief garden staffer, Benjamin BadKitten took some personal days off (paid, of course, with benefits intact) as a health-related precaution. Working in Moscow's torrential rains and hurricane-level winds (neither of which actually happened) might put him at risk for pneumonia, he explained. And getting his fur wet would make his paws cold and his tail less fluffy, both of which he considers inhumane working conditions. So BBK has spent most of the past two weeks curled up on my lap or alone in his favorite chair. He must have risked his delicate paws and stylish plume of a tail for a little while, though,because I recently found an intact squirrel's tail on the living room rug. I do not think my ten-year-old Maine coon cat magically morphed into Simba the lion and bagged the rodent. Instead, it's likely he retrieved the poor little guy's tail after a car ran over it on our street. The BadKitten has gone mum about all squirrel-related details and, instead, wonders which garden beds need more fertilizing. Maybe it will keep raining.

The pumpkin plants are still alive, but some of their leaves are turning a sickly shade of pistachio. I'm considering temporarily transferring three of the pink plastic cylinders to the pumpkin patch, and anchoring them around the plants with tomato-turned-pumpkin cages. No matter how this brainstorm turns out, it will still seem more logical than draping banana peels on the canes of our beautiful rose bushes, in a daft effort to outsmart the aphids. (I actually did that several summers ago, and realized I'd been had when the little green bugs sent an emissary to our kitchen, asking for ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate syrup and maraschino cherries for their banana-split party.)

I'd had great affection for the asparagus bed early this spring, because we tried to eliminated their roots last fall, after they had gone to seed so fast. When slender stalks appeared by surprise last month, guilt haunted me for trying to snuff them out. But when the new growth immediately sent up plumes,too, I decided we'd wasted a raised bed. So I used a spading fork to dig up as many remaining asparagus roots as I could find, and planted pumpkins for our grandchildren. Faithful readers already know there almost certainly will be a major pumpkin pratfall by October, but for now, my imagination sees jack-o-lanterns.

After his recent reinstatement as chief garden staffer, Benjamin BadKitten took some personal days off (paid, of course, with benefits intact) as a health-related precaution. Working in Moscow's torrential rains and hurricane-level winds (neither of which actually happened) might put him at risk for pneumonia, he explained. And getting his fur wet would make his paws cold and his tail less fluffy, both of which he considers inhumane working conditions. So BBK has spent most of the past two weeks curled up on my lap or alone in his favorite chair. He must have risked his delicate paws and stylish plume of a tail for a little while, though,because I recently found an intact squirrel's tail on the living room rug. I do not think my ten-year-old Maine coon cat magically morphed into Simba the lion and bagged the rodent. Instead, it's likely he retrieved the poor little guy's tail after a car ran over it on our street. The BadKitten has gone mum about all squirrel-related details and, instead, wonders which garden beds need more fertilizing. Maybe it will keep raining.