Soggy Vermont.

5-24-11 VERMONT: It was an uneventful trip up here—the best kind. It was a rainy trip, and a rainy, cold night. Today was summery—almost hot, humid, mostly cloudy with a gentle breeze. I walked around with Sam and Chloe this morning before errands and am overwhelmed with the work that needs to be done. Fortunately, only the veggies and herbs are semi-urgent. Everything else will get done when it gets done.

I went to Longacre’s this morning and got fertilizer, peat moss and a bunch of perennials to replace those lost to winter kill. In the afternoon I started uncovering the veggie garden, removing the black plastic mulch and the soaker hose. That doesn’t sound like much, but the pasture grasses and weeds had grown into the plastic so much that it was hard to tear it out, but the intrepid gardener persevered.

I moved some thyme from the veggie garden, huge rambling plants that I had started with one little plant several years ago. Some I put in the new herb garden and some in sunny bare spots in the pasture. The late afternoon rain, we can’t go for 24 hours without some rain, drove us inside for dinner.

In bloom: apple, azalea, honeysuckle, lilac, blueberry, mohican viburnum, bleeding hearts, forget-me-not, mertensia, red and white trillium, pink, purple and yellow lamium, pulmonaria, viola, lily-of-the-valley, vinca, creeping phlox, alkanet, epimedium, baneberry, bergenia, geranium, spurge, hellebore, wild ginger, jack-in-the-pulpit, bunch berry, and in the pasture: dandelion, wild strawberry, foam flower.


Master of all he surveys, for a few seconds.

You can't be too rich, too thin, or have too many dandelions.

White Trillium, Red Trillium, also called Wake Robin.