May in VT.

5-22-13 VERMONT: We arrived yesterday after an easy trip. My Achilles tendon has been pronounced healed, and I can do everything but weight training, until another month has past. My leg is still weak, but I expect it to be at full strength by the end of the summer.

Nick and Gus, as usual, ran around like crazy when we arrived, and Judy and Maizie showed up a few minutes later. Maizie is not Invisible Fence trained, so she needs close watching. After a trip around the pasture, Maizie taught herself how to swim in the pond.

Things are a bit chaotic because the house outside trim is being painted, so there are ladders every where and a garage full of Ria the Painter’s supplies.

I did my walk-around. There doesn’t seem to be any hollyhock or hesperis this year, the clematis on the north end of the deck is gone. The magnolias, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, primroses, pachysandra, bloodroot, serviceberry, hepatica and butterbur are all finished blooming. We were not here for over a month while my leg was healing and missed them.

The pond actually looks better than last year. I threw in six clarifying ‘pucks’ from Aqua Dynamic Solutions and will add a bag of barley-straw pellets to fight algae. The frogs are in good voice, fish seen happy, newts and crayfish present and we have four painted turtles, perhaps five.

Yesterday I did some pruning, some cleanup, and some odds and ends after we got the cars unloaded. Today I started on the veggie bed. I removed the black plastic mulch and then the soaker hose, weeded and pulled the corn stumps, added the nice pile of llama poop, seasoned with a soupçon of horse poop, a gift from Janet and Bill. Then I raked and graded, tested the soaker hose for leaks and, finding none, replaced it, and started replacing the plastic mulch, so as to reverse the positions of corn and tomatoes. Changing the positions of the ‘crops’ is supposed to fool the pests and parasites. Mercifully, it started to rain, giving me an excuse to stop. There was a T-storm yesterday night also.

Janet, Melissa, Scott and Steve all stopped to meet Maizie.

In bloom: Virginia blue bells, forget-me-not, violet, bleeding heart, lamium, trillium, azalea, ajuga, dandelion, wild strawberry, apple, cranesbill geranium, Mohican viburnum, spurge, lily-of-the-valley, jack-in-the-pulpit, ginger, hellebore, lilac, vinca minor, blueberry, honey suckle, pulmonaria, alkanet, columbine, sweet woodruff.


This apple tree usually puts on a show for Memorial Day. That's bleeding heart under the tree.

That's a really big water bowl.

Count 'em-four turtles catchin' some rays.