This spring has been very wet and dismal. The rain and gray continues and it has been cold. Everything seems to be about 3 weeks behind. The saucer Magnolias are gorgeous and full of blooms. This seems to be late. But the rhododendrons are on time with the red ones and ‘Unique’ has started to bloom in the neighborhood.

Our tomato seedlings did not start. We did not put them on the heating mat since we were going to California in mid March. So we restarted them on March 30th. We had good luck with some but no germination on the Stupice and Siletz. So we bought a start of Stupice and a Willamette which is an older but similar variety to replace the Siletz.

The peas we started on Feb 25th were big enough to plant out on March 16th. They seem to be doing well and have started to climb this week. The “Outrageous” lettuce went out on March 30th.

We started the Pole Beans yesterday on April 22th and will start the squash, cucumber and corn today. We will start the bush beans a little later.

We have also been doing a lot of general clean up. We had a lot of moss around the pathways. We cleaned the back cement patios on April 12th with the power washer and hand scrubed the wood dec. Then we cleaned the moss and power washed the drive way on April 13th. We sprayed the driveway and deck with anti-moss on April 15th. Next day, we did more yard clean up – G pulled horsetails and I raked up the beech leaved and gathered up years of beechnut hulls from around the deck. We ended up with 2 cans and 5 bags of yard waste. It was a great feeling of accomplishment to see the yard waste go out on Tues 18th. We finally got to mow the lawn for the first time on 20th. It has been so wet.

We took a day off on 21st – our first beautifully sunny day and went and saw the tulips and did a little wildflower hunting at Washington Park in Anacortes.