All Year I Dream of the Days of May
April 28 - May 4, 2025
Weekly journal of a Midwest gardener… we made it to May! Full steam ahead in the garden!
Monday, April 28, 2025
I started the day as one should. In the garden! I took advantage of the sunny skies to pot up my new geraniums and bring out the ones that had been in the garage. Yikes! I should have put the garaged geraniums in a shadier location first and not plopped them straight into the sunlight like I did. By the end of the day, what few leaves they had looked quite bleached. I finished the day in the garden by planting out some onion seedlings and celery starts after supper.1
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
When it rains in the morning, it seems to set the tone for the day, doesn’t it? Shall we garden? Not in the rain and by the time it’s over (leaving almost a half-inch in the rain gauge), we’ve moved on to something else, it seems. That pretty much sums up Tuesday, though I did putter around a bit after the rain, pulling a few weeds along the way.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
The day started with cooler temps, as a spring morning in April usually does. But there was no rain after lunch, so I mowed the lawn and filled the bird feeder with the last of the bird seed. Then I decided to take a quick pass through the garden to fill up the empty bird seed bag with weeds. While pulling up dandelions in a fairly wild section of the garden, I discovered a white violet blooming. Woot! I thought the ones I transplanted here years ago had disappeared. Guess not! Happy to see it!
Thursday, May 1, 2025
It was a whirlwind of a day. I sowed seeds indoors for flowers2, was a guest on Noel Kingsbury’s Garden Masterclass Thursday Garden Chat (video here)3, then went to CourtsYard and Greenhouse to start buying annuals. I also did a few things not related to gardening. It doesn’t sound so busy when I write it all down, but trust me. Busy! Hello, May!
Friday, May 2, 2025
Dee and I hopped on Zoom early to record another podcast episode because we both wanted to get out into our gardens. But did I get out to the garden? Nope, I went to Menards, one of several errand stops, and what do you think happened there? How about hostas for $3.36? Yep, that’s what happened there.4
Saturday, May 3, 2025
In the morning, I went to the Johnson County Garden Club’s Garden Celebration at the Johnson County Fairgrounds, an annual event, always on the first Saturday of May. It’s a great way to kick off the gardening season. I came home with herbs and hostas. Of course, I also stopped at my favorite bookshop, Wild Geese Bookshop, while I was in Franklin. I bought a book related to writing, not gardening, and had a lovely chat with the owner about gardening books as I was leaving.
Sunday, May 4, 2025
I spent the rainy morning writing a blog post and editing the podcast episode we recorded on Friday. After lunch, I met one of my sisters at CourtsYard and Greenhouse. She was looking for a hanging basket or two. Brrrr. It was cold. What happened to spring? How could it only get to about 50°F after the nice days we had earlier in the week? Spring, thou toyest with us! Anyway, I helped my sister pick out a beautiful hanging basket and another potted up container with salvia and other flowers that will be stunning on her patio. We also picked out some flats of flowers that I will get later in the week, when they’ve grown a bit more.5
That’s a Week!
Forgive me for not telling you about the Aldi Finds that I bought on Wednesday. I purchased another kneeling pad for weeding (so thick!), two new gardening hats (one green, one flowered, both washable), two pairs of gardening gloves, and a little garden fairy kit. I bought the garden fairy kit mostly because, yes, I do like to set up little fairy garden displays in my front garden for the more observant neighbors to spot as they walk past. I will set them up next week
Quotable
“Herb gardening has been compared to chamber music. Both are best appreciated in small places, for they have an intimate quality lost in a large hall or a big garden.” - Helen Morganthau Fox6
Have a great gardening week!
Where Else to Find Me and How to Support Me
🌐 My online home is my website. where my main blog still lives happily as May Dreams Gardens. Come visit anytime!
🎙️ Tune in every Wednesday to The Gardenangelists, my weekly podcast where Dee Nash and I dig into all things gardening—flowers, veggies, and all the best dirt, plus gardening books. We’re on YouTube, too, so you can listen and watch!
🌸 Curious about the women who shaped American garden writing? Check out Lost Ladies of Garden Writing—a passion project of mine with new posts every other Wednesday.
📸 Follow me on Instagram for letters to my garden, pictures of my flowers and garden, and the occasional reel that might make you smile (or nod in solidarity).
📚 Add a little garden joy to your bookshelf with one (or all!) of my five humorous yet helpful gardening books—or pick up one of my two children’s books for the young garden-lovers in your life.
🛒 Shopping for garden goodies or books? If you use one of my affiliate links (often to Amazon or Bookshop.org), I earn a tiny commission—at no extra cost to you.
🌿 And the biggest help of all? Share this newsletter with fellow gardeners who might enjoy it. Word of mouth is the best kind of fertilizer to help a newsletter grow.
.Thank you!
If you like what you’ve read here and haven’t already done so, please subscribe to join me in the garden every week.
I started the onion seeds in seed rolls to try out that method. They were quite spindly when I planted them out in the garden, so I’m not sure how well they’ll do. I bought the celery seedlings at the local greenhouse. I chose Monday evening to plant them in anticipation of rain through the rest of the week. In general, I prefer evenings for transplanting to give the plants a chance to recover in the cooler temps overnight.
Last fall, I collected seeds for Signet marigolds (Tagetes tenuifolia) and Zinnia angustifolia. I’ll know soon whether the seeds are any good—they should be!
In case you missed that link, here is the link again to the YouTube video of my discussion about Lost Ladies of Garden Writing with Noel Kingsbury and his colleagues, Richard and Claire for his Thursday Garden Chat.
I went to Menards to buy some ant traps, which are stocked in their garden area. Since I was out there, I decided to take a quick look at the plants—so many plants—and that’s when I saw a woman hold up a hosta in a quart-sized pot. It was like a beacon. I had to take a closer look because the sign said $3.36. I also inspected them closely to make sure they weren’t infected with Hosta Virus X. They looked decent.
I won’t wait too long before going back to the greenhouse for those flats of flowers. They won’t be there much longer before someone buys them. It’s crazy busy over there, even on a cold, rainy Sunday.
I bought a good used copy of The Years in My Herb Garden, by Helen M. Fox (1953), and immediately found that lovely quote. No matter how big your garden is, having a few smaller spaces and plantings that you can get up close to makes it more intimate. And if they are filled with plants with scents, like herbs, so much the better!
Thanks for the connection to Gardeners Masterclass. It gives me something to add to Gardeners World as my list of things to watch with my morning coffee (part of my Antidote to the News Project).
I have a question about the alliums in your photo. Mine are also doing that annoying thing where the leaves begin to yellow just as the buds are opening. Is that universal or just some varieties! I have Gladiator and Purple Sensation. (Maybe I will just move them farther away, or find something to plant at their feet if this is unavoidable.)