In the Midst of May
May 12 - May 18, 2025
Weekly journal of a Midwest gardener… in the midst of May
Monday, May 12, 2025
Garden club day!1 I went to garden club where we toured the medicinal plant (herb) gardens at the Indiana Medical History Museum2, followed by a tour of the museum. Do I want an herb garden now? And not just a few herbs here, there, and over yonder, but a proper herb garden? Yes, I do. Should I dig up a brand new area for it or repurpose another flower border?
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
I made another quick run to the local greenhouse, this time for lantanas and petunias to make up a couple of hanging baskets that I’ll hang in place of bird feeders in front. Yes, I have spent a lot of time buying plants. ‘Tis the season! After lunch3, I worked on the latest Lost Lady of Garden Writing article4, followed by a bit of procrastinating/waiting on rain to finish up the day.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
In the late afternoon, before supper, I planted out all the tomato and pepper plants. This is the earliest I’ve planted them out in many years. I grew all of them from seed, except for a variety of tomato called ‘German Johnson.’ I picked that one up at Menards while running errands in the morning. Honestly, these have been the best seedlings I’ve ever grown.5
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Hot like summer! Or at least that was the forecast, so I hurried up and mowed the lawn in the morning before it got too hot. I listened to the end of one mystery and started another one while trimming and mowing.6 As I mowed, I realized that I had a lot more flowers in bloom than I showed in my bloom day post.7 I also realized I have a lot of plants that still need to get potted up or planted out in their forever homes.
Friday, May 16, 2025
Before breakfast, I picked lettuce and strawberries and pulled out a few radishes and a couple of green onions.8 Yum! After breakfast, I weeded a bit, then waded into Plopper’s Field, one of my perennial borders, to tame a bit of the wildness and cut back asters. I did the same in another border called August Dreams Gardens.9 This is the earliest I’ve ever chopped back asters to encourage branching and more blooms.10
Saturday, May 17, 2025
I woke to a much cooler day following a wicked storm that blew through yesterday evening, leaving nearly an inch of rain. When I went out to check the rain gauge, I realized the arbor leaning against the post that held up the wisteria had fallen.11 I set it back up as best I could and continued on with my Saturday… watering houseplants, cleaning, planting, going to church, etc.
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Sunny and cool. I finished up my part of editing the weekly podcast, then headed out to the garden to plant, plant, plant. My goal was that anything in a pot would be in its forever home by the end of the day. I might/may have finished this newsletter early before heading out to start planting, so unless I say otherwise, assume I met this lofty goal.12
That’s a Week!
I do feel like I’m a bit ahead of schedule in the garden because I often don’t do a lot of planting until Memorial Day weekend, and truthfully, I might still be planting on Memorial Day weekend. But then I look at the shrubs that seem to have doubled in size since last year. They’ve certainly taken advantage of all the rain this spring. It will soon be time for me to put down my trowel for a bit and get out the pruning shears and other tools to start in on a bit of shrub trimming.
Quotable
"I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way." ~ Jane Austen (from The Austen Pathway)
Have a great gardening week!
Other Stuff By Me and About 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.
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I also spoke to a local garden club later in the day. They met Monday evening at CourtsYard and Greenhouse, where I presented about new and interesting plants that I had chosen earlier that day on a quick visit to see what they had in stock after Mother’s Day weekend.
The Indiana Medical History Museum Garden is on the grounds of what was once Central State Hospital, which started out as the Indiana Hospital for the Insane in 1848. The pathology lab building, which is now the museum, was established in 1896. The hospital was shut down permanently in 1994. It has a fascinating history, and yes, my maternal grandfather was a patient there in the 1930s because of Parkinson’s Disease, I think. That made it even more interesting.
I had lunch with my older sister, brother-in-law, niece, and great-niece and checked out their gardens. This is the sister and niece whose lawns were half-dead this spring. Though we all think the lawn service somehow messed things up late last fall, there is no way to prove it. So they are reseeding and moving on.
Meet Mrs. Charles H. Stout, the latest Lost Lady of Garden Writing.
I checked on the tomato and pepper seedlings the next morning after planting them out, and they all looked great. No little critters came along and bit off any pepper plants. Maybe that’s because they haven’t found them yet, or maybe it’s because I put a little “forktress” of plastic forks around the plants to keep the critters from getting to them.
I finished Unnatural Causes by P. D. James and started Shroud for a Nightingale, also by P. D. James.
My blog post for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day auto-posted at midnight on the 15th. Instead of putting all the pictures in the blog post, I made a video with them.
As I carefully chose the words I used to describe how I harvested, I was reminded of this blog post I wrote about the language of harvesting, which I later revised a bit for an essay for Northern Gardener magazine.
I call the one border Plopper’s Field because I mostly just plop new perennials in wherever there is an open spot. I call the other border August Dreams Gardens because it is filled with perennials that flower later in the summer, except for the tulips I stuck in there, which obviously bloom in the spring.
Cutting back late-blooming perennials like asters, goldenrod, and mums encourages branching and more flowers. It also helps to keep them down a bit in size. In Great Britain, they call it the Chelsea Chop because it is usually done around the time of the Chelsea Flower Show, which is next week, May 20 - 25, in London. Here, I sometimes call it the Indy 500 chop because I generally do it the last weekend of May, around the time of the Indy 500 race. Most of the people around here know when the race is and may never have heard of the Chelsea Flower Show.
Remember how last fall I tried to rig up some support for the post that held up the arbor for the wisteria, which I knew was ready to fall at any minute? Turns out my “engineering marvel” didn’t work as well as I thought it would. But, I’ve managed to shove the arbor and post into a more or less standing position. However, I clearly need to provide a more permanent fix or remove the whole thing. There was a bluebird house attached to the post that fell, but it was empty when I checked it, thank goodness.
I planted about 80% of the plants I purchased, and some of the plants I received to review. I made no progress on the rest of the vegetable garden. I didn’t plant the herbs, either, as I continue to contemplate an herb garden location. I finished the audiobook, Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James. Tomorrow, I’ll try to plant the rest of the plants!