Racing Around the Garden

May 19 - May 25, 2025

Weekly journal of a Midwest gardener… in the racing capital of the world

Monday, May 19, 2025

I planted up my “Dad Container” on the back patio, choosing plants my dad would have liked: a dark red geranium, an ‘Angel Wings’ Senecio, and three dark blue salvias. It’s a way of remembering him, and I will, every time I see that planter with those flowers, the ones I think he would have picked out. Tell me if you do the same? Then I finished up my day of gardening by mowing the lawn,¹ picking strawberries and lettuce, and potting up some thyme.²

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

If you are going to have an appointment to get your hair cut, isn’t it nice when it falls on a day when it’s raining? Yes, I think so too. And thus, after two rather long days of working in the garden, today was a day of rest. It was also a day for the recently-planted plants to get a thorough, God-given watering, which will benefit them much more than when I water them.³

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

And just like that, there’s a chill in the air, and summer seems further away than when we started this week. I checked out the garden departments at Home Depot and Menards, both of which were packed with plants but not many customers, and bought seeds for scarlet runner beans. FedEx dropped off another box of trial plants, mostly tomatoes, but also a pepper, a cabbage, a basil, and a pumpkin, all from Burpee. It’s raining/not raining, cloudy/not cloudy, and mostly an unsuitable day for gardening.

Thursday, May 22, 2025

I’ve had enough of this weather-imposed rest from the garden. Under overcast skies, I did some light weeding, set up a fairy garden, and harvested more lettuce, more strawberries, and the first pea pods.⁴ ⁵ Who really likes weather like this? The violas and pansies are loving these cool, cloudy days, at least those I haven’t pulled out of containers to make way for summer annuals are loving it. But I’m not. Enough of this weather!

Friday, May 23, 2025

Finally! Today we had sunshine, warmer weather, and hummingbirds! I opened the blinds in the morning and saw a hummingbird feasting on the Cuphea ‘Vermillionaire’ flowers I had planted in a hanging basket by the kitchen window. That was what I hoped would happen when I planted up that basket! With the return of sunshine, I also have hopes that spring will now stop its backward slide, shake itself off, and take us forward into summer.⁶

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Today’s weather was much improved. I trotted out to the Vegetable Garden Cathedral with my basket of seeds and seed labels and sowed seeds for four kinds of summer squash, three different cucumber varieties, five varieties of green beans, scarlet runner beans, ornamental gourds, nasturtiums, and ‘Glass Gem’ corn. Now “all I have to do” is weed out the border where I generally plant flower seeds, sow those seeds, then sit back, relax, and wait for the produce to come rolling in.⁷

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Under cloudy skies, I worked on the back patio, straightening up piles of pots and planting a few things. Using plant shelves I bought at Aldi, I set up a little theater for my pelargoniums. I have 14 of them potted up for summer, which includes two that made it through winter in the garage.⁸ Then I potted up those tomato plants that Burpee sent me to try out. I potted them up together in one big container and then stuck the Everleaf Lemon Basil they sent in the center.⁹

That’s a Week!

How do you know when you’ve turned the calendar over to summer? Is it when you get to June 1st? Maybe it’s summer for you after the big Chelsea Flower Show in London which is always at the end of May? Or maybe you are a traditionalist who calls it summer on the Summer Solstice, June 20th? Around here, I tell people that summer starts when they sing Back Home Again in Indiana before the start of the Indianapolis 500 race. Today, that was at 12:38 P.M. If you’ve never heard that song, I found a video of it being performed by Jim Nabors in 1974, the one and only year I attended the race. (I think that was the year…)

Back to gardening!

Quotable

“This is the spiritual life; the ordinary things one does from hour to hour.” - P. D. James in The Black Tower (1975)

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!

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1. While mowing and trimming the lawn, I listened to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. (It seems unnecessary to include the author in that statement. Doesn’t everyone know who wrote Pride and Prejudice?) I chose it because the audiobook of the next Adam Dalgliesh mystery, The Black Tower, by P. D. James, was not available to check out from my library, and I prefer to listen to books in a series in order. So while waiting for it, I decided to try some Jane Austen because honestly, I’ve read about Jane Austen, but I haven’t read Jane Austen.

2. I haven’t decided where to plant my new herb garden, so I planted the nine varieties of thyme in containers for now. I plan to figure out the herb garden location and plant the thyme in it well before frost in the fall. Well before.

3. Tuesday was also a good day to check in at the local Half-Priced Books. I purchased a “collector’s edition” of Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (leather-bound, 1964), The Complete Language of Herbs by S. Theresa Dietz (2022), and The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by P. D. James (2016). That last one goes with my Christmas-themed books that I like to read in December.

4. The pea pods are the variety ‘Snowbird,’ which I hadn’t grown before, but it seems to be an early, heavy producer. ‘Snowbird’ peas are eaten as pods, and per Burpee, are supposed to be ready to pick 58 days after sowing. I picked mine 66 days after sowing, but there were probably some of them ready to pick a few days ago. I chose this variety because that’s what was on the rack at the store when I bought seeds earlier in the year, lest you think I did extensive research into pea varieties before deciding on this one. A lucky pick. I will plant it again.

5. The fairy garden reminds me of one of those memes… “tell me you are young at heart without telling me you are young at heart.” Cut to a picture of a fairy garden in my grown-up garden. Honestly, every garden needs a fairy garden in it.

6. I took advantage of the nicer weather on Friday to be out in the garden. I spent the late morning cleaning up the vegetable garden so I could direct sow seeds for beans, squash, cucumbers, etc. While mowing in the late afternoon, I stepped on a soft spot in the lawn. Uh oh. Moles! Yes, a mole has taken up residence in my back lawn, and appears to have dug up through the side yard. Dagnabit. (While gardening and mowing, I also finished Pride and Prejudice in the morning and started listening to The Black Tower by P. D. James in the afternoon.)

7. As if I’ll just be sitting around watching the squash grow! We all know there is more to growing vegetables than just sowing seeds. If I were going to sit around and watch the squash grow, I’d at least make myself useful by watching out for squash vine borers and squash bugs, too!

8. I need to figure out a better way of overwintering the pelargoniums/geraniums, other than tossing them in the garage in the fall and hoping for the best. Perhaps I should have watered them a bit more through winter? Maybe if I set up some artificial light, just enough to keep them happy? I have the summer to figure it out.

9. The trial tomato plants from Burpee include Unicorn Yellow F1 Small-Fruited Tomato, Unicorn Red F1 Small-Fruited Tomato, and Sugar Basket F1 Small-Fruited Tomatoes, one red and one orange. Earlier on Saturday, I planted out two other trial plants from Burpee: Golden Cross 40 Cabbage and Capeliente Pepper. Both are supposed to be early maturing. The only trial plant left to plant is ‘Patch for Kids’ Pumpkin. Hmmm… maybe my older sister might like to grow that one if I don’t have a spot for it?