Walking Sticks

It seems as though gardening season has finally arrived. Each year for the last 3 –4 years the seasons seem to start a bit later but finally we’re having a bit better weather. We’re still going to have showers and breezy days, that’s the norm, but the cold temps are not.

While my better half has been busy getting the garden ready for planting our veggies, I’ve been busy with the seedlings, transplanting some to larger pots, and starting more seeds. My dahlias are half way big and ready but to soon to go out and the others will be ready by the end of the May. We’ve also been cleaning up after the windy days and everything is coming along so well. We have one small tree to take out, I think it drowned with all the rain we’ve had. I’m going to replace it with a topiary lavender tree. The bees go crazy for the flowers. Our local Mason bees are busy, they are filling up their nests for next year with reckless abandon and pollinating everything in sight. We should have a great crop of peaches again.

We planted a pomegranate tree, a pear and two apples since last year and even the apple trees are getting blossoms on them as small as the trees are, so perhaps the last couple of years of not good growing seasons, this year looks promising.

I have to get my corn seeds into trays at the end of the month and get them started next. I know, I know…corn seeds you can plant out when the ground is warm, but here we still get cold spells and with that comes slugs, so I’ve learned over the years to start the corn inside and plant it out when it’s about 8 – 10” when it’s strong enough to withstand the onslaught of especially the slugs. We don’t use chemicals in our garden to control bugs, but over time, because we’ve been diligent and because the soil gets turned so often, the problems with bugs is nearly non existent (except a few slugs which is less each year to). We’ve encouraged beneficial bugs to our garden because of the lack of pesticides and they are doing the work they were meant to do.

We were outside yesterday afternoon enjoying some quiet time and listening the birds, when overhead I heard the sound I’ve been missing for a few years, and that is the sound of swallows. There were tons of them making their all to familiar chattering sounds and you could see them scouting out places to start their nests. We have tons of birdhouses around, so I hope a family chooses to come here. They seems to do a flypast, disappear again for a couple of weeks and then before you know it, you see them sitting at the threshold of the birdhouses….so I’m waiting patiently for that to happen.

So with the better weather comes walks in our local parks, some of which require hiking up to the tops of hills and it helps to have a little help. While we were at a garden center last week, we came across these wonderful walking sticks. I would like to say they are locally made because I do as much as I can to support our local business and artisans, but these are from China. They caught my hubbies eye and he wanted to get one for me….Sweet, but he needs one to and so I made sure he picked out one with a masculine theme for himself. Some had animals carved into them, some had faces, but we found one that is a real guy walking stick. Which one do you think I chose..????? Aren’t these great. They are about 4’ and a bit, tall. A full size pic follows. I have no idea what kind of wood they are, but they do have some weight to them. I see many walks in the forest coming up.