The vegetable garden is poised to go out of control. I always love this time of the year when the vegetable beds look relatively organized and weeded. Lots of fun things to harvest as summer rolls in. We have had plenty of radishes, which we now dislike – you can only eat so many radishes, even the chickens don’t want them. I’m not even pulling them out of the beds. They’re supposed to repel some unwanted insects. We ate the first two Parisian Pickling cucumbers tonight. I was surprised to see them ready to pick.

I counted plants in the upper garden: 36x tomato plants, 12x bush beans, 14x cucumber plants, 4x cucamelon, 10x strawberry, 6x blueberry, 6 or 7 blackberry canes, 18x  cucurbita (squash, gourds, zucchini), peppers, herbs, radishes, carrots, sweet peas and lettuce. I also have eight tomato plants closer to the house. I have plans for the potential bounty but I can also see a lot of items landing in the compost pile. I truly am going to try to stay on top of using all the veggies. Good thing we have chickens.

We started re-landscaping the front yard. We ended up removing the original azaleas because I was unable to trim them back into shape. Since we plan on bringing in Japanese maples, we needed scaled back plants. Today I did the northwest corner of the house with smaller azaleas and two tamukeyama Japanese maples. On the corner we will plant a beni otaki Japanese maple. We have one in the set of trees that arrive early June.

The Beni Otaki maple can grow to about 15 feet tall and is able to hold its color even in the sun. Its name translates to “Red Bamboo”. This tree has black bark and grows in an upright form.

Some of the other large maples will be placed along the stone river bed. The former owners had a lovely rock river bed in front of the house. Over time, it collected dirt and weed seeds. This year I decided to weed with a pressure washer, and I uncovered a lot more rock. We decided that we will pull up all the rock, alter the course slightly, line the course with new EPDM, and possibly move water through the bed, all the time. This project is definitely going to be felt in my back. I’m also redoing the azalea and maple garden on the southwest corner. We have some interesting trees due in and I believe I will need to have some more segmentation in the garden. Hoping all of this will be done over the next 60 days.

Of course all of these ideas may change once I get my Japanese maple book. “Book for Maples” by Masayoshi Yano is on its way to the farm. Mr. Yano was one of THE experts on Japanese maples and passed away last year. His book is not to be found anywhere and the organization with rights to his book have stated there is no intent to publish it again. However they do have a digital version which you can get by sending a fax and paying 9000 yen. Thankfully I have a sister who is fluent in Japanese and she has a friend in Japan willing to hunt down this DVD. It took a few weeks but the DVD was finally acquired by my sister’s friend. Not that this book will be life changing, but I always enjoy doing the research.

The little hens are nine weeks old. We had planned to move them next weekend to the blue coop but I thought they looked cramped in their new coop this morning. I’m also tired of patches of grass/clover destroyed by them. So Rhoda, Olga, Wanda, Greta, and Gretchen are now enjoying larger quarters. The older hens can not get into their coop but can get used to them being around. We’ll let them free range with the older hens in about two months. Pond builder thinks we should get a few more chicks mid summer. I’m thinking 14 hens is really enough.

Two little koi needed some extra care this weekend. We noticed that two of our shiro utsuris had problems. They continued to eat and swim well but clearly something was going on. They do have bacterial infections but it appears they have injured themselves somehow. One koi had a large ulcer near the tail, a tear in the dorsal fin, a tear in the tail fin. The other koi had a torn up right pectoral fin and the scales near the pec joint were raised. I gave them a little broad spectrum treatment then sedated them. They each got an antibiotic shot, cleaning of wound area with a potassium permanganate solution, and a little neosporin on their wounds. They are now living in the quarantine tank with some tosai that are too little to go into the main pond. After twenty four hours, the injured koi are looking much better.

The hay is waiting to be cut and so are the grass areas on the farm. My Ferris zero turn is in the shop right now so mowing has been on hold. Maybe the mower will return this week. I’m crossing my fingers for dry weather because the guy who picks up/delivers mowers, does not work on rainy days. Life is a little slower in the sticks.