Is it ever going to get warm?

Come on, somebody give me some hope. It just feels like winter is never going to end up here. I should be tapping my trees and hauling sap, but it's too cold for it to even drip. The ground is hard as a rock under the snow and I would do anything to hear a bird other than chickadees, crows and bluejays.

Its coming I have robbins chirpping and the doves are cooing lots of snow but the birds are happy ;0)

Jyl I think were all so tired of it.... We were just graced with 5 inches :(.... it all melts just in time to come back again! Good ole MI...ugh

I'm trying to look at the bright side, it was very pretty out this am. Supposed to be 60 ish by St Paddy's day. I love these wild flucuations at this time of year. And you know it won't be long.....

We're expecting a big storm tomorrow. Ice and snow. Yuck!

I have Crocus blooming and as of last night, snow on the blooms. Where is spring hiding????????

I would have to dig down at least 10 inches to find the dirt. We got slamed with snow.

Yeah, a little over a week ago my little black pussy willow popped with a bunch of cute catkins, then promptly got buried under a thick white blanket. I love winter until March then I am over it.

It's May 17th and only 52 degrees at noon, so no I do not hold out hope of warm weather this year...I have lost hope.

While it looks like a return of what we had in 2008 it is going to start warming up by the end of the week. An Indigo Bunting flew ahead of me out to my greenhouse last night...only the second time I've seen one here. It must be a harbinger of better weather to come. So...if it's going to be a cooler summer we just need to plant accordingly. Grow varieties of veggies that don't mind it. I've started Yankee Bell peppers which do better in our climate, so do North Star peppers vs. Cal Wonders. I plant a variety of different heirloom tomatoes. Some will suffer, but some will do alright and give me at least a few. It will be a great summer for lettuce. It likes the cool weather. Cilantro may not bolt quite so fast. So please don't loose hope. You can still have a great garden if you think about it.

Unfortunately I started everything I can afford to plant back in March, except for my squash and lettuce which are now planted. My watermelons, peppers and some of my tomatoes (not sure which ones forgot to mark them) and one single cucumber made it through the freezes on Sunday and Monday nights. Cool doesn't bother me it is the freezing after Mother's Day that irks me.

Oh good I wasn't seeing things:-) A few days ago I saw my first ever Indigo Bunting hanging out by my feeders. I didn't know what it was so I started a google search and found it to be a bit darker and more iridescent than the pictures. I had started to wonder if it was a Blue Grosbeak that got blown a few hundred miles too far north, but I will assume that it was a healthy Bunting. I would have remembered seeing anything that beautifully blue at my feeders, I hope he will be back, but I think maybe he was passing through.

May 24th, 2011 48'F degrees with frost warnings for the wee hours of May 25th. This is when I start fantasizing about a drunken leprechaun dropping his pot-o-gold on my head, so that I can afford a greenhouse:-)

Down here in the southwestern corner if Mi, we have had 70's and 80's this week. everything is growing, garden is almost in and morels and asparagus are up, strawberries are blooming and setting fruit, apples etc have bloomed. Seems like everything is going thru the blooming cycle so fast . A lot of rain and the yard needs mowing twice a week. I guess all of the time we spent with the snow on the ground was just for us to rest up for the work ahead.

We've barely been out of the 60's all month long, we had a couple weeks of 70's in April then one cold spell after another. We also have not had the rain that you guys are getting downstate, I mowed my lawn 9 days ago and it is time to mow again, but 50 degrees and windy just wouldn't be fun. One day we went up to 84 in the afternoon the temp dropped 20 degrees in 2 hrs. then the next night we had a frost advisory. My weather-bug chirped to let me know we have a frost advisory for tonight again. My strawberries did start blooming yesterday and my irises and rugosa roses are starting to get buds, but my gold buddleja is starting to scare me with no new growth.

05/27/2011 @ 8:30am in Grawn 35' F :-(

Okay, is it getting warm enough now? I think my tomatoes grew 6 inches with the last 3 days of sun. It was finally dry enough to work up the garden yesterday. Summer overnight. Michigan does keep life interesting. How's everyones plants doing?

Beans and corn are up, tomatoes are showing their first blooms,strawberries are growing fast and rhubarb is ready to pick and yesterday the temp was 92 degrees as was Monday, and we had more rain. The weather man said we have had between 8-12 inched of rain in the past 2 weeks. Of course the farmers are complaining that they can not get the crops in because of all the rain, but wait until August, then they will complain that it is too dry. My Dad was a farmer and always colplaimed about the weather. I do not.......... at least there is no SNOW!!!!!

:) June 1st, 2011 @10am 64'F, the past two days have been in the 80's, yesterday was a bit much, but the cucumber seeds that I planted 2 weeks ago finally stuck their little heads up. Nothing has exactly grown by leaps and bounds, but we have gone four whole nights without a frost warning. Michigan weather is rarely boring, I think complaining helps people to get their creative juices flowing, figuring out how to be prepared for things like frost and 86 degrees in one week.

We got most of the garden in on Monday. I still have some plants hardening off in the garage. They'll go in next Monday. So far, so good on everything. It's awful windy here which is hard on new transplants but I think they will all survive. I'm glad I had a few truckloads of topsoil put on my garden before I fenced it in. It's nice and high and drys out when the rest of the land is still wet and muddy. We've been eating tons of asparagus cut from the garden. I've been giving a lot away too. It's so good. I'm very glad I planted that.

I have all my annuals in and containers planted. Now the hard work is done we can sit back and hope God waters it all so I don't have to drag the watering can or hose around.

Other than a few oddballs I finally managed to get my garden planted this week. The weather has been odd (cold,hot, cold) and windy. I fretted my plants would be thrashed too hard and break off but so far they just look a little worn out.

I still have some morning glories and a snail vine in the cold frame along with a couple peppers that are just too small to go out. I had put some morning glories in a planter but they look like crap so I have been reluctant to take the others out.

I started my seeds later this year (4-11-11) , seems like every year I try to back up another week before starting because it's too cold in May to plant without watching half my stuff die off. This year I did better than last year. Stuff was smaller when it went in to the coldframe and while I wish it was a bit bigger now I have to remember I just put it out. Suffered much fewer casualties than last year and for that I am grateful.

I direct sowed some fennel for something new, but so far all I do is water the patch of ground and pray..lol

I wish the garden grew as well as the weeds do...lol.

Never mind. Sorry I asked. 98 freeking degrees.

glad your warm now LOL
Gloria

Cooler again. OK by me. :) Hate the hot stuff. Now to go hoe some weeds. Found some old carpet by the road and picked it up. Going to put it down in paths to keep the weeds down and also going to cut some in circles to act as tree mats around the fruit trees. Weed whacking under the steel cages is a lot of work.

Huge hail storm in the thumb last night ruined many of the tomatoes in the farm garden. I had grown about a hundred heirloom varieties from seed, and voila, gone. Just have to be thankful that there were no tornadoes and the kinds of misery we are seeing elsewhere in this country.

I'm so sorry Nancy. Maybe some will come back up from the root. Tomatoes are pretty hardy. What is with all the hail? It seems like almost every storm we have some hail comes along with it. If this keeps up we'll have to all grow indoors with hydroponics.

Why can't the hail just kill the weeds??