Weather variations

Generally by the middle of May our area has warm and sunny weather settled in. This year we've had a cold-ish early and mid spring. The garden has responded a little slower than in previous years. The strawberries are only just beginning to be sweet off the plant, cherries are slowly turning red, nanking cherry is just starting to ripen the fruit. Trees are leafed out and peaches are fattening on the trees, as are apricots. The grape vines have tiny clusters on them, and flowers are flowering. Gophers are having their way with anything they like, and the trapping has been modest thus far.

We'd had a few days into the 80s F, which were rather pleasant in the shade (and the mosquitoes found it lovely in the evening). Then we got a good wind blowing in from the south west (the direction which brings the rain). We had a little thunder, some lightning and the three waves of hail. Small hail was the first pass, then medium (pea sized), then a bit larger size. All this came along with a big rain event and I checked out my water harvesting areas – downspout to apple tree, road to basin/berm) and found it took a bit longer for the water to soak in than with big-ish rain events.

Hail in May

After the storm passed I noted some damaged leaves on various plants, but most things seemed okay.

Harvest

Aside from rhubarb there hasn't been much new to harvest from the garden. The usual herbs and chard are still around, and the weather has been cool for spring, so the strawberries have taken their time getting sweet. The few red ones were rather tart. Today I went and filled my basket with berries and washed, trimmed, and sliced them. Sprinkled with a little cane sugar they'll make their own light syrup and I'll put them into pint jars and freeze them. The batch of berries contains some sweet and some not so sweet, so by the time they sit in the sugar juice for a while they'll be pleasantly sweet. I did this with several quart jars last year and when I thawed the berries they had good texture, color, and flavor. I ate them just as they were. I also made a strawberry mousse for a dessert (which was much too rich for me to eat, but  my dinner companions enjoyed it).

Strawberries

The big white peach tree got a heavy thinning this past weekend (I still have one section to go) and the crop looks very promising. Another harvest on the horizon is raspberries, which I just ate off the plants last year, this year I think there will be a larger harvest to eat.

First tomato blossom

A friend gave me a few tomato plants, big sturdy things that had been grown in used paper coffee cups. I put them in the garden last weekend and noticed just today a few blossoms on one of the plants.
The plant is growing near an apple tree and its accompanying guild plants — yarrow, comfrey, fava beans, narcissus bulbs, and a few volunteer peach seedlings.

tomato flowers