they're pretty object-level, actually

Roses have their first flush in April/May, including DA ‘The Poet’s Wife’, blooming gamely in part shade, above the cut. Also newer shrubs currently blooming are ‘Lavender Crush’, ‘Munstead Wood’, and ‘Eden’, among several older rosebushes on the property.

This year, we also have lots of dahlias! Here’s Gallery Art Deco, a short “border dahlia”, which was overwintered totally by accident, but seems none the worse for wear:

We also got “Masterclass” and “Arabian Nights”.

My absolute favorite of the seed-started dahlias actually started blooming in April, this baby pink, lavender, and butter yellow stunner:

I also really like this one, sort of “Creme de Cassis, but make it collarette”. (For non-dahliaheads, a collarette is a specific conformation of dahlia with an open center and an inner ring of irregular, feathery mini-petals.)

This month, I also got our first yield of two (2) Washington Navel oranges, three (3) “Minnie Royal” cherries, and a handful of “Misty” blueberries. May will be a great month for fruit, once our fruiting plants have become Large and In Charge (tm).

More unexpectedly, with the help of some unseasonably warm weeks, I got our very first tomatoes of the year in late May, “Stupice”, started indoors in February:

Gold Medal - my risky pick beefsteak - and my standard cherry tomatoes are chugging along with decent fruit set. Warm nights: who needs ‘em?

I finally got our second raised bed set up as well, and planted out scarlet runner and romano beans, cucumber, and summer squash, as well as transplants of “Aunt Molly” ground cherries, Thai “Ascent” pepper, “Fireball” pepper, and my one (1) Patio Baby eggplant, all February-started. Everything was setting fruit when it got planted except the eggplant (which might need its own tiny hoop house), so this month I got a handful of small ground cherries! They’re definitely a fun flavor experience, like a very sweet, fruity tomato. S hates them; more for me, I suppose.

Also here, but not especially photogenic: way too much Nozaki cabbage. I always forget how big they get, almost 18” long. Needless to say, I will be making both kimchi and sauerkraut in June. I’ve already blanched and frozen an entire head, which came out to two gallon ziploc bags of half-cup portions. Fortunately for me, Nozaki cabbage is versatile, definitely mild enough to stir-fry and eat in salads.

Meanwhile, in tree news:

Our second apricot tree, the much less productive one, collapsed during a spring windstorm. Somehow, it didn’t crush anything on the patio, except for one (1) plastic pot with strawberries in it. (The pot was slightly dented. The strawberries were fine.) This did give me the chance to learn to use a full-sized chainsaw, courtesy of S’s dad. Fear me. Here is the immediate aftermath of the tree-tastrophe, pre-chainsaw:

This was also a great impetus to deep clean and reorganize the patio - it had been a bit neglected all winter, and was genuinely hazardous right after the tree collapsed, not because of the tree itself but because of all the unripe apricots scattered trippably underfoot like so many large ball-bearings. We were able to use the fruitfall and small branches to fill in the new raised bed, hugelkultur-style, and S and their dad chose to use their free will, some of the logs, and some random scrap wood from the crawl space to create a new bench. Combined with the existing furniture, we are going to have so many places for our friends to sit, now that it’s firepit season.

The loss of apricot #2 has also given us the space to plant one more tree, probably our last until after the ADU’s done: a cherimoya, which Mark Twain called “the most delicious fruit known to men”. Stay tuned for that.

In other fruit news, our very first plum has just arrived as I write this, a “Beauty” Japanese plum from our multibud plum tree:

And of course, we have a few weeks to prepare for our Blenheim apric—

Wait. Out of the window, it looks like—

Is that…? Oh no, could it be—

It is.