The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - a weekly roundup

I'm feeling a little frustrated and grumpy today after spending some time in the garden and yard today. There hasn't been much activity this week, but here's the roundup (sans pictures).

The Good:

• We have sprouts! Zinnias, cucumbers, beans (soy and green), morning glories, and moon flowers are all popping out of the soil.
• The lettuce is just about ready to start harvesting. I may go pick a few leaves for a salad for dinner, I can't wait any longer.
• The grapette tomato and the cayenne pepper plants have little flowers on them. They were a little bright spot in my day.
  
• Strawberry season is upon us! I contacted the berry farm today and it's almost pickin' time. I'm having a hard time finding a local organic farm, but this farm minimizes the use of chemical applications and doesn't use any pesticides since they use bees to help their crops. I'm happy to support a friendly, local, and family-run farm. I plan to pick as many berries as possible. I can already taste them...
  

The Bad:

• The basil plants aren't thriving. I think I planted them too early and it hasn't been warm enough for these heat and sunshine loving plants. A couple of plants have yellow and brown on the leaves, and they don't look healthy. I'm worried that this will affect their growth for the rest of the season (I've read online that cool weather early on will stunt the growth of basil). Another basil plant seems to be getting attacked by bugs. We have a lot of pesto dreams riding on these basil plants and I gave them a stern warning today that they will be replaced if they don't get with the program!
  
• The sun was in hiding this week and as a result the garden has stalled out. The chard hasn't gotten much bigger and the leaves are getting munched on by some type of chard-munching pest. I think it's time to buy some ladybugs and hope they eat our predators. The spinach is also about status quo, which is not much. I'm still holding out hope for having fresh greens sometime before it gets too hot.
  
• Our rain barrels are empty. We haven't gotten much rain this week so I've had to use the hose to water the garden and flowers this week. Today I watered (with the hose) and now it looks like it might rain. Apparently watering the garden will make it rain just like washing your car will!
  

The Ugly

• The mulch. My feelings about the mulch can be summed up in one word - UGH! I really thought mulching was going to be the answer to our ugly yard. It looks OK still but the border I put around it is not sufficient to hold the mulch in place...it is spilling out into places we don't want it (mostly thanks to the dogs). And I need to spend some time spreading it out a bit more evenly because there are lots of bare spots.
  
• Luna decided to express her anger (or maybe boredom) today by digging up one of my pots that contained delicate zinnia sprouts. This better not become a habit!
• The weeds are back and they ain't pretty. One of the benefits of square foot gardening is supposed to be the lack of weeds. Yeah...not so much in our garden. I'm sure that I'll soon give in to the fact that I will be spending my time weeding this summer. I'm just not yet to that point.

I forgot how much patience gardening requires. You just can't force Mother Nature to speed things up.

I'm doing my best to enjoy the process of gardening just as much as I enjoy the outcome. Maybe next time there will be more of the good to report and less of the bad and ugly.