The weather here has been cold and kind of nasty, so my garden isn’t faring as well as I’d like. The chilliness isn’t the worst part– it’s been raining so much that there’s been hardly any sun for my poor plantlings. It’s not terrible (yet), but not great either. I went and took some photos on Tuesday… The lighting in the pictures is kind of weird– it was so dark and cloudy that the automatic flash went off for some of the photos.
The strawberries have continued to grow and have lots of flowers. I’ve been trying to go out every other day or so and take a paintbrush to the flowers to encourage their pollination. So far not much has happened besides the petals falling off the flowers, but hopefully we’ll see some progress soon.
One of the plants that we thought was dead has suddenly come back to life– there are little happy green leaves starting 
Hopefully we can keep it alive this time 
In the photo above, you can see the two Italian flat-leaf parsley plants that Ramona gave us. We put them into two pots that had previously held dead strawberry plants. They are doing well– I noticed some new growth in the middle!
The mesclun is thriving! I think that we’ll start cutting some pretty soon to eat in our salads. I’m excited! However, the yellow pear tomato plant that is in the center of this pot (above) is looking sort of weak. I am pretty sure it’s due to the non-sunny non-warm weather we’ve been having. The leaves are pretty limp (I do make sure to keep the plants watered!!) but it hasn’t turned brown and keeled over yet. And this was the best looking sprout of the bunch! I’m pretty sad that it’s not doing so well.
The Black-seeded Simpson is actually doing better now! In the top photo just above, you can see that the four plants are making pretty big leaves finally. In the lower photo just above, you can see the new sprouts from the seeds that I sowed after all but one of the original lettuce plants died.
In the centers of both of those pots, we planted the Early Girl sprouts. They are still standing, but they haven’t been doing much. I’m hoping that now that the weather is getting better (yesterday it was finally sunny and almost 70 degrees, and today it’s sunny and in the 70s, and I think it’s going to be warmer for the next few days!), we’ll see some new growth on these plants. I’d be pretty sad if all of my tomato sprouts pooped out! (We might have to make an emergency trip to Prairie Gardens for seedlings… 
)
Tiny Tim is still hanging on, too! This sprout actually looks the best of all the tomato sprouts… I have high hopes that we’ll at least have a mini cherry tomato plant later this summer!
All is not bad, though. I’m finally seeing growth on the cucumbers! And the chives are starting to look like more than just a single tiny green blade here and there.
Here’s a close-up of the true leaves finally starting on one of the cucumber sprouts. My dad (who has gardened in the past) has assured me not to fear, cucumbers grow like crazy. Now that these true leaves are starting to unfurl (and warm weather is on its way), I think we might start to see some of that crazy growth– I certainly hope so!
Finally, I will leave you with the most hopeful image of them all– the peas!
They are doing great! They get bigger every day, though I haven’t seen signs of any flowers yet. I did add some extra vertical supports to the tomato cage using dental floss to give the tendrils something to cling to. I think they were happy with that!
So here’s hoping that the warm weather (and sunshine!) will bring rapid growth to my garden!
