As they say

If you don't like the weather in Chicago, just wait ten minutes.  On Saturday May 18th I got a sunburn.  On Saturday May 25th I did not.  It was cold.  The fingers of our dedicated volunteers were also cold.  This did not prevent them from harvesting four pounds of chives and a medley of other herbs for our very first delivery of the year! 

 

We collected four pounds of chives with plenty more for future harvests.

Can you spot our mystery volunteer?  A regular who has no problem helping with the harvest? 

 

While the temperature plummeted this week, we don't seem to have fallen into a frost.  This is good news (I swear that I'm not counting chickens yet) for our fruit trees.  Last year's sudden late season frost did a number on apple crops across the Midwest.  Right now our trees appear laden with growing fruit.

Apple trees, pruned during dormancy, full of fruit.

Who can resist the appeal of a baby plum?  They are so cute at this age.

These apples deserve their own post... so if you need to know about this variety before then, drop by the garden and ask someone.

 

 

And the figs are growing and fruiting healthily too.  

 

Volunteers use leftover fence wood to cover a large divot left from Persephone's tomb.

I might be most excited by the buds and flowers on the red raspberries.

 Then again...
  

A lot of credit has to be given to the volunteers that pushed themselves to the garden on a day that warranted despondent checking and rechecking of weather apps.  Maybe it's the radishes that are about to pop out of the soil like inflating party balloons, but these are sunny people.  

The again...  The hard work and harvesting of our mystery volunteer, who is no doubt adorable and probably weighs less than a Purple Calabash tomato, continues all throughout week.  Which is why we have chicken wire.

the promise of plums, apples, and figs

While we sow and worry the soil in our raised beds, we sometimes forget what is happening around us in our small orchard of fruit trees. We performed a light spring pruning on our apples a few weeks ago, and unearthed the fig trees that we had buried for the winter; however, the trees had been dormant when we worked on them.

At the end of yesterday’s work day, I walked around the perimeter of the garden, looking at the fruit trees. I was pleasantly surprised to see that our Stanley plum tree is full of beginning fruit. Last year,  after suffering through a windstorm that happened at a critical point in the season, the plum tree lost most of its fruit, yielding only six pounds at harvest. If only a portion of the tiny plums that are on the tree make it to autumn, we could have a bumper crop.

Our apple trees are also loaded with bundles of potential fruit. It is a long time from flowering to picking, however; many things can conspire to keep the yield low, as it was last year. It is, nevertheless, heartening to witness what is literally perennial optimism, as apples start to blossom

The combination of an early thaw and a late freeze a few weeks ago may have damaged our pear trees. We’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks.

Even Persephone, our larger fig tree, has started fruiting. Last year, the then two-year old tree produced a handful of small, mild fruit late in the season. This year, we may get more, and earlier.