I keep a very loose record of what happens in the garden.. It’s basically a list of things to do. When I want to feel like I’ve accomplished something I cross the items off the list when they are finished just to feel like I am really getting somewhere.

We both spent the day in the garden today trying to get it into shape. E, kindly turned over the vegie beds which was a God send as it would have taken me several days to accomplish what he did in an hour. He blended in ten bags of three part manure which I brought from town.

Then he worked on the pond pump. It is solar-powered and hasn’t been working for a while. The fish are thriving and we have five frogs but unless you can hear the sound of water dripping through the pond pump it seems the birds don’t come to the garden in the droves they otherwise might do.

I potted up my tomatoes and again ended up with far too many…. I am seriously considering only planting tomatoes in the garden this summer and surviving next winter entirely on tomato sauce as I ended up with seventy-one plants.

Twelve each of Roma Paste, Alisa Craig, Ruths Perfect, Cosmonaut Volkov, Pollocks Medium and eleven of the Saltspring Sunrise. I am about a month behind in the usual schedule for the seed tomatoes so who knows if I will even get any.. but I expect by early June, these guys will be ready for the garden.

I took pictures of the garden but it will be prettier in a few days when everything blossoms. Right now it is just ready to burst.

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As I was coming back from the garden around four, the otter ran past me on the driveway.. He was heading to the water for dinner.

I was reading over the garden journal entries for the last few years to see how many tomatoes I had planted in the past. I came across an entry for May 1, 2015 that the American goldfinch had returned to the garden. I had no sooner read that entry when one returned to the

feeder beside me.