May 12, Tuesday

Watered and weeded the bed. Also pruned my tomato plants, which I just now learned to do from this excellent gardening site. The gardening guides make this out to be an onerous weekly chore, but in my little garden it's nice to have something useful to do. Seeking out the little suckers and pinching them off is nearly as fun as roasting fruit flies.

Also pruned some silver maple branches that shade parts of the bed in the morning. This included climbing onto the roof of my house. Got most of them for now, but this may change as the sun gets higher in June. The branches I couldn't reach are some of the highest on the 40-50 foot tree. They may have to stay, or I might be able to throw a rope over them from atop the roof and pull them within reach. Not sure that's worth the obvious risk to life and limb. Seems to me that everything I plant here grows pretty well, a little morning shade notwithstanding.

Noticed that this maple has maple bladder galls all over some of it's leaves. A little googling tells me a microscopic mite lays its eggs inside the galls. Apparently they don't hurt the tree at all, and pesticides are not terribly effective in any case. They're actually kind of pretty. A vibrant red, sort of a cranberry or fuchsia.

My mesclun is starting to look scrumptious, tho still tiny. It's going to need a lot of thinning, so fresh-cut baby greens will be on my salad plate someday soon.

Sprayed a half dozen dandelions, all in the back, and finished mowing the back yard. Rain due overnight.