The sun is out and it seems that every insect everywhere is now awake. The forest is literally abuzz with activity. Even now some disgusting insect just landed in my light fixture and is buzzing out his death throes. Eww.
It’s also time for many of us in North Idaho to start thinking gardening thoughts. I planted a few cool season plants a couple weeks ago, but for the most part the big, big planting will probably happen next week.
With all the recent rain, along with the insects, the weeds have exploded as well. Our lawn is a jungle. It’s sort of embarrassing, but we haven’t had a window of opportunity to mow it when we were not working and it wasn’t raining.
Although technically, I’m a Master Gardener, it’s hard to tell from my garden, since I really don’t have much of a green thumb. Even though my veggie garden might be a little anemic and my flower garden a little ratty, the one thing I can grow is perennial herbs like tarragon, thyme and oregano. Even now, the oregano plants are exploding out of the beds. (My contribution to this incredible surge of growth was exactly zero.)
I have some large herb plants now that I keep dividing and moving into other places. A couple of years ago, I read that deer don’t like certain perennial herbs, so I decided to affirm that and put some of my thriving plants in places where I haven’t seemed to been able to grow anything else.
Naturally, the herbs didn’t thrive. But now the deer have a little added spice in their salad.