Early Strawberries, Stunted Peas and Skunks

Let's start with the skunks. Happy to report, not a close enough encounter to have pictures to share. (NOT to say that I would think about snapping pictures if I had a skunk's nethermost end pointed in my direction.)

Last night at a meeting, one couple was telling of their recent adventures with a mama skunk and her babies living under their garage. Whew-ee, I thought. Sure am glad we haven't had a skunk around here for several years.

Hubby went out to do chores first thing this morning and as he stepped out of the door from the house onto our enclosed entry porch, he said, "Omigosh, strong skunk smell out here." We immediately decided it might not be in anybody's best interest to let Zoey the Wonder Dog go out with him as she usually does.

An investigation determined the smell was strongest on the enclosed porch and on the front open deck on the opposite side of the house. The deck on the front is within the fenced in area, and there should have been no way (famous last words?) a skunk could get under the house in the back where the porch is. Hmmm.

After a careful perusal of the premises and no sign of our odoriferous visitor, we decided there was nothing to do until the smell went away or . . . something else happened. It's after 7 p.m. now, we no longer can detect any odor nor have we seen any black and white "kitties." Hope that's the end of the story.

I took this picture at least a week or so ago when the strawberries were in full blossom. I think we have more blossoms this year than I can ever remember seeing. The time of the blossoms signaled we're going to have an earlier than usual harvest.

Look what I found when I was walking through the strawberry patch this afternoon! The berries will indeed be ripe sooner than their usual July 4th date this year, folks. No doubt about that.

Peas. I planted my Lincoln shell peas on May 19th. They have a maturity date of 67 days.

I wasn't going to plant any edible podded peas this year because I end up giving most of them away or they go to the chickens as we just can't eat all of them fresh, and I don't have much luck freezing them as they get mushy on me.

But then a week after I had planted the shell peas, I caved (surprise, surprise) and put in just 8' of Oregon Snap Peas. Okay. So we'll eat them like crazy when they're in, give the surplus away and hope we don't have too, too many of them. The snap peas were planted on May 26th and have a maturity date of 65 days.

So here are the shell peas today reaching a wimpy 5" tall if they stand on their tippy-tippy-toes and stretch. They're darn close to a month old.


And here are the snap peas, with one week's less growth time on them, at a lusty 8" tall.

Makes me wonder if I happened to get the snap peas planted during the right phase of the moon, but missed with the shell peas. In the past, I have tried to do all my planting coordinated with the lunar calendar but didn't pay much attention to it this year because it's really difficult as we have such a small window in the spring/summer to plant in order for our crops to have time to mature. (Didja get that?) At any rate, it will be very interesting to see if either or both these pea crops mature in the time frame that they should.

All peas around here should be happy, happy, happy as we've been having lots of cool, wet weather. Matter of fact, the bulk of my garden hasn't done diddly-squat in the last couple of weeks because of nearly total lack of sunshine. Plenty of natural moisture, but no sun. We're never satisfied, are we?