A Short Garden Tour

Land O'Goshen, the apple trees are finally blossoming!

Now if we could only get a long enough fall this year so that the apples would have a chance to fully ripen . . . or should we start now building a REEEALLY big greenhouse over the whole orchard?

This raised bed has a sunken pot of Sweetgrass in the center. (Sweetgrass will spread and take over the acreage if you don't contain it.) This year I decided to sow a wildflower mix in the rest of the bed. Seeds are starting to sprout . . . but so are what must be a million little weeds! As a person who likes to yank every weed before it becomes a problem, this planting may push me over the brink. How do I know which are weeds and which are wildflower sprouts?? In past situations like this, I've grown some weeds all the way to the flowering stage before I realized that, duh, you dummy, you just spent three months cultivating a WEED!

Last year I started some California Poppies indoors and transplanted 21 of them to this garden bed. They filled the bed (see above picture) and provided gorgeous blooms for much of the summer and into fall. I loved them. In the fall I let the flowers go to seed and this spring . . .

. . . look at the volunteers! My question now is should I thin some of these plants out? The bed became completely filled last year with the 21 plants I set out. Here we have 21 bazillion plants coming along, and I'm wondering if they will do okay or if they're going to be so dense they'll choke each other out and the blooms will suffer. Anybody know?