I love photos of your garden and I love imagining you on your island in your happy place. It is like a little mental vacation for me here at work to imagine what it must be like there. Good luck with the bees and the sprouts.
I think any garden, big or small, is inherently a beautiful place. But yeah, stick one on a lovely little island in one of the most gorgeous regions of the world...yeah, it puts yours truly in his happy place. :)
I used to be in the very place you are in now. I will happily provide you with more opportunities for garden-imagery fuelled "little mental vacations" as the growing season continues.
Quotes like this are what keep me day dreaming and funneling money off into Vanguard whenever I can. God, I can’t wait.
I'll let you in on a little secret. It's worth the wait.
@Jon_Snow I'm envious of your weather! I jinxed myself and now it's been cold rain for 3 days. Good for the peas I planted, bad for all the rest of my plans... Booooo. I like how we can live vicariously through each others pictures though! That's a peaceful looking garden spot! Nice mason bees too. I haven't tried introducing any pollinators, but I get tons of mostly leafcutter bees and a lot of even smaller bees I haven't identified yet. (Also honeybees (someone might have a hive somewhere near, they can travel quite far but I sometimes have a lot) and a few bumbles. I even let paper wasps hang out in my shed ! They are awesome predators of some garden pests (I saw one munching on a hornworm once, and a grasshopper once as well - after that I decided they could 100% stay! It makes me smile to see them patrolling around the plants looking for food to bring back to the nest. They are very chill too unless you are literally like a foot from the nest.)
Well, I'm blessed to be located in a part of Canada with the longest growing season. Already I've got a few plantings of lettuce, spinach, and peas thriving. As always, I have to restrain myself from planting/transplanting ALL THE THINGS. Spacing out my various plantings has always been a weakness.
One of the great things about my little garden spot is that, on top of the Mediterranean-like micro climate of the island's which provides wondrous Zone 9 growing conditions, the garden itself is located in a circular clearing (the pics do a decent job of showing this), bordered on all sides by some good sized trees. One thing that can hamper growing certain things in the PNW is the lack of true HEAT. Sure, for a few weeks in the Summer temps can flirt with the 30's Celsius, but heat loving crops can sometimes lag here. But due to the garden's positioning, facing southward in the forest glade...when the sun is present, the place traps the heat - and the trees prevent the wind from dispersing it. I can always count on an extra 3 or so degrees of warmth here as compared to other locations on the island. Some of my family on the same island, closer to the sea, can be considerably cooler than my garden spot.
One notable drawback of the location....are the very same trees that help create this greenhouse effect. With every year, as the trees grow higher, I'm actually getting less and less direct sunlight hitting my garden beds. At some point, some very difficult decisions will have to be made. Might involve a chainsaw. I'm probably fine for several more years, but I still have considerable angst about what will likely have to be done.
And just as I was ready to declare my parsnip seeds duds...we have germination. Easily the slowest gerninating seeds I've experienced thus far.
Right now I'm in the midst of hardening off my brassicas that need to be put out in the garden by mid -April...because, in what has to be the worst possible timing in terms of getting my garden off to a great start...I'm heading to Mexico for a month shortly thereafter.