Happy Saturday! A big thanks to Natalie of Natalie the Explorer for hosting WeekendCoffeeShare.

Come on in from the sun and the heat before your skin turns red or worst, crisp up. 😄Just kidding about the last one but, seriously, the sun here will do that. It’s done that to my vegetables when I was too late to cover them in shade clothes.

I returned from my 2-day road trip last week feeling exhausted. I felt like I’ve caught the travel bug, like I don’t want to stay put. I just want to go! Go go go! I have been combating this with gardening.

Tomatoes!

Most of the garden has been under shade clothes since early May. It’s the earliest I’ve been needing to switch from insect fabric to shade clothes. I remember I don’t usually put shade clothes until the middle of June.

In my region,, shade cloth is a gardening necessity because the sun’s UV rate will kill plants in a heartbeat. I use a 40% shade to reduce the UV rate. I found that under it, even the tomato plants don’t wilt so easily.

Speaking of tomatoes, check this out! Tomatoes are coming! This is from the Tiny Tim tomato plant. It’s a dwarf tomato, meaning it can only get up to 2-feet in height. I’ve been looking for a dwarf tomato and am trying out this variety this year.

Strawberries!

I harvested my first bowl of strawberries of 2025 yesterday. I washed them, cut them into halves, and mixed it in some plain yogurt. It was so good.

The perfectly ripened strawberries were sweet with a hint of sourness while those that were under-ripe were the opposite.

Was it worth the wait?

Definitely.

Peppers!

Let’s talk peppers! I only have 2 new pepper plants this year as most of my pepper seedlings mysteriously died in March. The 2 survivors are gypsy (middle) and Big Bertha (right). Don’t ask me about the names, the seed packets provide the names, not me. The one on the left is the only one from 2024. I found out a few days ago that was a kaleidoscope pepper. For the entire winter, I thought it was kaleidoscope pepper that perished, as opposed to the Sweet Banana pepper. So much for looking forward to pickled peppers. 😢

Behind the pepper, you’ll see the container fig tree. It’s grown a lot since I brought it out at the end of March.

Flowers!

Here are the flowers in what I call the “bad zone” of the garden. It’s separated from the rest of the garden by a strip of sidewalk.

These roses manages to put on a show each year despite all the problems with aphids. There’s another rose bush on the same strip but it can never bloom as profusely as this bush.

When I put the 2 new 30-gallons grow bags next to the rose bushes, I had perennial plants in mind. Petunias were definitely not on my mind. Petunias are annuals, even though they are avid re-seeders, I find the spot is never the same. Anyway, these petunias were supposed to be foxgloves. The seeds probably got mixed somehow. I started 6 foxgloves plants and all 6 turned out to be petunias. I’m just utterly speechless.😡

Finally, here are my favorite flowers of 2025 – columbine and peony. Living in the Rocky Mountain region of the country, columbine happens to be a native plant here. I planted this last year and it did not flower last year. Straight up, this flower looks like an origami but the side-view makes the flower look more intricate. I also love this blue-violet color. There should be more of this color in nature.

My other pick for favorite flower is peony. I just love how they look like a large puff ball. It reminds me of a teddy bear that needs to be hugged.

There it is, my end-of-May 2025 garden. I hope you enjoyed this. I am once again on the road next week. Another road trip, this time, to the Four Corner region and New Mexico. Meet you on the road!