For the last 11 or so years, as much of our family as possible met at the Byrns Greenhouse near Zim, Minnesota, for our family buy-them-out-of-flowers day. Okay, so it seems to me! As our greenhouse and house are stuffed full of vegetable starts, we just can’t start flowers inside anymore. I love my hanging baskets of flowers plus I always need a few (ha ha!) more perennials. Sons, Bill and David plus their families joined in the shopping frenzy too. Granddaughters, Ava and Delilah, helped pick out a lot too.

Here we are at Byrns Greenhouse this year.

Following that, we tired but happy shoppers went to the Wooden Table to enjoy a meal together that I didn’t have to cook. (Hey, it’s Mother’s Day, right?) I love to cook, but as busy as we’ve been lately, cooking kind of falls by the wayside. I’m more apt to pull a few jars from the pantry than cook from scratch these days. Thank God for the pantry! Last night, it was chicken salad sandwiches, made with canned chicken breast, a nice, sweet onion and some Gaucho relish. Yum! Quick, tasty and very easy.

This is how we watered in the new onion plants.

Will got the Sand and Central gardens all manured and tilled up the day before and we also watered in the trillion onion plants in the Wolf Garden as it was headed for a few days in the low 90’s. Whew! That’s hot for spring in Minnesota. Will threw a tote on the back of the truck and hooked up a 12-volt pump to the battery, and a short hose into the tank, a longer one to deliver the water. We took turns walking next to the truck to soak the rows of onions. Very slick! It’s looking like a droughty summer so we’re figuring out how we’ll water everything.

All the fruit trees are beginning to bloom, and the tree leaves are starting to pop open.

With the heat, the fruit trees are starting to bloom! I’m just hoping we don’t get a late spring frost, so we’ll get fruit this year. Last year, we had very little. Will got our new FE cherry tree from Honeyberry USA planted. I’m really excited about it as it’s a Zone 2 pie cherry that has wonderful flavor. I can’t wait! — Jackie

20 COMMENTS

  1. Love the chuckle you put in “l always need a few more perennials.”. I always ” need” a few more too! My Mother’s Day present was a lovely hanging basket for the shepherd’s crook by the front door. Flowers are such a refreshment for the soul.

    • Aren’t they though? We sure enjoy ours, as do the hummingbirds that join us for the summer.
      We, obviously, because of our seed business, grow tons of vegetables. But the flowers are something special that keeps us happy.

  2. Thanks, Jackie and all, for mentioning the pantry dinners. My husband recently had occasion to take a couple of friends through my larder (all my hard work canning since 2020). Thing is, we use up very little, ever. He then said to me, We have to start eating this stuff! I forget about it, out of sight, out of mind, especially when “putting-up” isn’t on my mind (mostly winter). I keep my larder thinking the sky is going to fall any time now. Well, I have years of food preserved. That means we’ll have to eat food, especially vegetables that aren’t fresh. Oh, well. Must do it.

    • Gee, isn’t that sad? Having to eat food you’ve put up. Ha ha. We love it so much!! It may look like years of food but when you actually only have that to eat, you’d be surprised and shocked at just how fast it goes. When we lived very remote, being snowed in for six months out of the year, my pantry diminished very fast!
      And we never know when “the sky might fall”. Lol

  3. Sounds like you had a very fun Mother’s day. I love going to the greenhouse and my daughter got me a lot of plants for mothers day. The best kind of gift. Hope the fires are not close to you. We are very dry here as well. I have already started watering my garden and its just May! There is not much rain in the forecast, so I will be working on plan B or maybe C, lol. Sending prayers for a blessed week.

    • Thanks again, Marilyn. The fires aren’t too close to us, but it’s still scary. You can see that hot plume of smoke, even though the fire is about 40 miles away. It’s still hot and dry here. Fortunately, it’s early so we don’t have anything planted yet, but for the onion plants. We’re praying for rain.

  4. Happy belated Mothers Day to you and all other mothers.

    We often use an IBC tote like you for various things. If you hit up a hardware store and buy the fittings, you could eliminate the need for the pump! When our water lines are frozen or the top pump is out of order, we load up the IBC tote and fill it up at the big tank of water (1200 gallons) and then just gravity feed out of it.

    • Yep, we’ve done that too. With the pump, though, we get enough pressure to flood the row a little better. We’ve got a big, 500 gallon poly water tank we can use, too, if we need it.

  5. Glad you had a great Mother’s Day. I love days of pantry cooking, too; but mine usually fall
    into the winter months with soups, stews and just good fixings. Hope you have many, many
    more Mother’s Days to celebrate! My gift was beautiful Wave Petunias for my flower boxes.

    • Thank you, Jan. I pretty much can year-around, as I have things to put up. I’ll be starting in on asparagus in a few days.

    • Amen, Robin!! We love our pantry dinners so much. And greenhouse shopping. Will tries to act bored, but I notice he’s always right there, checking out this and that. Stuff that would look good in our yard.

  7. A Mother’s Day with family, flowers and food you don’t have to cook, sounds like a perfect day! The little granddaughter looking up at you in the picture is so sweet, you all look so happy!
    It’s been very hot and dangerously dry here in Nebraska also. Finding a simpler way to water the garden will be a priority for sure…carrying all those buckets is not fun!
    Whether it’s storms, heat, cold or drought, stay safe everyone!

    • No, carrying buckets of water is definitely NOT fun! Been there; done that. No more for me|! It’s still hot and dry. Ninety degrees in May, in Northern Minnesota is crazy!!

  8. Love the family photo of smiles! :) hope the high temps aren’t followed by a freeze! Your onion rows are as dry as mine, which I ve been watering by hand, The winds are not only dryin everything out ,they make sprinklers ineffective. out come the summer drip hoses. In May! seems we are all in a strange weather system these days. so Glad you got a meal OUT nice, even though our home preserved cooked foods are awesome its a treat to eat someone elses eats! have a good day!

    • It’s still hot and dry. Thank God for an easy way to water our LONG onion rows!! It’s all we have in the ground so far. It’s crazy weather!!

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