Contents
Everything at Once
May arrived without apology. One week everything was tentative seedlings and the next the beds were overcrowded, the courgettes were outpacing everything, and the daily walk around the garden had turned into a negotiation.
This is the overwhelm that winter planning quietly forgets. You read the seed packets in January with optimism; in May you find yourself thinning plants at dusk, wondering if you overdid the lettuce.
The answer, always, is yes. But the thinnings made a fine salad.
Rain and Drainage
We had five consecutive days of rain in the second week — not unusual for May but heavier than the forecast suggested. The new swale on the north slope held up well, directing water away from the beds and into the storage tank that feeds the drip irrigation. The investment in that earthworks last autumn paid for itself in a single wet week.
One raised bed showed standing water by day three. I’ve marked it for improvement — the base needs better drainage material before autumn planting.
The First Outdoor Harvests
The broad beans came in mid-month, earlier than last year. We picked them small and sweet, barely bothering to skin them. Radishes, spring onions, lettuces — the kitchen is no longer dependent on the store cupboard. This transition, from preserved to fresh, is one of the year’s small ceremonies.
First strawberries appeared on the 22nd. We ate them standing in the garden, still warm from the sun.
Tools and the Repair Café
The repair café session this month drew the largest crowd yet — nineteen people. A local school brought four students who wanted to learn basic electronics. We fixed a sewing machine that had seized after years in a damp shed, and someone brought in a beloved analogue camera that needed the shutter mechanism cleaned.
The camera repair took the whole session and wasn’t fully finished, but the owner returned the following week with coffee and a promise to bring prints once they’d run a roll of film through it.
This is the part that doesn’t fit neatly into repair statistics: the stories that come with broken things.
Reading
- “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer — I’ve been circling this book for a long time and finally committed. Her writing on reciprocity between plants and people is changing how I walk through the garden.
- Back issues of a small permaculture journal — practical notes on water management and soil testing, less lyrical but directly useful this month.
Energy in May
The solar system is performing well. Daily production is consistently above household demand, and we’ve started directing surplus into heating water. The batteries reach full charge by noon on most days, which raises a question I’m thinking through: what to do with surplus energy that can’t easily be stored or shared.
It’s a good problem to have. But it is a problem worth thinking about.
What’s Next
June will bring the longest days, the first tomatoes ripening under the polytunnel, and almost certainly a stretch of heat that will test the water management. I also want to finish the longer piece on energy sufficiency — the notes have been accumulating for months.
For now, the garden is making most of the decisions.