May House Log

Many Things Are Happening!

Jun 05, 2026

House Logs are an offshoot of my Nature Log and We Make a Home series, created with the intention to record the beauty and seasons during (at least) our first year living on our new piece of land! I’ll be sharing photo essays about each month, and all the photos will be taken at/in our home and on our land as a way to observe and appreciate this new-to-us place. It will cover explorations both wild and domestic.

While I can barely believe it, since I skipped last month’s house log, the last time I wrote to you in this format, there was snow on the ground. I owe you so many updates! First, I will say, our tulips and daffs did not disappoint.

The trees got their leaves back, we built a garden for the year.

Alfie & I hang out in the garden all day now

Many spring ephemerals have gone to seed.

I apologize for the truncated version of the season change, but the real focus today is everything going on in the garden.

In addition to all the seeds we started in mid-March, we went to a lot of plant nurseries, and we picked up some perennials that are now already flowering. Like the Rosa Rugosa! It has the most heavenly scent. We have also made our home home again to some natives: an elderberry bush, an American plum, columbine, and New England aster.

We planted the majority of our seedlings and seeds on May 18. But, we direct sowed snap peas exactly one month earlier, on April 18. Today they are about thigh-high, and sure to be the first veggie we snack on from the garden.

Snap peas on May 18, after one month of growing

We have a couple other plants that took off early too: chamomile, second-year chives, and herbs like cilantro and parsley. Those things are all ready for harvest now! I drank a cup of fresh chamomile tea in the sun, and I am hoping to dry a big supply this year.

But the big planting day was special. All the seedlings (except tomatoes) went in the ground. That included basil, onions, calendula, echinacea, anise, and lemon balm. Then we direct seeded everything else, including over a dozen kinds of heirloom beans, which I have been dreaming about all winter.

I actually didn’t like beans before I met Emilio, but his black bean recipe changed my mind, and when we moved to the Hudson Valley and started buying dried beans from local farms, I became obsessed with heirloom beans.

They are beautiful, delicious, and if we manage to get a good crop, the ultimate storage food. They’re also easy to cook and eat—they can be any flavor, a part of any dish. This year, I mostly chose them for look and variety, so I look forward to doing a taste test and finding our favorites. We’re also working on a video showing all the varieties we planted!

Beans are quite magnificent when they germinate too, their perfect halves splitting to reveal a pair of leaves.

We soon noticed that our garden beds were full of volunteer mystery plants, which we have since deduced must be some kind of squash or cucumber from our compost. We have a worm compost that we use for kitchen scraps, and I can’t think of any other way these many mystery plants could have popped up.

We picked many of them, but left a couple to try and solve the mystery.

I am quite proud of our marshmallow plants, which we successfully cold stratified and shepherded into the ground.

We also seeded zinnias, cosmos, cantaloupe, zucchini, squash, cucumber, radishes, and probably some other things I am forgetting.

Our tomatoes are giant and healthy and beyond ready to go into the ground. We have dahlias from seed too, and a few tubers, waiting for the hot days (and warmer nights). I must admit we have too many tomato seedlings, but we’ll be planting as many as we can.