Our spring was very cold for awhile, and then the last couple weeks it’s been super hot. It was 85 degrees yesterday and humid. Today it’s in the 40s. Tomorrow it is supposed to warm back up. It gets hard to plan your garden and planting when you’re not sure if the weather is going to cooperate. Here where we are situated, I follow a couple of different Last Frost dates – one for Houghton, Michigan, and one for Marquette (they are each about an hour or two away from me, I’m in the middle). According to my source, these two towns which are only a couple hours away from one another, are about 2 weeks different in terms of last frost date. One is mid May, one is late May. Then our weather can vary from day to day. It can be really hot and make you think “oh, I can plant those tomatoes” and then we get frost. Or even snow! I saw we might get some slight snow / rain showers in a couple days. But the temps shouldn’t be too cold where I’m that worried about us getting it. Anyway, I planted the last bits of my garden this weekend (before I saw that snow prediction). If I have to cover things, I will. I do have one or two things still waiting in the house – ginger, which can’t take ANY cold at all, and some gourds I’m waiting to sprout.
Here are some updated pictures of our gardens the last couple of weeks:
My cottage garden – we are putting in stones around all the paths. I will be sprinkling cayenne pepper if we get something digging up stones like we did last year. (We had something digging for grubs in the garden – a skunk or groundhog, probably.) 
Here is the main Herb garden portion of the Cottage Garden. On the left I’m putting more perennial herbs, and the right is annuals. 
Another view of the cottage garden. 
My first Asparagus harvest! I just put the bed in last year so these were the first I have gotten. 
Here is a view of the main garden. We are using landscape fabric this year to attempt to thwart weeds. It is pretty much all planted in this pic. On the left (from the back) are: tomatoes, then carrots, then sunflowers, leeks, cucumbers and zucchini. The right (from the back) are tomatoes, onions, sunflowers, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, greens/broccoli. 
Here is a side view picture of the garden, only a few things were in in this picture (pic courtesy my husband Elton). 
Our greenhouse before we put the outer plastic up for the year (photo taken by my husband Elton) 
Here is inside the greenhouse. We got the plastic cover up yesterday and then I planted these all inside. On the left are peppers galore (bell and various hot peppers, and paprika) and the right are ground cherries, eggplant, and then a space in front for my ginger. 
Here is our moon garden. We had planned it last year, and I got seeds pretty late – nothing had come up. So this year I started seeds inside and we planted them out last weekend. It’s still doing pretty well. It’s mostly white flowers (to reflect moonlight – the “moon garden”) but I put some black pansies in, and black hollyhocks too (although hollyhocks don’t flower their first year). 
Here you can see the whimsical makeshift trellises we put in for our moon garden. I have white black-eyed susan vines to climb up these. 
Here is my scarecrow / garden guardian. Her name is Valeria. I figured the garden could use the protection (to keep the grub-digger/stone-messer-uppers away). I made her body from a gourd I grew last year and other things from outside, to tie her to the land that she is protecting. 
Here is Valerian (on the left) and my Stinging Nettles patch. These are in the back portion of my cottage garden. The Valerian flowers smell really good when they bloom.
The garden is growing and our spring is definitely under way. Hopefully the weather keeps cooperating.
My tiny u.p. farm 