Millions of tiny plants in my compost top dressing

I think I may have used my compost prematurely. I thought once it looked and smelled 'dirt like' it would be ready. I have millions of little fine clumps of seedlings and oodles of tomatoes coming up in the gardens where I spread the compost. Is this typical? I never did get the heat that people speak of.

Rhubarb about four feet across

Four foot rhubarb...far cry from last years plant.

Fortex beans in the hot sun today.

One remaining raspberry has some new growth.

Compost for my dying raspberries.

Empty compost bin. You were right Mark. Patience.

My raspberries look awful. They have slowly turned brown. I've been cutting back the dying bits hoping they would shoot out some nice new green growth. No such luck, and now I have a raspberry plant with a few stalks, a few dead leaves with just a blush of green on one leaf. The other is dying really fast. It looked good, set some raspberries and suddenly started turning brown as well.

One almost dead raspberry

The other very dead raspberry

My gold raspberry is going gangbusters, so I really don't understand. I wrote to Marigold Nursery and she suggested that I feed them and maybe they will send up some new growth. Sounds good to me. So me, being me, I gave them a heck of a treatment today. I never do anything half-assed. First I mixed up a batch of my wonderful Seawood Liquid. Watered it in well. Then I threw some of my dry fertilizer around each plant. It takes about a month to break down, so it's for the future. Then I set about doing a lot of weeding and general puttering around the yard. I was out all day. After dinner I went outside to putter some more, and thought, I wonder if I can get some compost out of bin one. I started digging around in it and found that there was a LOT of useable compost. I used my pitchfork to sift it a bit (I need to make a compost screen...stat) and started to spread it in the berry bed. There was so much that I put about 3-4 inches in it and brought the soil level back up flush with the bed. I had enough compost to thickly spread around the asparagus plants and the rest of that bed. I put the uncomposted bits in bin two and called it a day. A job well done. I'm achy but satisfied. I got a small handful of strawberries to put on a bit of ice cream tonight. I love berries. Nature's perfectly delicious food.

The berry bed doesn't look bad from a distance.

Glass art in the strawberry patch.

Everyone knows I love whimsy. These are the lastest creation of Kitras Art Glass in Ontario. I brought a few into the store just to check them out. I LOVE them and grabbed three for my garden. They are perfect.
Not quite a Dale Chihuly installation, but perfect for me.

Garlic Scape Pesto is every bit as good as they say

My garlic patch suddenly scaped. The garlic seed was given to me last August by garden guru Jim, so I didn't know if they were hard or soft neck. The three different types he gave me were all hard neck so I got lots of scapes. I had already decided to make pesto, so I was ready to go. Here is the recipe. I took liberties with the recipe. I didn't measure anything and just kept adding olive oil until it tasted right. Once it tasted right, I helped myself to several teaspoons. Yummmm.

Garlic Scape Pesto
Ingredients:
1 cup of garlic scapes, top flowery part removed, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1/3 cup of pine nuts
3/4 cup of olive oil 
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese 
1/2 teaspoon of salt 
black pepper to taste 
Preparation:
Place scapes and pine nuts in the bowl of a food processor and buzz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmesan to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. For 1/2 pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.