Finally, finally, FINALLY! I get to play in my yard, clean out my beds and plant my vegetable garden! Though we are nearly a month away from the last frost, the days are beginning to show some promise AND warmth. My kids played outside all afternoon on Saturday with their Daddy, flying kites and drawing on the driveway. And me! Well, I spent the afternoon at Lowes and 47 other places looking for compost.
Lowes made me happy though. They had some veggie starts and that was what I was ready to see! I finished getting the lumber and materials for my square foot gardens and after 3 trips through the check out line and to the car, I was done with them! This square foot gardening thing really does show incredible promise, but I'm a by-the-book (this book) kinda gal so when they say get five kinds of compost, that's what I'm going to do. Fortunately, I only have to do this once. I plan to start composting myself, too. So off to Home Depot, Menards, Meijer, Wal-Mart, etc. For some strange reason, all the garden centers around here aren't open yet. What's with THAT! I only found three types so far and two may be the same because one is not labeled. So I have cow, mushroom, and mystery compost. Doesn't that just thrill you to pieces?!!
I know I saw "worm casing" compost somewhere before--I think it was Sam's Club, so I'll head there in the next couple of days. I don't know what it is about this area, but they are all so IN to cow manure. It's just everywhere. I never thought I'd be interested in such things, but you know...a girl's gotta do, what a girl's gotta do. And this girl needs to plant vegetables for her family--if I don't self-destruct.
Ah! The joys of gardening! I've always loved flower gardening. Learning bit by bit, year after year. It's all great until about mid-July when it gets so stinkin' hot you'd rather be inside, and definitely NOT out weeding. My little Daffodils are up so far--nothing else. The pussy willow did fully puff out and the puffs are starting to "flower", or turn bright yellow. Can you tell I know nothing about these things?! . It's kind of a neat plant. I'm still waiting for my Forsythia though. The buds look good.
We have a weird bird visitor too. It keeps crashing into our windows trying to get in. When it's not crashing, it just hangs out on the screens. I think it likes us. Nothing we do seems to affect it. I haven't figured out what it is yet, so we get to do a little digging today. One day, I hope all these things will be our common knowledge. Until then, we'll just use the Field Guides!
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3 comments:
Isn't it so nice to have the sun shining again...FINALLY?!? :)
I'm so encouraged by the flowers that are already blooming and the promise of so many more. And I've barely begun thinking about my vegetable garden.
Your pussy willows look great. El was learning about them since she memorized the pussy willow poem. I'll have to let her look at your pictures.
I have a funny story about my compost pile. I used three pallets to create a box to hold our garden goodies. It worked great, until I burned the whole thing up!
We had a garbage barrel near the pile and I was burning our bills. A friend stopped by. I forgot about it. When we went outside the whole thing was in flames. There was nothing left of the pallets. I'm so glad there was nothing around to catch fire. My neighbor just laughed at me. When was he going to tell me I had a huge fire? Ah!
We loved square foot gardening and had great results with the climbing cucumbers and tomatoes. Love your pussy willows! I haven't had those since I lived in Ohio.
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