Start of June

Added some new perennials to fill in gaps in the landscaping. Also finished planting all the seeds and veggies for the garden.

Full plan includes all the usual things. We're trying broccoli again this year.

More full-shade native plants for under the linden

The shrubs are two varieties of St. John's Wort. Then two native types of plants.

This spring is being awful

It's been consistently cold and dreary on the weekends. But I finally got the garden beds all marked out today.

After the next round of rain, I'm probably going to try and get some seeds in the ground.

Bed expansion and more yard clean up

May is an exhausting month in the yard. The ground has finally thawed enough to start digging. Which means re-edging and my continual plot to further expand the ingress of the west fence bed into the yard

 I was able to get it out probably another 6" in some spots.

 It also means it's time to rototill the garden beds in preparation for planting seeds

We are also planning to create a new bed around our deck and utilities, largely because the dogs keep digging here. Little Miss Excavator has had to have her paws rinsed off at least 5 times so far this spring.

Finally, I snapped a photo of momma or poppa bird taking off from their nest in search of more material

It'll be May!

The snow seems to have finally, FINALLY stopped. To wit, this was late April:

But a few days later, we discovered this: Bird nest tucked on top of our pergola post! So Spring has truly sprung.

Spring perennial clean up

It's that time of year when I cut down and remove all of the winter garden perennials that we left up for ecological purposes.
Grasses and canes removed from the west fence bed

 Canes removed from the bean bed

 Year 2 raspberry canes removed and trimmed.

 Island bed all ready for its pollinators!

 Buds on the redbud

 Painted lady butterfly on the squill

Garage Organization - 2 years later

In past posts I had outlined my approach to installing organizational storage solutions and why it's a good idea to take things in phases, take an inventory of what you are trying to organize, and so forth.

So. How has this worked out two years in? Remarkably well. These photos were snapped just on an average day. I hadn't done anything to tidy up the garage or do my usual spring purging. As you can see, there is still a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

2018 Summary

Last year really got away from us in terms of updating here, in large measure because we were so busy in the yard! Beyond the yard, G started academy-level soccer and I trained for and competed in a half-marathon. Both of these ate up a good chunk of our summer and early fall.

We were also dealt a bit of a blow with Big Dog - he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, so most of April and May were dedicated to getting him to a stable point. Additionally, we had a very wet spring, which meant we didn't get to plant the vegetable garden until June. The late planting led to a late harvest, much of which was ruined by poor weather again.


April 15th - Snow fall! What the hell?

April 21st - Little Dog, Excavator

April 29th - New telescope!

May 6th - Re-landscaped the front Island Bed with native perennials and annuals

June 16th - I wasn't digging! Must have been some other dog

June 18th - I picked up a new pot, more herbs, 5 bags of top soil, 4 replacement pepper plants. Filled the deck planter box up, planted all the new plants, plus the remaining annuals.

July 22nd - Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed

July 29th - Zucchini bread day

August 4th - The start of burr season

November 3rd - Quote from G: I like harvesting carrots the most because they take grit.

Fall wrap up

Time to tear down the garden.

Weekly roundup - August 13

This weekend was rough. H was gone all night Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday. This meant all of the yard work was going to fall on me.

So, to get a jump on things, Friday night I went out and harvested our garden. At night. In my PJs. H got home a few minutes before I finished and snapped this photo of me with the massive zucchini I found.

This is over 12 lbs of produce. The zucchini counts for 4 of those.

I ended up making a batch of zucchini bread and another 5 jars of pickles (2 of bread and butter spears and 3 more dill). Two more zucchini got sliced up and a lb of beans sauteed for dinners this weekend. I'm thinking a lot of fajitas and stuffed peppers are in our future though. It's also a good thing G loves raw bell peppers now.

Our coneflowers continue to be a pollinator heaven. I snapped this photo of a lovely female eastern tiger swallowtail with one of many honeybees.

Garden roundup

So much going on right now.

We have tons of rose hips nearly ready to be picked.

And the bushes are about to put out another round of blooms.

We were visited by a Painted Lady butterfly today.

Black eyed susans are in full bloom.

BES, coneflowers and miscanthus.

Same, plus the phlox.

The bean bed, now with some midsummer blooms.

We had about half a dozen volunteer tomatillo plants in our corn and pumpkin bed.

One lonely pumpkin.

Sunflowers.

Loaded tomato plants starting to ripen.

This one pepper plant has 20 peppers on it.