Good news was my partner got done very early today, not so good was we had a bit of a race against the rain. All too easy to get snippy then, but fortunately there was very little of that. Broke 70°F today.
- Watered seedlings, started moving the egg carton flats downstairs.
- Early afternoon, I started raking the front lawn area to bring up any thatch from the winter. I noted quite a few spots where flowers have strayed from their original beds. While I was working out front, my partner got home from work. I was pondering if it was time to do a first mow, but he said we should wait out the next rain and see how much more it grew.
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Curious about how much this bounces back. We moved last year’s now-not-dead lavender to a new bed we started where the broccoli and spinach will go. The lavender is a helpful companion to the broccoli because it repels slugs. My partner is starting to understand how much of a difference it can make when you take the time to get not just the turf, but also roots and stones out of a bed, and remarked what a difference it is to work the soil after. When he said that, I just smiled and nodded.
- While he was doing that, I was yanking up a cluster of lady’s thumb I missed last year, and cursing myself for throwing some new weeds in the old weed bin rather than start a new one. What I had put in there was the Oriental Bittersweet I recently dug up from last year’s milkweed patch, and it was still growing happily inside the bin (only been in there a few days). I was worried it might have dropped some bits, so I couldn’t dump the now spent weeds from last year in the compost, and instead had to take the bag out and fill the remaining room with the berry creepers and dandelions we had pulled up so far. After that, I tied the bag off and left it to bake. [Some of the creepers snarled, and I managed to get a dried out thorn break off between my gloves and shirt as we were stuffing them into the bag. It took a bit to get the teeny thing out, but we later managed after we had headed back inside.]
- When I was working on that, it seems some of the hosta that were buried in that same milkweed patch either sent out some really long searching roots to get beyond them, or there may have been another plant that made its way outside of the bed but was smothered by milkweed shade. It’s going to be interesting watching that bed to see what comes up as we move the milkweed this year. I’m still not sure why any hosta are there, as that’s not the shadiest spot. Maybe there used to be something else over there that acted as a mid canopy to keep them in shade.
- Speaking of moving the milkweed, we had hoped to get the splash guards up today to get some of the ones that are already poking up against the house, but ran out of dry time.
- After he finished with the lavender, he had moved on to last year’s kitchen bed to get the stones and roots out from the westernmost side to prep it for one of this year’s three sister spots.
- While he did that, I noticed the clouds were moving in so I dumped out the last bin of front yard rakings into the compost and started moving wood to prop up one of the free vinyl windows we were going to try to make a quick and dirty cold frame out of this year. Since none of the non potato seeds we have been trying to start indoors this year have felt like doing anything, I thought maybe some time out in actual full sun might help things along. We managed to get that done, though I realized I placed the first one in a spot that won’t be seen from my office window, and I didn’t get a picture of it before the rains started in earnest. I have no idea how this will work or not, but I figured it can’t be worse than how much they’re not growing indoors so far. It won’t be long before most of them will be going in the ground last this month anyhoo.
- We did get everything cleaned up before the rains starting in, so at least we didn’t have to wipe much down before storing it.
- I realized just now that I haven’t even glanced at The 2 Hour Garden book in a bit, and I need to see how on track we are with that.
