Taking a break from work

Sadly, that means I'm taking a break from the hard labor of this weekend and not the "work" that I actually get paid for.  We, again, worked our booties off this weekend.  Saturday, after Dave and I ran and walked respectively, we spent the entire day doing yard work.  He ended up planting some hostas and impatiens around the huge tree in our front yard with its new plant bed.  We zigzagged the hostas and planted the impatiens at regular intervals throughout.  It looks fantastic!  We even had several neighbs come by and give a thumbs up!

I spent most of the day planting the rest of the garden.  I learned a lot from last year's garden disasters and things are going much better now.  We actually have spinach---which means I didn't pull up the spinach plants thinking they were weeds like I did last year.  Ditto on the rainbow chard.  The "mesclin" (essentially a mix of baby greens) is doing wonderfully, but I'm wondering when I should start thinning them, and I'm thinking about now.  The radishes are doing the best of anybody thus far.  And that is because I did thin them and they have room to grow.  We have sugar snap peas and english peas coming up and I'm not sure I should trellis them.  The Burpee seed pkgs didn't say to, but how can they grow to 3 feet without a trellis? We have beets, carrots and leeks sprouting up, too.  I'm not too sure about the carrots though.  They'll get this year and then one more try next year and if they don't straighten up and fly right, those bad boys are getting tossed from the garden.

So that's the stuff I had already planted in the garden.  On Saturday, I added 6 tomato plants (one each of a certain kind, I'm going to keep track of who does well and who doesn't).  We kept the romas, which were obscenely productive last year---tomato sluts---and the yellow ones which were simply pretty and sweet.  The other 4 plants may or may not be what we planted last year, but I thought I'd try out some different ones.  I also planted 3 cucumber plants, bush plants instead of vines.  We'll see if they do better.  I wanted to also plant bush zucchini, but I'm not sure I did.  I had missed the opportunity to plant onion bulbs, so instead I found some onion plants and planted those.  Pole beans (odd southern snap/green beans) went in on Saturday and okra (which had soaked over night) went in on Sunday. 

We also went wild on the herbs this year, and we bought several perennial herbs, which may make this herb garden less work than I thought.  In addition to the sage, thyme, tarragon, oregano (annual) and parsley (annual), we also bought curry!  I have no idea how to use that one, but it smells so amazingly wonderful, we had to get it!!  In fact, we got three plants of fresh curry and planted two of them in our new experimental green perennial garden near the drive way.  We decided to try our hand at a spot where we have an odd plant bed actually *in* the driveway that the landcape architect wanted us to pave over.  We've left it there, and over the winter put annuals in it.  That didn't really work, so now we're experimenting with a green perennial garden.  We bought some humongous elephant's ear bulbs from Myers Park Hardware and Nursery  and have put some lamb's ear in front of it.  It's going to be  a very texturized green garden which I hope will look nice!  It will be a nice compliment to the hydrangeas we've just planted close by.

I also planted two hanging baskets and three pots full of impatients and pretty annual greenery.

So that was Saturday.....

Sunday we finished new family room and moved furniture in.  It looks good, but unfortunately, we've got to crowd in the desk in there until the office is finished in the garage.  I also spread pine out for the scotchbroom beds in the back.  And we cleaned a wee bit. 

It was a honkin' busy weekend.  But I think we've passed the hump as far as yard work goes.  There are a few more things left to do....like finish moving the pile of dirt from the driveway, planting peppers and eggplants, finish planting the lamb's ear, finish spreading pine, and weeding.  But overall, the spring landscaping is done. 

Now to focus on writing. 

10:08:15 AM