I am in between visits from in-laws. Visit was good, I think. It is good for grandparents to spend time with their grandchildren, especially in view of health problems.

I focused the last week on my garden(s) (what am I talking about??? I have a postage stamp and three window boxes ...). In the back, I put the Japanese Maple in. It looks gorgeous. I still need to thin out the canopy a bit. I put in Sweet Autumn Clematis to keep the other Clematis company. They can mingle and we will have some nice bloom in the fall. General cleaning-up, put in some Impatients to brighten things up a bit. And I moved the Bleeding heart that had gotten so enormous it was crowding everything else.
I took the pansies and primrose out of the window boxes and planted them under the blueberry bushes. You never know, we might still get some mileage out of them. For me geraniums are the quintessential window box flower but since they don't get enough sun here, they actually never look really good. So this year I did something drastically different (and ironically, this was the first year I managed to overwinter my Geraniums). I assembled some houseplants that can't stop multiplying and added some colorful coleus. (I will post a picture once they have filled in a bit). Basically, there is Sweet Potatoe Vine and Wandering Jew trailing down the front, two different types of coleus and a polka-dot plant in the middle, along with a white Impatients (some flowers, I figured), and in the back there is a spider plant and a fern. It looks pretty good with unusual contrast of foilage.
I put my tomatoes and peppers on the roof and a few herbs and other things. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, I worked for five hours climbing up and down that ladder with my backpack loaded up with plants and compost. I thought my back would break. The potting soil I had used last year had not drained very well so I really needed to refresh the pots with lots of Perlite and compost.

And speaking of compost, I had to move that around too, because my bins were full. Again. I wish I had room for a third bin.

So much for was my gardening craziness. I also repotted most of the houseplants and put the geraniums in pots on the steps. I will post pictures eventually. The bizarre thing is that while I dig around in the little dirt I have, all around me neighbors are putting in paving and building walls and covering up that last bit of dirt as if it were the evil enemy. Oh well.

I still have to do the tree-pit in the front. That's the toughest habitat. Dogs, people, cars, salt in the winter. Whenever I have an extra plant that looks tough I put it in there. Last fall I put in a hosta and it came up this spring. Then someone actually dug it up and took off with it. I hope it found a good home.

Culinary Stuff

I delegated most of the cooking this week to my spouse. Being cooked for is nice. I could get used to it. We went out once to Little Giant again. I had wild asparagus for the first time. It was amazing. Pencil-thin with relatively large tips. Very green and fresh tasting. Apparently some guy from Vermont drives around and sells it to people in the know. I don't think he will be coming by my house, though. The other noteworthy thing I had there was a Mojito with rum they had spiced themselves. I managed to coax the ingredients out of the waitress. Speaking of drinks we were at a BBQ today and I had excellent home-made beer. It was seriously good beer. Almost makes we want to start brewing. But my neighbor said he had been tinkering around for four years and pouring a lot down the drain. Hmm, maybe I can trade some canned goods? Or some spiced rum?  11:05:17 PM