5-20 update... late

I took this series of shots and poorly spliced them into a panorama on May 20th - I'm just getting around to posting it now.



Our dogwood never did turn pink this year, it bloomed mostly green with a couple of pink flowers here and there. The orange Rhodie is in bloom and I finally went out and took proper pictures of it. We planted some flowers in the pots, and finally picked a plant for the big blue pot on the deck (it's some sort of olive tree, it smells incredible!) Everything has leafed out so the yard is looking very full now. It has also been raining since I took these photos and everything looks very droopy. The good news is, I haven't had to bother setting up the sprinkler system yet this year!

May 19, 2006

Boring title, but I think for this blog it's appropriate, since I'm just updating my garden.

While I was in Montana for my grandmother's funeral, Dan ripped out the old boards from the garden beds and bought cinder blocks. We'd talked about this for a long time, so he decided to do that for me while I was gone. We even started planning to expand the garden this year, plotting out where we might plant fruit trees and such. Then he broke his knee After that disruption, I opted to just go with what we have for a garden space, and we can expand next year. So today I finally got around to getting out to dig up the clay in the garden beds.

I own a pry bar and a pick axe. These are not my heavy landscaping tools... these are tools I use on a regular basis whenever I need to dig anywhere in my yard.



This is my Prize Rock for the year. Three years of digging the same beds with the same garden fork, and I never ran into this beast until now. To show you how big the rock is...




That's me cleaning it off.


Here is a before shot of the garden. This was actually taken when we moved in, so the beds were still full of weeds - but you can see how they were built with boards which rotted out very quickly.


Here are our beds today.

The ground is actually really uneven up there, probably due to the trenches dug by the previous owners for the sprinkler system. I tried to level it as much as possible for the bricks, but it's temporary anyway, so I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it.
The back bed has tomato plants (roma, early girl and the Mystery Heirloom I picked up) and rows of seeds for beets. Mom handed down her pickled beets recipe, so I want to grow a bunch this year.
The front bed is home to two zucchini plants so far. I put up the green wire guides for the pickling cucumbers, so when I find those plants in the store I'll be ready to get them in the ground. I left a lot of room for the squash to grown, I know they're going to take off.


This is a view from the other side of the garden, to show the entrance. The wood on the inside are tree trunks from a couple of small trees Dan removed last month. We have a bunch of trunks and large cedar branches piled up that we figured we would "do something" with in the future (probably line paths in the back of the property)


This is my tomato area. The Prize Rock is now the entrance to the garden, and I plan on painting something cute on it at some point. Maybe. Anyway, there are my tomato cages... hopefully the deer will leave these alone.