Week of May 21st 2012

I couldn’t tell you how many weeks I’m in with my garden at this point.  The plants are growing well and the few strawberries that came off the vine this weekend were delicious. 

What I have found recently though, again, once you start spending more time in your yard it leads you to think about the other things that you need to take care of out there as well.  In the last few weeks we have:

·         put up another fence – one that had been falling down all winter long, and as soon as the weather get’s a smidge warmer I’ll go out and put a sealer on it. 

·         Dug out the center of the lawn and put gravel in for our above ground pool – much to our dogs’ dismay since it’s reduced their bathroom space.

·         Put up the pool and purchased a saltwater filtration system, all of us have some sort of issue with chlorine and it is more eco friendly in the long run.

·         Planted more bulbs in the front yard – hopefully the gardeners won’t pull them up – yes I have a gardener, although recently I’m wondering why – since I seem to do most of the work anyway

·         Harvested the first batch of lavender and hung them to dry

·         Harvested a batch of basil and cilantro – basil immediately went into the processor for Pesto and the cilantro I froze – I read somewhere that it was better than drying for flavor, I’ll let you know if that’s the case.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon fixing the drip system in the front – again from the gardeners, I guess the weed whacker really does a number on those rubber hoses and they apparently don’t care that they’re there.  Well really Steve worked on the drip system after I gently reminded him of the problem by turning it on while he was out front watching me trim back the roses and attempting to trim the maple – I’ll have to do some research on that one since I don’t really know what I’m doing but it seems that the tree is really trying to make itself into an impenetrable bush and I have to figure out what I can trim back without killing it.

So where does that leave us?  Well waiting for plants to grow, I may be able to harvest some spinach this week and replant to get another few batches before the end of the season.  Lot’s of watering and puttering and if I’m really smart about the whole thing I’ll start with a plan of attack so that my wanderings in the yard actually lead to something productive as opposed to small projects here and there that help but don’t actually look like I’ve done anything at all. 

Until next time.