Sunday, April 4, 2010

The Garden Diaries #1

Today was a great day, above average temps, clear blue skies and nothing official to do until 4 p.m. Most of the snow is gone, the ground is thawed enough to do basic garden clean up. I have decided that I will have a great garden this year, full of thriving flowers and vegetables. So, I carpe diem'd and spent the day in the yard!

The first task was to turn the compost over. On Friday, the compost pile was absolutely vibrating with buzzing bees. I knew the best opportunity to turn the compost would be before it was warm enough for the bees to be active, so headed out about 8:30 this morning, despite the fact that the noisy teenagers that live here kept me up until 2:30 a.m. I was surprised and pleased that the composting is working and we have some actual rich loamy usable compost.

I want to get the wood pile moved, and so Daryl is building me a nice structure for it. Since he was busily building that, I picked task #2: clean up/prune trees in the front yard. I don't think I really set out to give the whole yard the hair cut it received, but am thrilled with the result. I really cleaned up the largest willow, getting rid of all of the suckers and other saplings growing at it's base. Did the same for the other 2, and then tackled the dogwood shrubs, cutting them back significantly and taking out any unrelated shrubs.

I love how the 'forest' handles regrowth - how these shrubs are thriving in the remnants of old dead trees, and how, because they have been protected from the lawn mower, evergreen seedlings can flourish.

There is quite the pile of tree branches for me to deal with, but day one of Garden 2010 was a success. Now if only I could find someone to do the inside the house work for me while I enjoy myself playing in dirt! :-)

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