May 16, 2024

2024 Garden 5: seedlings and growth!

The veggie garden just grew a lot -- because I put in all my seedlings/starts! It's finally consistently 50 and above at night, so I think they'll be okay. Last year I lost all my tomatoes to a late freeze, so this year I'm appropriately paranoid about paying attention to such things.

I rearranged the bricks of the overall garden to form some steps in the paths between beds. I still don't have enough bricks, but I don't care enough to go buy any. I'm sure I'll find some this summer. (I got all these bricks from a neighbor a few years ago when she redid her front walkway!)

On the far left outside the fence, I put in some perennials that I moved from elsewhere in the yard. The fall leaves had already blown over and piled up there over the winter (handily killing the grass in about a 1-foot-wide strip), and I thought it was a good way to encourage pollinators to the area! So I've got multiples of Shasta daisy, bee balm, rose campion, and okay okay I bought a nice native echinacea and native lobelia cardinal flower. OOH, it's going to look so GOOD and be HUMMING with activity!! I hope.

On the right near the fence, you can see my two Cavendish strawberry beds. I plan to move some of the new runners over to a different bed this summer (start a NEW strawberry bed with fresh plants), and take out these old plants (they do have a life span, after which they don't produce as much) -- making way to rotate other veggies into these two beds next summer.

(Can I just add, it makes me happy to think of Cavendish strawberries because the variety was developed in Nova Scotia and I've been to Cavendish, PEI! So they remind me of the Maritimes, hee hee! A bunch of strawberry varieties originated in Nova Scotia.)

The snap peas are coming along nicely. I don't have much to add other than this year I'm also trying to be better about weeding the weeds right away.

More homegrown goodness after the jump!

May 2, 2024

A puzzling week or so

We've been doing puzzles lately! Thanks to an informal puzzle exchange at yoga (gotta love yoga), I swapped out a couple puzzles. Everyone's been working on them on our big dining table. I love how it becomes this mini-obsession for all of us as we walk by. ^_^

This one was FANTASTIC because we could all claim a little box section to do, put it together, then slowly join them. For once, I didn't mandate that the edge had to be done first. ;)

More happenings after the jump!