Back in the Gardens Again

61°f/16°C this morning, rain, continued all day, some localized flooding. Over 2" total, and cold! Temperature dropped to 55°by evening.

It was a foggy ol' morning out there today, and honestly it was a bit of a relief to know it would rain all day and I can take it easy. I pretty much overdid it the last two days, working for hours outside, and I paid for it last evening, getting myself dehyrated and a little feverish and hurting all over. You would think I would know better. So today has been a day of rest and it felt pretty good.

I appreciated all your comments on yesterday's post about the good people I met recently. I agree, we all need to be more aware of the goodness around us in these dark days. It helps me that we do not watch TV, so our news exposure is pretty limited, otherwise I think I would find it overwhelming. But there are so many people out there doing good things in quiet ways, and it helps to remember that. And noticed it.

I have at last planted ALL the plants that were waiting on me. It seems like every time I would be nearly done, lo and behold more plants magically appeared. Okay, not magically, I bought them. But I haven't bought any more since Tuesday, so maybe I am finally done? Probably not.

The Mexican primroses are really taking over in this bed. I pull them up as I need space, them and the lamb's ear which also spreads at will.  That's a random peach tree on the right, no idea how a seed got there but I have let it grow. There used to be a peach tree here about 20 years ago when this was the compost bin and not a garden. So perhaps a seed survived all those years?

These pictures did not load as I had intended so it's a mishmash of veggie and flower gardens. This is the lettuce and spinach. For the first time ever in my life, I have spinach. I have never had luck with it. I think I have found the solution, at last: blood meal. Greens need lots of nitrogen, and apparently I wasn't giving the spinach enough.

Hard to see, but these are the peas on the arbor, doing terribly because this area is too wet for them. I'll pull them up this week, I think, and get the rattlesnake beans planted. The rhubarb is under the arbor and is doing well so far. On the left are the tomatoes, also doing well. I've had to add my bone meal/blood meal/wood ash mix a couple times because of all the rain leaching out the nutrients. These were planted in the no-till area, so we just pulled back the mulch and dug holes for them. It took longer for them to look good, but now they seem to be fine.

Oh, and the big black and white thing is one of those air thingies that car lots use. Granddaughter Sarah sent it because she had heard it would keep predators away from the chickens. Larry figured it would keep crows out of the garden too, and it certainly seems to be working. It's a skeleton, kinda weird but effective.

The herb garden is finally finished, for now.

I used a log from the tree that fell on my van to be a plant stand. You can see part of the tree is still waiting for Larry to finish cutting it up. Maybe one day...

I love this rose, and have had a time keeping it safe from the deer. I thought they had killed it last summer, but here it still is. The bloom turns pink as it ages. I thought it was a climber so planted it by the big wagon wheel, but oops. 

The first canna to bloom looks a little worse for wear for some reason.

The old cast iron pot was painted and had a hole in it, but sure makes a pretty planter.

Back in the veggie garden, this is the cabbage and broccoli, and at the top of the photo is the tiny corn. The broccoli is beginning to head up.

This is hard to see, but it is an area below where I planted a strip of wildflowers three springs ago. Mixed in the grass and weeds are many coreopsis plants, along with a few cosmos, that seeded themselves.

And this is the original row. I planted a row of daffodils here and on a whim scattered the wildflower seeds on top of them. Now, after the daffodils are done, I have all these coreopsis and yarrow. Last year I tilled the area behind them and planted more flower seeds, but due to the drought only a few came up. But this year, we have quite a row of zinnias and other flowers back there, Problem is, there is grass and weeds too. So what to do? try to weed it? leave it to its own devices? Any advice appreciated.

That's about all the news, because that's about all I've been doing. Except today I did run to the store to get some meds and a bandage for Little Boy, who has been limping for a while. 

We left him alone thinking that, as dogs do, he would take care of it himself, but it seemed to be getting worse. It looks like he has got it caught in something and kind of split the area between his paw pads, so it looks pretty sore. He does not like the bandage, but I put lavender oil on it so he won't chew it off and so far that seems to be working.

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