To Build a Table

My wife wanted a picnic table so we could spend some time eating out-doors this year. I figured it would be cheaper and more fun to build one than to buy one. We ended up using This Old House's plan, and were very pleased with the results:

This is just about my favorite time of year in the yard. Those purple flowers in the background migrated over the fence from where my neighbor planted them. They were blooming when we first bought the house and I've mowed around them ever since.

It was a different purple flower that helped me pick where to place the table.  My wife wanted it in a shady place. I recently finished reading Nancy Gift's A Weed by Any Other Name, where I learned that violets are a shade-loving "weed" and can tell you what parts of your yard or garden would be good for shade tolerant plantings. Violets have always been one of my favorite "weeds."  There's a nice one coming up in my side garden:

So, after my first mowing of the year, the violets under the grass were revealed. I searched the yard and picked out the area that had the highest concentration of them and that's where we've placed the picnic table. It's not the most shaded spot right now, but the tree it's under is not yet fully leaved, so it should be great by the time it starts to get really hot outside.

Inheritance, part two

Our house also came with a lot of tulips!

First harvest

This past week, I harvested some of what over-wintered in the garden. I was clearing out some space for the second round of greens and herbs and decided to pull everything useful from that area. I also had to cut back the rosemary to get full access.

The rosemary is in the bottom of the basket, with parsley and wild garlic on top. Just to the left, that's parsley root. I haven't tried it yet, but it's supposed to be edible.

While weeding the area, I came across these carrot volunteers and left them to grow:

 It won't be long until I'm harvesting some micro greens, when I thin my bok choy and arugula:

Inheritance, part one

When we bought our house, it came with a number of beautiful plants. The landscaping wasn't perfect and was starting to get a little out of control, but there are still some elements of real beauty, especially in the early spring.

The heavenly bamboo actually adds a little color all winter long and is one of the most interesting things to look at when everything else is dead. We have two of these in our yard and two more just over the property line out back.

I just missed the peak color on the forsythia. It's bright yellow flowers are always a good indicator of when to get the cool-weather vegetables planted. As the leaves start to come in, the yellow gives way to green. I'm planning on trying to clone forsythia this year to work toward having it as a hedge around the side of our back yard.

We have three of these pretty pink-flowered bushes. After they finish flowering, I'll be cutting them way back.

This is one of my favorites. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think either a gardenia or a camellia. The flowers are just beautiful and smell nice, too.

I think the periwinkle might be my wife's favorite. It's growing as a ground-cover along the side and the front of the house. Right now, I'm allowing it to come into the side garden a little, but I'll be cutting it back when it's time to plant out my tomatoes.

I'm sure this wasn't intentionally left for us when we bought the house, but I really do love this purple deadnettle that's growing as a weed in our yard, so I had to get a picture before I mowed for the first time this weekend.

Speaking of beautiful weeds: I don't know what this is, but I took a picture of it before mowing as well.

Sprouts in the Greenhouse!

Sprouts!

Things are starting to come up in my greenhouse! The spinach on the left side came up first and is already developing its first true leaves. The line of cumin just to the right of the spinach came up next, followed by the tomatillo just to the right of center. As of yesterday, at least one of everything else has sprouted as well!

New Toys!

My new garden knives arrived today!

Now, I get to go outside and see if the dirt's dried off enough to work with.

Planting in the Rain

This weekend was a bit of an experiment for me. I had some spare time and I really wanted to get some seeds in the ground. Unfortunately, it was raining. In the past I've had some success with transplanting seedlings out in a light rain. Cloud cover helps reduce the shock to the plant and, if the soil has been well-worked ahead of time, this can work well. Seeds appear to be a different story. For starters, the soil wasn't worked as well as I would like. Since our soil has a lot of clay, it was clumping and this made appropriate planting depth difficult to impossible. A more serious problem, though, was the handling of the seeds themselves. They were getting wet as I tried to spread them and they were sticking to each other and to my fingers. Moisture also got into my seed envelopes and I had to air them out or a while afterwards. Well, at least I learned something!

The ground is still too wet to work. Maybe by tomorrow or the next day I'll be able to get the rest of the bed planted. Hopefully, my new hori hori knives will arrive in the mean time!