The Busy Month

Hmphf...a month has passed since my last blog post.

All I can say is spring and I have a love-hate relationship, and while I relish the newness and warmness of spring, it has a tendency to put this gardening girl into a whirr of activity to keep up.  I have to beat the heat, so all the hard labor gardening projects need to be completed before June!

Since my last post:

• I acquired a small quantity of retaining wall blocks (40 lbs each) and built another raised bed for warm season vegetables.  Yes, yes...that would be in addition to the two existing 20' beds already built for vegetables.  Sharing vegetables is one of the ways I try to be a good neighbor, and we often have much to share.
• I (tried) to solve a drainage problem by diverting water to a little runnel and then built up a short wall around it for asparagus.  The little canal has been filled in with good earth, and one year old asparagus stock was planted on April 1.  Asparagus does not start producing until it is 3 years old, but we are looking forward to that time!
• The early spring crops in the two main vegetable garden rows were also planted April 1.  This year I am trying broccoli, and so far so good!  It rained for a solid week at the start of May and has been cool and overcast ever since, so my plants are doing marvelous.  I anticipate a BUMPER crop of kale again--it is hardy vegetable even at 2" tall. 
• Our backyard is overflowing with landscape rock of the 1-2" variety, but also has an abundance of interesting boulder-size geological specimens.  I picked the most interesting ones and build another rock wall raised bed for a perennial flower garden, which is something I have hoped to plant for years.  It is in!  I selected a dozen or so of the sun-loving, long-blooming types, and hope to attract many a butterfly.
• Oh, and I forgot to mention that we brought in 2 yards of good garden earth for all the new planting beds, and another yard of well-mellowed compost for the existing garden beds.  One wheelbarrow full at a time...
• Dallin and I worked for the better part of two weeks with a pick axe at intervals (long enough to rest sore muscles) on the LAST tree stump in the yard.  At long last, the Siberian Elm stump has been removed.  Please folks, don't ever plant such a tree in your yard, especially 10" from your AC unit!
• I dug a foundation for a shed, then we brought in a yard of road fill, and then we laid concrete slabs on top the road fill, and then we built a shed.  
• We built a shed--it really needs its own bullet point.  Dallin hopes to never, ever, ever do that again.  It took 8 hours--enough said.  
• And finally, we found a very cheap play fort on Craigslist, we rented a U-haul to pick it up, we mended the poor broken thing, made a "kid zone" area and are currently in process of assembling it.  It is still in need of a several more repairs, but it much more stable and play worthy now.

Whew.  That was my month.  I have pictures, and good arm muscles. 

Perennial flower garden bed with rock wall (to the right of our back door).

Raised garden bed: future home of warm season vegetables (to the left of our back door).

Foundation for the garden shed.

Garden shed in process.