The Garden is Now Open

Ladies and Gentlemen, for the first time in 2017, I am please to welcome you to the tornado path...um...I mean, our garden plot...


Yeaaaaah, so all those lovely, record-breaking warm days in February and what did we do?! Get sick, work in our home gardens, travel, do a whole bunch of other stuff that kept us from getting to the garden plot for clean-up...

But this week we made it.

And it was an ever-lovin' mess!!!


We walked up and are both like, "whoa."

"Okaaaaay, then. This is ... special!"

The tall bamboo poles with string around them to keep the deer out are completely fallen down, there are weeds growing out of every (I mean every) crack and hole in the weed barrier, trellises and poles and such all strewn around.

Pretty sure we were vandalized...


...by wind, rain and deer.

Last fall we very thoroughly removed all of the compost, dug down, re-sized, and placed large paving stones (recycled from my yard at home, thank you very much) before piling the compost back on. All in the efforts to minimize weed growth.
Weeeeell, here's how it looks...

 Weeds were growing out of the bottom just like in previous years. Alas. We tried.

(Typically at home I lay the weeds out to dry out in the sun before putting them in my compost; I've also read that weeds, especially those that have gone to seed, should be put in a plastic bag and left out in the sun to bake for a month or so to make sure all seeding has died. Well, here at the garden plot, we're far too lazy for that!)

All in all, just so much craziness going on!

So we spent a whole 45 minutes or so doing some of the minimal clean-up we had time for to get it a little less like a bomb site.
Our highest priority, though, was to get seeds in the ground!

Hey remember that post-it on which you wrote "SEEDS" and stuck to your cell phone knowing you'd see it and remember to bring the seeds with you on the day we were going out to the garden? Yeaaaah, not so much. Grrrr.

Thankfully partner had a few new seed packets (and hence we discovered that we will have 5 varieties of lettuce...ok, more, actually, because 1 of them is its own variety pack!) and so we cleaned out the disastrous little bed and got in a few rows of lettuce.
Yay! Progress!
We strung bamboo back up and cleaned out the smallest possible bed!


Yeah, so our work's cut out for us, that's for sure.

Well, at least a little does go a long way when it started as THAT much of a disaster!

And with that, the garden is open once again!! So excited for another year!
(And this year we will definitely know what we're doing and have it down! ;-D)

Happy Wednesday...

I'm choosing to ignore that it's like 23 degrees outside and there is a few inches of snow on the ground and will instead just say...

My beautiful first daffodils before they were pummeled. 

Spring. Not Spring.

You lie. You tease! I'm coming for you!!!

Yeees, after my exuberant "It's SPRIIIIIIING!!!!" ...well it got down to the teens over the weekend!

Then it got warm; today it's 65 and sunny.
Tomorrow it will get down to 17 again.

Well that's just depressing.

I was going out of town and so before I left, I figured my spring bulbs are used to coming up with potentially snow, so they'll be fine; the knock-out roses that had started putting out leaves bloom multiple times throughout the spring and summer, so even if this first one kills them off, hopefully they'll come back; so all that I was strongly worried about my hydrangea's poor little bitty leaves.

My coworker suggested piling it with leaves as insulation. Welp, worth a try.
So I did.

And I'm certain that my neighbors think I'm insane ("Honeeeeeey? Remember all the leaves she raked and then dragged to the corner on a giant piece of cardboard instead of a tarp because her husband stole the tarp for another project and then she left them there instead of bagging them up like a normal person? Yeah, well now she's dragging them back up to the flower bed where she got them.    How should I know?!   Shoot, duck, I think she saw us!")

However, upon returning home, I was pleased to see that nothing really had a problem. The rose leaves still look fine (my coworker's theory is that they're too small and didn't catch as much wind...?), the hydrangea leaves appear to have survived with minimal "burn" (we'll say it's because of my incredible foresight and expert gardening care), and not only are the crocuses back bobbing their happy little heads in the sun, but the tulips were exploding out of the ground! (I always have that "Oh yeah, I planted them there too!" moment when these bulbs come up!)

"We survived!! Go us!"

So, we shall see what this longer streak of cold temps this weekend and next week does. :-/   Come on, little guys, make it past this and we can really have a party!


In other news...


THE SEEDS ARE PLANTED!!!!!

Yeah, I'm sorry, but how cute are those?!
Puttin' the good ol' only-way-to-garden-in-a-1-bedroom-apartment Aerogarden to use!

With room for more in a few weeks!

So excited!!! 

(Put them out last night and husband already reminded me that I must be a very diligent little watering elf. I know, I know! I try...I really do!!)