Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Crazy + Spring

GUESS WHAT? It’s spring.

GUESS WHAT ELSE? I am crazy.

Spring + Crazy =

20120414_weeds, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
Yeah, GOT to do something about all those WEEDS…

20120414_afterweeds, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
Ah, that’s better…

20120414_bricks, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
Argh, my TOE! How long are these things going to SIT here, anyway? Been, what, like, three YEARS now or something?!?!

20120414_afterweeds, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
HMMMMMMMM…

20120414_box, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
THERE you go!

This is what spring tends to look like around here; as we were building a second, smaller box with (almost all) of the remaining bricks, I asked the husband (rhetorically, since I already knew the answer) if All This would ever be, you know, done. Would I ever, ever have a “finished” yard?

He, of course, responded by giving me A Look, laughing, and saying, “Um, no. You will never stop tweaking and fiddling around with stuff out here.”

Sigh. He’s undoubtedly right. But I have to say, my empire is beginning to resign itself to being under my rule again. We have artichokes.

20120414_big_artie, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

And cherries starting to form.

20120414_raniers, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

And baby apples.

20120414_apples, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

Brussel sprouts (with bonus potato, because of course a potato plant came up).

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

Beets and bell peppers and a few stray carrots.

20120414_add_bells, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

And even a few wheat stalks that survived the Bird Invasion of Just After Planting Time.

20120414_wheat, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

20120414_wheat, Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

I planted some corn and pumpkin among the wheat, and bordered the whole bed with yellow onion sets; later, I’ll drop some scarlet runner beans among the corn and let them climb in and around the stalks.

There are twenty-four roma plants in the back bed, with basil planted all around them, and four Blue Nile potato bushes in the apparently now Forever Blue Nile Potato Bed. (There is also what I’m pretty sure is another Blue Nile bush growing in the compost bin. Heh. Persistent little dickens, ain’t they?!) Four cucumbers in the front box. Two container zucchini flanking the sliding glass door. Peas all around the Found Object, with a curving of pak choi around it.

There are bush cherries coming to go along the sunny back fence, and a morel habitat to take up residence along the dark-side side fence…we’ve already been finding a few morels back there for the last few years (I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!), so I figured since they obviously already like it back there, we’d go ahead and spore the dickens out of it and see what happens.

The blackberries have been gently tied up to their new trellis. The second brick-box is full of butternut squash (which I’m going to encourage up a tripod as it begins to vine and get all crazy like it always does), and the first one shown above is being held for the strawberries that are on the way. Stuben yellow eyed beans are all around the bean towers, soon to be climbing up the strings in determined vines.

Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll finish scraping the old mulch from the big patch around the play structure, and drop the watermelons into the back part, and okra and spinach around it.

A small army of heirloom tomatoes are waiting for their enormous pots and why-are-these-so-complicated cages.

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

There are also jalapenos, and lettuce, and a tremendous variety of herbs and flowers waiting to be planted. A few pots of ginger to be started. More potatoes to be planted.

Oh. And then, something will have to be created with these.

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App

Ah, Freecycle, how I love thee…

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
About 27 retaining wall blocks worth, at the moment…I’m thinking Herb Garden, y’all…!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I used about 100 of those retaining wall things (they might have been the smaller size) to make an herb spiral! It's pretty, and it's supposed to create all sorts of microclimates for your herbs, but I'm pretty sure they would do just as well in a plain ole raised bed.

CeltChick said...

I'm exhausted just reading all this! I've considered raised beds many times; I may have to find a local source of used bricks...

Steph B said...

Seriously, what would it cost me to get you to South Carolina in...oh...August? I could keep you sooooooo busy! You're a wild woman.