What a great weekend

It often happens when Sarah and I
are chatting someone up about how much we love gardening - they ask us "how much time do you spend out there?" We are always temped to answer "not much." Well that would be a lie. I think I logged at least 14 hours this weekend. But boy was it fun. It is so great to have the whole family outside again.

Today I stayed away from the seed packets (for the most part). Before church I took about 40 minutes to attack a weedy section between the two wall gardens along our steps leading up to the house. This section is about 20 inches wide and has never been planted. It is a weed factory. My plan this year is to plant it with a couple rows of that corn that gets to be 9 feet tall. It will look cool from the street and will be a visual and actual fence keeping us from falling off the wall. I weeded the heck out of it, scraped weedy roots out with the big digging fork and spread about 5 buckets each of garden soil and compost. The corn will go in the ground in about a month, so this should be great by then.

We even gardened a little at church this morning. We brought sunflower seeds and planted little pots with the kids at the nursery.

After church we spent the whole rest of the day in the yard as a family. I worked on some deferred garden prep projects. I stayed away from the soil, so I wouldn't be tempted to sow seeds. I am trying to keep to my succession planting plans, which require smaller plantings every couple of weeks. Yesterday's planting is enough for a while. Instead of planting, I attacked the raised herb garden at the edge of porch that Sarah and I have always wanted to tear out.

Next up was the trellis work on the porch for the wisteria. Our wisteria is heading into year #3. We have never had a real plan for it - other than we were looking for it to create some privacy for us. With the carport gone, I had some free trellis from the former grape arbor. I used three sections of trellis to close in two "walls" of our porch. The South wall, which faces some weedy scrubby unclaimed space between our yard and our neighbors, will now be hidden. We also got some privacy screen on 1/2 of the east wall. This is an important screen because it is right where we eat our meals out in the summer, and shields us from our neighbor to the east. Both Sarah and I are super excited about these screens. The porch has always been such a missed opportunity for us. I think these trellis and this more mature wisteria have us heading in the right direction.

We had some more seeds pop up today. Beets are now up in traditional cold frame. Green onions popped up in sq foot garden #1, as did brocoli #2.