No more groundhogs, either. I'm sticking with this guy for my first sign of spring:
think I need some new gloves?
It was 90º here every day last week. Yes, I just said it.
Look at that temp, just beginning to cool down to 85º at 7:30 pm!
We had a lot of work to pack into the past week. We went from cold and rain to mid-summer temps overnight and all of a sudden I was really behind in my chores!
The center garden was a MESS. Weeds, weeds everywhere, and grapevines, stakes, broken trellises and eyesores all of it. Every time I reached my hands into the long weeds I was convinced I was going to come up with a handful of Water Moccasins. Gardening in the south near water is not for the faint of heart!
Before:
After:
I left a few weed patches for a wetter day since they were pretty stubborn. I did manage to plant out lettuces, spinach and bush beans in the center garden that day. Of course the next day we had torrential downpours so I'm pretty sure I ended up planting the neighbor's garden!
This year I am really testing the limits of the seedlings. In prior years I have always noticed that when I start 2 batches of seedlings a few weeks apart the younger ones catch up within days when planted outside, and since it is so warm already it felt a little ridiculous and a waste of time to repot them in larger pots, so into the beds they went... straight from their little peat squares with only 1 set of true leaves!
Can you see them? Tomatoes on the left, peppers on the right.
Another day I attacked the "East Garden"- (sounds so stately, doesn't it?)!
Still have a long way to go to get the Bermudagrass out that has encroached my mulched areas, but at least the beds are weed free now. Don't you just love my hodgepodge o'crap? I'm going to grow my zucchini in that "lump" of compost inside the old gazebo sides that are wired together LOL, and sweet potatoes in that big piece of drainage pipe. Functional, yes - pretty, not so much!
The hubs was working hard all week as well in his limited time off. Our fire pit was rotted (see old wood pieces discarded behind him), so he built us an identical new one in the same place. This design worked perfect for us since the old firebowl gets surrounded by big chunks of rubble and river rock that had been dug out of the ground years ago when we found an old drainage field from another project. Those rubble pieces get warm enough to rest your feet on and warm up without burning them. The kids had to remove all the rock rubble out of the way, and then pile it back in to the new one. Go ahead, call CPS on me... I made my kids move rocks all day...
The finished product:
Daddy was leaving this past weekend again so he had a "Guys Day" with the boys but couldn't resist a little fun...
As he and the boys were headed to the rifle range and it was a little chilly Saturday morning so I said "hey guys, grab a light jacket"...
Here is Finn explaining to daddy that "mom said a light jacket, not a LIFE jacket"!
I love this guy :)
But last night it was time for this again.
Someone has to earn the money around here!
So he went "again"? The sequester didn't effect his ship in the end?? I'm glad for you (to earn money) but sad for you to have to say good bye again. Hugs to your family!!
ReplyDeleteFreedom Acres, not exactly - this is a short training trip for him, the deployment is still up in the air and depends on sequestration talks but they are certainly getting pressure to fund our military to get back in the game with the state of what's going on in N. Korea and now I just saw the news out of Boston a few seconds ago... what is wrong with this world today? ugh.
DeleteGood luck to you family! Your new fire pit looks awesome :) And your garden beds look very nice too!
ReplyDeleteThanks Stacy! The garden beds will look even better if those seeds I planted didn't wash away LOL...only time will tell!
DeleteYour fire pit looks great! I can't believe how much work you got done in your gardens! I'd be lucky enough to keep the weeks out, let alone in the mulched areas! The life jacket picture is adorable :)
ReplyDeleteMegan, who am I kidding? That Bermudagrass will never be eradicated!
Delete*weeds not weeks!
ReplyDeleteGood thing I like you so much, otherwise I'd hate you for bringing up summer temps more than once on your blog...:) Seriously, it can be just as bad to be hit overnight with summer weather! At least I can ease into gardening. You know, plant one thing, hurry and cover it in a foot of mulch. Wait a month, repeat. I can almost hear Finn trying to explain the difference to his daddy. What a hoot!
ReplyDeleteSusan, I know... I felt pretty bad about blogging about temps here when Mama Pea is trapped in a snowdrift! It was crazy... 50 highs them bam - 90 every day. Waaaahhhhh, where's my 65 degree workdays?!
DeleteWhy can't we hit a happy medium with our temps? I have gardening to tend to, and it's so cold and windy I'm just sitting here in the house accomplishing nothing, zip, nada. I suppose I could mop the bathroom floors :-(
ReplyDeleteGran, I was hoping for a good long stretch of 65º days but instead I get sweat and mosquitoes!
Delete90 already?? I think Mama N. can't make up her mind this year... We're flip flopping between 80's and 50's here and needless to say it's getting old.. :-(
ReplyDeleteOur garden is a hodgepodge kind of garden too, but who cares as long as things grow. The fire pit turned out great!
Anke, makes me scared of the extremes... it will be just awful hot again this year I think. I sure hope the violent weather stays away though.
DeleteYour gardens are looking awesome! Boy oh boy it sure gets hot fast for you! Our temps have gone down a bit so there is frost at night again but today it's sunny and around 20C out there.
ReplyDeleteYour fire pit looks fantastic. We can't have fires in our yards here but I'd love to moves where we could. There's nothing more fun than a good fire.
I hope your hubby isn't gone long.
I'm not only trapped in a snowdrift, I'm beginning to fear I'll never be FOUND under it. We got 8" last night and now at 4:30 p.m. it's snowing like crazy again. Honkin' big flakes coming down diagonally. But it can't last much longer since it's now the middle of April. CAN IT??
ReplyDeleteAt least your hubby is off earning a bit of moola, but he's not gone for a year. I know it's got to be hard for all of you with everything up in the air as it is. All the uncertainty and inability to plan for anything.
Your garden ALWAYS looks gorgeous from the second you start working on it the first of the season until your big Halloween blow-out in the fall. You may "make do" with cobbled together beds and old drainage pipe but somehow you make it look like something out of a magazine.
I sure hope you don't have a scorcher of a summer like you did last year. That was awful.
P.S. Should we all take up a collection and send you new gardening gloves?
I'd love a day that got up even to 50. We're STILL stuck in winter, but this week is supposed to be "normal". What is that, anymore.........
ReplyDeleteErin, I love the fire pit, when I first saw the Hubs bilding it out of wood I thought of the polish wood stove good for only one fire. Now I get it, when it is full of rocks it heats up slowly and holds the heat for a very long time. I can see one of these in my back yard in Buckroe Beach before the end of this summer. I will start collecting rocks where ever I go now. Thank the Hubs for his service to our nation and for teaching an old dog at least one new trick. Between him and Granny (seed mats)I may have a great gardening year.
ReplyDeleteLove the new fire pit! How long is hubs gone for this time?
ReplyDeleteLove the before and after pics of the garden. After the talking of water moccasins, seeing the toy frog and snakes in the garden beds was startling!
ReplyDelete