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!
