Good Gardening Weekend

Well, I have no fitness to report from the weekend. No running, biking or swimming. But I did get to spend the whole weekend with the family in the garden. So I'll call it a sucess. First, a pic of myself and Evil Genius from St Patrick's Day:

That Irish shirt with the lightning bolt is too cute. She's hard core, huh? I just stumbled across that one and thought I would throw it into the mix today.




All weekend it was warm (high 60's) and sunny so we were all able to hang out outside all weekend long. It was fantastic! We recently joined the Arbor Day Foundation, and they send you 10 trees when you sign up. Those came in on Saturday, and they were all less than a foot tall. So I'm growing them in containers for the first year or two until they get some decent size on them.



Bigun LOVED riding out with me to hit up Lowe's. We got some straw to mulch the veg patch, a couple of basil plants, and some cow manure and potting soil, but her favorite part was sitting on the cart letting me push her around. a couple of weeks ago, I published the "before" pic of the garden. Here's the mid-march update:



You can see the straw, we're going to mulch around the plants with that this year. The grass you see still needs to be removed. That's one task that didn't get done. Of course, around here we refer to things that don't get done by saying they were Glaven'd. So the sod removal was Glaven'd. And since that's where the potatoes are going to be planted, they didn't get in the ground either. That's called Potatoes Glaven. In the foreground, you can also see the cherry tree in full bloom. The bags of stuff are horse manure (insert Glaven = shit or Glaven doesn't get done joke here), that are going to get spread once the sod is gone. I did also notice that the peas I planted 2 weekends ago have broken ground too. I still don't think I will get too much of a yield from them, but that's ok. At least they germinated.

So the girls and I potted up all 10 trees, and put both basil's in a container for the deck. We also got some new containers and a pack of annuals from Lowe's. Bigun wanted to plant some pretty flowers for mommy (how sweet!), so we planted up some petunia's, and set some Cosmos and Marigold seeds in the same containers. One made it to the back deck, and one onto the front porch. They should produce waves of flowers, it's going to be really cool. And that was a ton of plantings for the girls! they crashed so hard when it was time to sleep saturday night

I mentioned last week that the people that back up to us had part of the lot cleared? Turns out it wasn't the neighbors, it was the local government! The water & sewer authority claimed that they had to work on a storm drain, and cleared out that whole section of their backyard even taking out their basketball goal just to clear the land! The worst part is that they didn't even work on the drain pipe. Just cleared and graded the land, then left. So not only am I surrounded by dumbasses, this town is run by dumbasses! I'm in a suburb that is not even an official city, it's only incorporated as a water & fire district. All dumbasses!
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This ties into the garden thanks to Sunday. Here's a "before" picture of what would be the berry patch.


You can see the table in the raised bed, and the fence running behind the tree. Notice all of the green behind the fence? All of that timber and undergrowth? Here's what the same basic area looks like this morning:



You can still see the table, fence, and tree. But the greenery behind the fence is now straw where the dumbass local government cleared away; totally exposing my backyard to the other street. It also exposes his driveway to us and our street.
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In front of the fence, you can see posts to the left of the tree, that's the grape vines and muscadine vines. To the right of the tree is the berry patch. It all got a fresh layer of mulch on Sunday. Bigun loves seeing the bulldozer that loads the mulch into the pickup truck, and she loves it when we borrow my dad's truck and she gets to ride up front and up high in the truck with me. This time, she discovered how to make the window roll up and down, and was actually riding with her arm hanging out the window like some joe cool kid. She's nuts.
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Also, I now have a couple dozen pepper plants that are about an inch tall in the seed flat. It's so cool to see something germinate that effectively. April 15th is our last frost date, so these pepper plants should be ready to go in the ground then.

Today the plan is to get out of work around 5 and get in a bike ride. Then hit the gym for a run tomorrow morning, just to see how it feels. With the sun over the weekend, I was craving hitting the trails around Furman, but just didn't get the chance too.

I hope your weekend was as fantastic as mine! happy monday. The office finished the trade show saturday with a ton of extra work for me, so I'm going to be cranking out code. Sorry in advance if I don't comment on your blog for a few days. I'm still reading, really!