Sewing Etc.

We have been hard at it the past three weeks, cleaning up the backyard and getting the garden planted.

The spruce that fell in the December storm had a sort of domino effect on the back yard. It dislocated the playhouse and the sliding glass doors leaning against it, and of course left all kinds of debris that had to wait until spring.

We started with the branches and pine needles on the south side of the house which filled nine 30 gallon yard waste bags. We moved the sliding glass doors to lean against the raised beds, and repositioned the unused solar panels behind the ones we are using. We rolled the big log chunks out to the front yard, and put an ad up for people to take them for free, and amazingly, they were gone within two days!

We tried the same with the sliding glass doors, but didn’t have any takers. However, the time spent putting the ads up was fruitful, because DH found his dream truck! It’s a 1993 Ford F250 diesel, and it runs very well with only 150,000 miles! We immediately put it to work, and got rid of the sliding glass doors, old wire, wood, tires, and file cabinets that had rusted out from flood damage. After three loads, we moved on to removing the dead cherry and plum trees, along with bags of weeds and other yard waste from prepping the garden.

After a week of clearing away we made a trip to the country and brought home a load of horse manure, free because we loaded it ourselves, and several bales of straw to be used as mulch after the garden was planted.

Getting rid of the obvious junk gave us the space and motivation to dismantle a few things that just weren’t working for us anymore, namely the old compost bins and the mini greenhouse/raised bed. Those were dismantled and loaded for the final trip to the dump. After clearing some more spruce litter we found enough compost to completely fill the last raised bed, and once the mini greenhouse was removed, we had just enough space to do a small plot of sweet corn; both were nice surprises. Removing the mini greenhouse bed allowed us to remove some rogue trees that had sprouted, and to deal with the grape vines behind it that had died.

We ordered a semi dwarf pink lady apple tree to replace the spruce tree’s shade for the west bedroom windows. It will also serve as a pollinator for our honey crisp tree since the old apple tree in our neighbor’s yard was taken down last fall, we solved two issues at once assuming it thrives.

Now we could get serious about planting! Over the next 10 days we planted onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, and beets, to join the peas already up. We brought out our starts and transplanted cabbage, cantaloupe, tomatoes and peppers, and set up the tubs of herbs that were either started indoors or had been overwintered under lights.

We decided to wait on transplanting the poblano peppers a few days, and used that time to put down some landscaping fabric between the tomato plants to help keep the weeds at bay. We also spent some time deciding how to use the remaining space. We will add pinto beans in the last three pig panels by the peas and black beans on the one unoccupied trellis by the raised beds.

Saturday brought a huge storm our way – finally- and we received 1.33 inches of desperately needed rain. There is more in the forecast, so we might actually get some. (We had almost no snow this winter and less than a quarter of the normal precipitation in March and April, so things were powder dry. We have been saving gray water for a month and using it to hand water. ) Because we are expecting drought conditions this summer, everything is getting mulched with straw and all the raised beds are getting shade covers. I have been using sheets from the thrifts stores, adding pockets on the long edges to hold 2 x 4 pieces scrounged over the years.

Sunday we planted the beans and got the poblanos out before the afternoon storms, and Monday morning we took our last big load to the dump. We’ll be gone for a few days this week, but are looking forward to the changes we will see when we get back!