Worth the backache

My back has been killing me this week. I stayed home from work on Monday and spent the day in a stupor from muscle relaxers. I realized when I pulled the bottle from the medicine cabinet that my doctor had prescribed them to me exactly one year ago this week. It's pretty obvious that my garden and all the work that goes into it in April is the culprit!

Backache aside, the garden is doing well. The vegetable raised beds are planted and starting to grow. And my roses? Heavenly. The Eustacia Vye I planted last year has been absolutely covered in dozens of rosebuds, and the two newbies (Benjamin Britten and Desdemona) both have several flowers and they were bare root plants less than three months ago. I'm in love!

Just look at these beauties. 

Good weather, lucky find

The weather this weekend has been wonderful. Friday saw the arrival of a cold front that blew away the "heat dome" that made July so miserable, and the air has been delightfully cool and dry since. The highs are only around 80F (26C) and the lows are in the mid-60s (18C) at night. According to all the forecasts, we're due for a full week of this reprieve. I sure hope they're right! It's actually been nice to go outside, and a few rain showers have made everything seem green and fresh again. 

Yesterday I went to Tractor Supply to buy dog food, and I noticed a shipment of trees off to one side of the parking lot. On closer inspection, I saw that they were young Crepe Myrtles, and wouldn't you know it, they had the "Muskogee" variety that we've been talking about planting beside the driveway. We already have five of them down the property line on the other side of the house, and we've been saying for months now that three more would be perfect. Not only did Tractor Supply have the variety we wanted, but they had exactly three! They were all sizeable, healthy, and an absolute bargain at $19.99.

Of course, they came home with me. How could I resist?

Since today was cool and overcast and that's supposed to continue for the next week, we went ahead and planted them this afternoon. Finding the trees was a lucky break, but so is the perfect weather for transplanting them--in August, no less! 

Earth Day in the garden

Yesterday after work my loving husband helped me set up 7 foot t-posts in the raised garden bed. They will serve as the support for the Florida Weave trellis I plan to build. Now that they're hammered into the ground, they're only about 5 and a half feet tall, which should be plenty of height for tomato support. I'm excited to try the Florida Weave method. The t-posts weren't cheap, but I should be able to use them for years and years.

Today I planted most of my garden!

Tomatoes: Two each of Eva Purple Ball, Hillbilly Potato Leaf, Nebraska Wedding, Rosso Sicilian, and Berkeley Tie Dye. Two cherry tomato plants (Mexico Midget and Ingleheart Yellow Cherry) are planted elsewhere (the flower bed in front of the porch). 

Although you can't see it in this picture, there's space on this end of the bed for my cucumbers. I plan to build a trellis for them with the two end t-posts and some smaller bamboo stakes. Another thing you can't see in these photos: marigolds are sprouting down the center of the bed and between the tomato plants. I planted those seeds a couple of weeks ago to get them a small head start. Year before last, when I used marigolds as a living mulch, I got the most tomato production I'd ever seen! I don't know if the scent kept bad insects away, or if the flowers attracted pollinators. Maybe both. It was a good year.

On this end you can see the baby lettuce and the radishes growing. Only about 6 or 7 carrots have sprouted, over on the right side. They're not very noticeable. (I don't have much luck with carrots, for some reason). The radishes will come up and out soon, but the lettuce needs to grow a bit more before I start picking it. Eventually, that end will be where the pepper plants go.

This last picture is of my potted up peppers (Datil hot peppers, Zapotec Jalapenos, and Sheepnose Pimentos) and the leftover tomato plants. As soon as I see if the tomatoes I planted in the bed take off, I'll be giving away the extras to gardening friends. The peppers will be ready to start planting out in a couple more weeks.

After working in the garden for a couple of hours, I got a little tiny bit of sunburn on my arms. I came inside, took a shower, ate lunch, and had the most delicious two hour nap. It rained while I was asleep--perfect for my newly planted garden!

Happy Earth Day!

Saturday night stuff

I made it to the weekend! What a rough week. I hope I never develop another ear infection; it's been really awful, but it's finally starting to improve. This morning when Gregg left for work, I went back to bed and slept an additional three hours. I guess I needed the extra rest.

All of my plants survived the cold snap quite well. I covered everything with old towels, plastic, and large, overturned plastic pots. It looked weird but it seemed to do the trick. I may have to re-cover everything tonight and tomorrow night, but according to the long range forecast I should be good after that (at least for another week). 

Yes, it all looked funny, but it got the job done!

In other news, I did our taxes today. That's a chore I dread every year, but it wasn't too bad. It only took about 3 hours and now that's off my mind for another year. We're getting a decent little refund back, due to the fact I have extra taken out of each paycheck to cover all Gregg's self employment income from his aquarium gigs. Better to have too much taken and get a refund than have a nasty surprise (a big tax bill) at tax time. About half of the refund will go to some house repairs we've been needing to do, and the rest will go into savings. 

My birthday is coming up next week! I'm planning to have Marla and Martina over on Saturday to help me celebrate. Gregg will get off work early, and Marla's husband will probably stop by with their little girl for a while. I'd love to invite Martina's husband, Will, but he works on Saturday evenings. There will be food, cake, and drinks. I'm excited for all that because I'm still staying faithful to my diet. I've lost 19 pounds since the beginning of January! A day to treat myself (and see my friends!) will be a nice break for my birthday! One of my gifts to myself this year is a new pair of walking shoes. My old ones are worn out, and a nice new pair should help inspire me to walk further and more often. I hope so.

The school year is winding down. When I go back to work on Monday, we'll be in our final quarter of this year. I can't believe we're only 9-10 weeks away from being done. And there's a week of spring break in there that doesn't count (at Easter). On Friday we had a professional development day in the district, so students had the day off. Besides one hour long virtual training session for clerical staff at 8am, I had the rest of the day to catch up on work before getting off a half hour earlier than usual. The teachers were in the library all day listening to presentations be our principal's mentor. And speaking of our principal: she announced to the teachers on Friday morning that she's been diagnosed with breast cancer. She said she begins treatment next week. I have no idea what this means for our school for the remainder of this year. 

It's always something, this year. Thank goodness it will be over at the end of May!

Recap of the week

 This week, in bullet points.

• Work has been tough. Student behavior among middle-schoolers always seems to be at its worst in early spring, but this year has been a disaster on a whole other level. More fights, huge classroom disruptions, four incidents in the past week alone where kids were threatening teachers and staff, and on and on. While I'm luckier than most in that I have a quiet, private office to work in, even the stress of my job is getting worse. I have to hold regular truancy interventions with families, and you wouldn't believe the cans of worms THOSE often open up. I'm on the phone at least once a week with DSS making reports of child neglect (educational and otherwise), and I have to schedule and prepare paperwork for all of our expulsion hearings this year, too. (Processing discipline referrals is part of my job along with attendance and record keeping). It can all be very unpleasant, to say the least, when you work in a school with such tough demographics. Our student poverty rate is up around 70% which explains all the other problems, I suppose.
• I still haven't heard anything about the job I applied for. It's still listed on the district website as open, and I hope that since the job won't start until July they're just taking their time about filling it. But I've decided the best thing to do now is to forget about it and keep looking. I was sad to learn that four more teachers I've known for years and (and really like) have accepted offers elsewhere. This makes 15 teachers that I know of who can't or won't continue working at our school next year. I don't know how we're going to function given the teacher shortage (and our school's reputation).
• WINTER IS COMING BACK. Because of course it is. It's going to get down to freezing a couple of nights next week, and I'm trying to figure out how to save the new young leaves and flowers on the crabapple, fig, and blueberries. Late freezes are pretty common in the spring, but what's not common is how far along everything already is due to the warm winter. If you can even call it a winter this year! 
• At least the plants I started in the house are safe. I've already had to start potting up tomato plants and they're growing like mad under the aquatic grow light Gregg found for me to use. Soon I'll be out of room inside, but at least we have the porch to keep them on until they acclimate to the outdoors, and the weather is consistently warm.
• Marco is driving us crazy. He's having some problematic breeding behaviors that we can't seem to stop. Gregg would tell you the main problem is his screaming for attention. (It makes him furious, and it is awful to listen to). But if you ask me, the main problem is that he tries to "feed" a pretend girlfriend as part of his mating behaviors, and that involves puking up food...wherever he can. We've removed all toys from his cage, and so now he regurgitates onto the side of his food and water dishes. I have to wash them multiple times a day and this has been going on for weeks now. It's pretty gross, not to mention, time consuming. If only it were possible to spay or neuter birds!

Last of all, here's a picture of my two sweet pups. They go nuts with happiness and excitement every day when I get home from work. Often this is the very best part of my day.

They were both vying for the chance to lick my feet after I took my shoes off the other day. That's true love!

Seed order

Oh, how I love a seed catalog in the depths of winter! This year I got two paper catalogs in the mail to pore over and plan my 2023 garden with: Seed Savers Exchange Heirloom Seeds and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Today I finalized my plans and placed orders with both companies. It's hard to believe, but in a couple of weeks it will be time to start tomato and pepper seeds. I want them to reach a good size for planting out around mid-April. Things that can be started earlier will be sown directly in the soil (like lettuce, spinach, and radishes) and cucumbers can be started later in the spring. This year I'm planning to start cucumber seeds twice, ripping out the first plants when they're done producing and then replacing them with new seedlings. I want a large crop of cucumbers so I can try my hand at making pickles--I love pickles, both dill and sweet. And of course I'm dreaming of salsas and sauces with my peppers and tomatoes!

Here are the tomatoes I've decided on for this year:

Nebraska Wedding

Eva Purple Ball

Rosso Sicilian

Berkeley Tie Dye

Hillbilly Potato Leaf

Ingleheart Yellow Cherry

Mexico Midget Cherry

As for peppers, I ordered three kinds:

Zapotec Jalapeno

Datil Hot Pepper

Sheepnose Pimento

I also reordered the wonderful "Marvel of the Four Seasons" lettuce that I enjoyed so much last year, and for cucumbers I decided to get the "Boston Pickling" variety which have always grown well for me. 

Here's hoping for a great 2023 growing season!

Batten down the hatches

We're expecting wild weather later this afternoon and tonight. Strong winds and tornado watches through the afternoon will make way for a hard freeze tonight. Ah, March. I don't think any month is more temperamental. Just last week temperatures were reaching almost 80 degrees and I could wear shorts at night when we went out to walk George. Now it's going to be in the mid 20s tonight and lots of early blooms and tender new vegetation will suffer. 

My salad garden has been coming along nicely (lettuce, radishes, and carrots) and will have to be protected. I'm planning to drape a sturdy tarp over that side of the raised bed and find some good heavy stones to hold it in place overnight. The pots of camellia starts will have to be secured, either on the porch up against the wall or else in the garage. I doubt there's much I can do for the tender new leaves on the fig tree. A hard freeze this time last year took out the new growth, but more leaves sprouted immediately afterwards and there was no lasting harm. The daffodils should be fine. Did I mention that my newly planted daffodil bulbs are blooming like mad? I counted almost three dozen flowers this morning! I doubt one night of cold will hurt them, but I'm considering picking a vase full for the house just in case.

I'm not worried about the newly planted crabapple tree---because it's still nothing but a bare stick! At least in that case there's no tender new growth to lose. The pomegranate tree will be fine. It's covered in a flush of tiny leaves, but it's in the warmest and most protected spot in the yard.

What else? I think all that will be left to do after covering the raised bed and moving the potted plants will be to do one final scan of the yard and porch for loose items. My container of seed potatoes has small sprouts and will have to be moved into the garage for the night to protect them from the freeze, too. That should be all. All that I have any control over, anyway!

Radish and lettuce sprouts I'll be covering tonight

 when the temperature starts to drop.

Early March update

It's been the longest week ever. After a lovely end-of-February break, the days started to drag as soon as I went back to work on Monday. It was hard to leave George and Marco and my garden projects and my peaceful home, not to mention my warm and comfortable bed. On Monday when the alarm went off at 6am I couldn't help but groan. Back to the salt mines!

Speaking of garden projects, there's been quite a bit of progress. Last Sunday afternoon I started most (not quite all) of my seeds for the year. I like to use the convenient little Jiffy peat pellets that come with a tray for seed starting. It's super easy to grow out little seedlings in them for potting up later. I took a photo to show you the process.

Here's the tray this morning, less than one week after starting the seeds.

The tomatoes, basil, zinnias, and rose campion have all started to sprout. I'm still waiting on the peppers. 

Out in the raised bed, the radishes and lettuce are up! They're too close together and will have to be thinned eventually--sowing such tiny seeds is really difficult. I'm sure once the carrots sprout (no sign of those yet) they'll be the most crowded of all. 

Remember the daffodil bulbs I bought on a clearance rack over Christmas and planted on New Year's Day? The ones I thought might have been planted too late to bloom this year? This is what they look like today.

We planted the bulbs in clusters around the crepe myrtle trees. There were a dozen clusters all together, and all twelve spots look like this, with short flowers getting ready to open. This fall I'll probably add some more varieties of daffs (these are King Alfreds) as well as some hyacinths. 

I'm glad March is finally here. Besides being my birthday month (yay!), it's the real start of spring (my favorite season). Last night when we took George out for a walk, we saw the first rabbit of the year. It was on our neighbor's lawn close to the circle of light cast by their porch light. After seeming to disappear in the fall and winter months, the return of these little guys is a sure sign of spring.

                                        

Turning off the news

 It's another beautiful and mild day here in my part of the world. This week has been warm and springlike, so much so that I wore shorts yesterday as I puttered around the house and the outdoors. The very earliest trees and bulbs are blooming already, my favorite being this grand old magnolia that belongs to my next-door neighbor. 

Although I've had the week off work, I've been busy. On Sunday, we planted the crabapple stick tree in our front yard. If it lives, I fully expect it to take several years before it's much to look at. 

The next day, Monday, Gregg helped me put up a bluebird nesting box in the back yard. The box was a Christmas gift many years ago from my late mother-in-law, Edythe. She shared my love of feeding wild birds and had a bluebird box in her back yard in addition to several feeders. Since we were renting at the time, I decided to put it away and save it until we were able to buy a home of our own. We've seen lots of Eastern bluebirds in this neighborhood, so our chances of attracting a pair to nest are pretty good. In fact, the morning after we put it up, I saw a pair of them checking it out! I was pretty excited, but they flew away after a few minutes. I haven't seen them again, at least not yet. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of fingers crossed, today I sowed seed for early spring vegetables in part of my raised bed. Carrots, lettuce, and radishes...

Just for fun, I also planted some potato seedlings in a large plastic container. I don't have much expectation of actually getting potatoes, but it will be a fun experiment. Over the weekend I'll be starting tomatoes and peppers indoors in peat pellets. We have about 6 weeks until our last frost date, which is just about right for having seedlings of a good planting-out size. 

With all these gardening projects and other things going on, I've been mostly avoiding the news these days. The last few years have just been exhausting. I've found it's better for my mental health to not follow national and world events quite so closely as I used to. I'm aware of the Ukraine situation, but I feel helpless to do anything except feel terrible about it. I realize it's the height of privilege to be able to tune out such events and concentrate on my own small life, but I don't know of any alternative that would actually accomplish anything. I don't take for granted how fortunate I am, at least.

We Lived Happily During the War by Ilya Kaminsky //

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

Crabby

Going back to work a couple of weeks early last summer is paying off again. We're on "winter intercession" which means that we have next week off! Yesterday was a half day for staff (students had the day off completely) and the joy as we all walked out to the parking lot at noon was palpable. It was a warm, springlike day with bright sunshine and blue skies, and the teachers were practically skipping to their cars! The break is very much needed, I think. 

I'm looking forward to working on several garden projects next week. My crabapple tree has arrived! I snapped a photo of it the other day and texted it to Gregg. His response? "That's a stick! Is it dead?!" I explained to him that it's just dormant and that a "stick" was all I expected. He did make me laugh, though.

I'm thinking about planting it this week since we're in for mild weather. Does anyone out there know if that's okay, given that we're sure to have some cold nights between now and early April? How early is too early for a dormant tree? If we got a hard freeze I could always devise something to cover it, and I plan to mulch it really well. Answers on a postcard, as John would say.

"Playing" was the wrong word!

Whew! A whole lot of work got done at Casa de Sparrow yesterday. We started at 9am and hauled six small truckloads of soil to our house. Each load meant driving to the school, shoveling dirt into the bed of the truck, driving home, and shoveling the dirt out of the bed onto a large tarp. Wash, rinse, repeat 6 times. Then we shoveled it all into wheelbarrow loads and carted it over to the raised bed. I can't believe how much dirt it took to fill it.

But now it's done! And it all cost me exactly $0.00! 

We had more than enough dirt left over to pot up the camellia plants Carol gave me. I'll let them grow some and develop good roots while I decide where they'll go in the yard.

I ended up with eight pots of camellia starts. Since I used free dirt and old saved planter pots, again, this didn't cost me a dime. 

It was a long, tiring day, but I'm so pleased with everything we got done! Now that most of the heavy work is done, I can get back to "playing" in the dirt. What we did yesterday definitely wasn't play.