Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Beginning...

Here's a happy patch of Sweet Lavender, in the corner between two of the yoga platforms.  It should grow to be about 2 feet tall with fragrant blossoms.


Here is some purple Phlox that I planted tucked under a broken pot.  There is another one using the other half of the pot in another part of the yard.  It will grow into mounds, looking like it spilled out of the pot.


This morning I put in seeds in front of the two front yoga platforms.  On the left I put in a butterfly mix of seeds, and on the right I did a huge spread of orange California Poppy seeds.  I threw a light layer of mulch over it to help me remember where I have planted, and to help retain some moisture.  (I could take a photo for you, but it would be pretty boring:  "Here is the left patch of dirt, and here is the right patch of dirt!  Isn't it exciting?!"  The sad part of that is, I really do think it's exciting... LOL)

I also planted seeds on the back side of my raised garden beds:  a mix of butterfly attracting plants, (Compass Plant, Gaura, Fleabane) and then an entire packet of Mammoth Sunflower seeds.  It's fun to have space to sow entire packets of seeds and hope for huge patches of color.  It's also free fun, as they are all seeds that I had saved from last year.  Bonus.

We had quite storm on Monday night -- the day after all the backyard work was done -- and I was worried about how it would all hold up in its temporary state.  It was mostly fine -- a little mud slid over one of the pieces of flagstone, but I knew that was an area that would need more help.  I couldn't do it yet because I still have one more day of work coming on my wooden steps.  That's happening either Thursday or Friday.


The good news is, my rain barrels were replenished.  Once again they are all too heavy to rock on their stands -- yay!  In particular the one by my raspberries was getting low, so I am grateful for a free refill.  Even the smaller barrel on my porch that only collects via the rain chain from my porch roof has a fair amount of water in it.  What is really strange, however, is that the barrel that was relocated to my sideyard, and got the new downspout?  Totally empty.  I haven't had a chance to investigate that yet, but I need to.  So mysterious... 

So in the coming weeks I'll be choosing plants and shrubs and tucking them in here and there.  I went to buy some last night, but somehow I didn't see anything that I just had to have, and came home empty.  I secretly didn't really want to be out planting last night anyway -- it was SO windy!  I stayed in and did laundry instead.  I know -- I am a wild child.

I have several caterpillars on my fennel out front -- I'm actually worried that there isn't going to be enough fennel to feed them since the plants are not very mature yet... Not sure what I can do about that -- nothing I guess.  I have other fennel plants, guess I will just hope that they find them.

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