Gardening progress

This little item is an instrument of torture!

It's a dandelion digger --- a brand shiny new one --- or at least it was all shiny before I spent some considerable time working in the back yard yesterday.

The neighbor up the street evidently thinks that yards are SUPPOSED to be covered with fuzzy yellow flowers, which means the seeds are "blowin' in the wind" all over the neighborhood.

This is NOT, however, my ideal lawn, and while chemicals may seem like the way to go, they are price-y (remember, we're in the post squirell budget month), and I'm not real wild about what they do to the environment.

So --- diggers up --- and away we go

I pretty much filled up a 5 gallon bucket with what I dug up


Yesterday's work outdoors also included planting the "low crops" section of the garden.

The tilling had been completed last week, so the soil was all prepared to receive the carrots and beets and swiss chard seeds.

I had not planted any of these things from seed before. Carrot seeds are teeny, tiny, tiny little seeds and there were bunches of them in the packet (which is packaged by weight).

Beet and chard seeds both look like little goat's head thistles, only not so prickly.

So now we're on "growth patrol" --- by about next Wednesday there should be some sign of green things (other than weeds!) growing out there --- Yippee!

The sunflower seeds that we had started in the little pots got planted too, now the trick is to keep the labrador off them until they get tall enough for her to realize they are there.

I can tell you that a winter of working at the computer and in the studio did not put me in shape for all that stoop labor, however. I have some sore muscles in places that surprised me, and going upstairs is a bit painful (ouch, oooch, ow!)

The squash and pumpkins need to be moved into larger pots, so I'll probably be working on that today (it's too early to put those in the ground here, just yet).

Onward and upward!!