What Perseverance Looks Like - 2011

Every Job has Its Perks

I work for the family construction company. I grew up around big equipment. My father used to deliver a dump truck load of sand for our sand box every Spring. He dug the hole for our pool when I was little. Little by little he cleared out the overgrown lot next door to us and turned it into a nice yard. So, this summer when I was looking at the overgrown back part of our property, I instantly thought of the hydro axe. My cousin came over to check things out and then dispatched not only the hydro axe but a Komatsu 200 shovel equipped with a bucket that has a thumb and one of our best operators to run them. In one day (ONE DAY!!!) he had managed to fill in the old pit of despair and clear out fences, saplings, weeds and vines and reveal the back portion of our property. In a few more hours yesterday morning, he weeded my red shed garden, took down the lunging ring and hydro-axed the stuff that had grown up inside it, and dug us a new, enormous pit of despair! Gotta love heavy equipment!!! I'm stoked and re-energized to spiff up the place!

Winter Sowing

I finally started this year's winter sowing on March 6th. We won't discuss last year's crop, except to say that it got away from me. I planted most of the vegetables, which germinated pretty well, but then I mulched the patch with dried grass clippings, a HUGE mistake. I blinked twice and the whole patch (in front of the red shed) had weeds about 3 feet tall!!! I never did finish planting the flowers and today I dumped what was left of last year's efforts onto the red shed patch, which I managed to get mostly cleared before the snow came. This year, other than the strawberries and rhubarb, I think I'm going to stick with annuals in that patch.

In an effort to remind myself why I bother, I looked at some pictures from 2008, when I had some success. That's also when a lot of what I winter sowed and planted in 2007 filled in and looked wonderful.

Also a few years ago, I made planting areas on both sides of the paddock fence using the lasagna method. They got completely out of control also last summer, so this year, hopefully, I'm going to abandon the south patch, transplant anything worth saving (not much - some tired lavender and a sedum) and focus my efforts on the north patch. That side is where Little Lady, The Baby, Cammie, and Little Man are buried, marked by bowling balls, so I hope to tidy the whole thing up and make it look good this year.

Hooray for Spring and second (and third) chances!!!

More Winter Sowing

Here's the list of seeds sown in 2009 so far:

Swiss Chard
Radishes
Brussel Sprouts
Fennel
Kohl Rabi
Cockscomb
Four O'clocks
Shasta Daisy
Zinnias (2 varieties)
Calendulas (3 varieties)
Verbena
Gaillardia
Tomatoes
Snapdragons
Morning Glories
Scabiosa
Celosia
Mimulus

I also moved everything to the north end of the deck and made a little corral out of landscape timbers. I got some flats out of the shed and have grouped the containers into flats. That should make life a lot easier in the spring. In the past I've just put them on the table in a jumbled mess and spent a lot of time pawing through things trying to find all of one kind of plant. The only thing I'll have to think about is providing some shade later in the spring, unless I actually get my act together and get them planted before Memorial Day. (I can dream - can't I???)

Amaryllis

You just have to love a plant that grows about 6 inches a day and has vibrant 6-8 inch flowers. I found these 2 beauties at Home Depot after Christmas for half price. They started out slowly but caught up in the past week or so. I find it interesting that the solid red one (that came in a box showing an apple blossom pink plant) has lots of leaves but only two flowers. The red and white one, on the other hand, has no leaves but two more buds developing.

Winter Sowing

Here's the crop so far. Yesterday the seeds I ordered from Value Seeds showed up, so I have lots more sowing to do in the next few weeks.

Red Shed Garden

The garden in front of the red shed had completely gotten out of control, so I pulled out EVERYTHING and started over. I am using the lasagna method, so I put a layer of newspaper over the existing dirt, covered with a layer of topsoil. Then I spread leaves I got from Little Man's grandmother. Lastly, I emptied all the containers from 2008, which had been filled with Miracle Gro, on top of the leaves. Now the whole thing will sit and hopefully percolate into a desirable place to grow tomatoes and other veggies. Note the new window boxes. They were made by Little Man's uncle to replace the ones that Little Man's grandfather made about 10 years ago. The original boxes had been bolted to the building. This time I have them sitting on bricks so they are portable. The new ones are also made of pressure treated lumber, so hopefully they will not disintegrate. Lastly, don't forget to admire the beautiful roof, which Little Man's father and I put on ourselves a few years ago. It was a very satisfying project and I now have a whole new respect for roofers!

Get 'Er Done!!!

I read a suggestion somewhere about reading the chapter in Proverbs that coincides with the day of the month. My efforts are hit and miss, but yesterday was a hit. Low and behold, what did I read but God's version of "Get 'Er Done", my uncle's favorite saying. (Which, by the way, he was saying years before Larry the Cable Guy made his catchphrase popular." Anyhow, here it is:

Proverbs 14:23 All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

Makes me think of my uncle's other favorite saying also: "Less talk, more work"!

Couldn't have been more timely, since my plan was to take the AM off from work and finish painting our front porch before the cold weather set in. We put the first coat on over the weekend, so round two didn't take long. I was helped along by some good tunes on the CD player, pointed out the window, and supervised by Little Man, who meowed encouragingly and kept a close eye on all the proceedings. The side tree did its best to fling leaves into the wet paint, but in the end, I got 'er done!!!

What does Perseverance look like?

Side Garden Comparison - August 6 to September 1

Here are some shots of our side garden, from August 6 and again on September 1. Little Man's fathers has been dead-heading and applying Miracle Gro, with visible results.

Flower Pictures

These pictures were taken August 6.

Experiments

A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday, when it was ninety degrees and 100% humidity, I spent a delightful half hour or so wandering around the yard playing with the macro button on my digital camera. The results were better than my wildest expectations! Plus, many of the flowers I photographed were the result of last year's winter sowing experiments. If I get ambitious I will write about winter sowing, but meanwhile, if you are curious, check out www.wintersown.org. The method appeals to my lazy and cheap nature, and the results were well worth the time I invested. Also, the beds along each side of the paddock fence were created using the lasagne method. What a time (and back!) saver. I sure wish I'd heard of it years ago. Anyhow, put very briefly, it is a method of creating a garden by laying down a barrier (in this case, 10 sheets of newspaper) right on top of existing lawn, coverin that with layers of soil and mulch, then planting. Voila!!! I now have sixty feet of garden, about 3 or 4 feet wide, running down both the north and south sides of our paddock fence. I did the north side 3 years ago and the south side last summer. It sure beats digging and beating soil out of sod clumps. Ideally there would be several layers each of soil, compost, and mulch, but even my scaled down version worked just fine.