I love how rainy it's been. I spent most of the daylight hours outside today in the soft drizzle with the chickens and chihuahua, who was much happier once I put his sweater on. I started chopping wood so that we could have a fire inside tonight, but quickly realized how much work it was and decided to quit and hope for a reciprocating saw in my future.
I successfully repaired the dog-damaged irrigation in the first vegetable bed, leveled all the soil out, planted 1 nasturtium, 2 broccoli, and 5 swiss chard seeds, and then covered it all with a light layer of compost mulch.
Recently, I have had the good fortune to acquire a plot at the Boulder City community gardens. It is about 60 sq. feet and before we got started was completely engulfed with geraniums, mint, and some sort of tuber plant. There was also a pathetic citrus tree. My dirt partner, her family, and I have spent some good time out there cleaning it out. Yesterday, I brought home a bucketful of mint. Today, I planted them in the holes on top of the cinder block retaining wall in the backyard. I am hoping that they will grow and spread and smell amazing all over the wall.
The multi-grafted fruit trees that I recently planted are blooming and growing green leaves. They look so happy. I hung up a clothesline between the pine tree and a wooden ladder and used it yesterday to air dry the bed sheets. I absolutely loved how the sheets smelled when I crawled into bed last night. They smelled like wind, the pine tree and the oncoming thunderstorm. Louie suggested I grow something on the ladder and I thought, "Why didn't I think of that?" Maybe some cucumbers or squash?
I spent last Wednesday evening designing my gardens for this year. I used two books that I scored at a library book sale for a dollar each for research. One is the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, published in 1969. The other is a Better Homes and Gardens Gardening Guide (it reminds me of my mom's cookbook, three ring binder style with clipped articles from the magazine included) that was published in 1978. I found the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening to be completely amazing and useful and I already have tons of pages flagged with sticky notes for future reference.
