Anyway, it's been a bit, so here's what's been going on.
Two weekends ago, Saturday, I went out and had a little retail therapy:
Among other things, I bought myself: a composter (yay), some solar garden lights (marked down that week for clearance... I can't remember if it was $30 or $40 for the ten pack), some plastic containers that fit the funny shelf in the front hall, a flower pot, stuff for the garden (although the place I went was sold out of much of what I wanted... dang!), and some perennials because they were on sale:
One even came with an extra, an interesting little lichen:
Of course, the garden isn't ready for them (especially since I couldn't get the stuff I wanted to amend the soil), so they've been sitting in their pots since then. :P
Sunday (two weeks ago) I went to Sheeples for Open Farm Day with a friend and some of her family:
Of course, we missed a turn, and ended up visiting a really pretty marsh area on the way there:
(I think I want to paint that.)
At the farm day, I finally finished spinning some singles that have been in progress for *ages*, and started two-plying them. I can't remember if it was that day or shortly thereafter I finished the plying:
(Plying is *much* faster!)
Last Saturday I was working overtime, so no gardening got done, but I did get out last Sunday. Dad was over too, and hauled away a bunch of his junk. Again, I forgot to take "before" photos. Here's the "after" of one of the piles he was working on:
(Those who know the state of the back yard before will know how impressive that photo is.) I was going to work on getting my perennials planted last weekend, but, somehow, things never quite turn out how I plan. When dad said he wasn't going to take the axle because the raspberry canes were drooping over it, I went to work on (again!) tying up the raspberries. I also inspected and cut out any stems that looked to be infected with the raspberry borer (did I remember to post about that? I figured out why I kept finding the canes broken: raspberry cane borers!) and burned them in my dad's stove:
Of course, before I could burn them in the stove, I had to shovel out all the ashes that were in it. I put them where the pines are, to balance the pH:
(I still need to dig the ashes in, they're just sitting on top for now. Of course, burning green stuff produces *lots* of smoke, so I was well smoked by the end, and mom came over to see if my house was on fire.
I ran out of string before finishing with all the canes:
(I had more upstairs... I was using leftover bits of kitchen cotton, but I didn't feel like taking my shoes off to go get more right then. I did tie them up that night after dinner, though, since they're right under a streetlight. (Of course, I found one more infected cane doing that, but I didn't want to start the fire going again, so I just put that one in the trash.)
I also got my composter put together:
Yay! Then I looked at how empty it was, and on Wednesday I was coveting all the yard waste my neighbours had put out for trash pickup. (However, today I started doing some yard clean-up, and my composter doesn't look *nearly* so empty... in fact, I suspect it's not all going to fit before I'm finished!)
So, that brings us to today. The bosses decided against overtime today (yay!), so I slept *late*, then washed my mango tree (it still has lingering spider mites, *sigh*), then went out into the garden. I took lots of "before" photos, in case I ended up working on not quite what I planned. Of course, what I *did* do took forever, so there wasn't much light for *after* photos!
Hmmm... looks like it's already a long post, and the next bit is also long, so I guess I'll do the rest as a "part two".
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