House (Garden) Update: Saturday

After sleeping late, I spent most of Saturday in the garden. (Thankfully the ground hasn't frozen yet.)

I started off by raking leaves:

(Only one pile got moved to the back, I still need to do the other three.) And more leaves:

(This also had a similarly sized pile to the front, but I took the photo after adding the pile to the compost.) Plus I raked some leaves in the back lane, but that raking I did after dark. (I also need to clean up those piles.)

It occurred to me the broken concrete slabs could be useful:

The sidewalk is wonky and somewhat wobbly, but functional. It'll do for now. (Dad had left the slabs behind because I said they'd be useful for making a base for my water barrels, but all except one were broken into pieces smaller than the base of my water barrels. *sigh* I had made the comment previously when there were more slabs, not all of which were broken. I'm not sure if these were broken when he left them, or if they broke when they were sitting stacked.)

I added more leaves and the frozen jack-o-lanterns to the compost bin. I tried braking up the pumpkins by smashing them on the slabs, but frozen pumpkins are tough buggers. So I decided to hack at them with my hoe:

I felt kind of like an axe murderer.

I cleaned out the birdhouse in preparation for putting it back up. Looks like there was actually a bird nesting in it previously!

(It had been up a while ago at my mom's, then in the garage for a bit, then stuck in the garden but too low... then this fall the wasps decided to build a nest in it. Once I remember to fetch the right size screws from the workshop, it'll go up in my yard, so that it'll be ready when the birds come checking things out in the spring!)

I also swept up some of the areas of the patio. (Observation: damp dirt is hard to sweep.) The parts without dad's junk are looking pretty awesome right now. :)

Then, as it started to get dark, I started doing what I had gone out to do: plant perennials. It was *very* dark by the time I stopped, but I managed to plant ten perennials (including two clumps of irises from the trash can full of them and the day lily). Most got planted in a "holding" spot in what will one day be a vegetable garden:

The day lily and two iris clumps got planted over by the trees:


Perennials still waiting to be planted:

Six, plus tons of irises, and lots of bulbs (mostly tulips, some asiatic lilies, and there might be some daffodils in there too).

Sunday was spent shopping (bra, Christmas, etc) plus dinner with the family. I have Monday off (more banked time), and so will be back out there again. I *will* get those perennials planted!!! (And then I'll switch to "inside the house" jobs next weekend.)