Lots of garden, little bit of fibre

It was a busy weekend, with glorious weather. Really, the weather dictated the activities... outside ones because I really couldn't justify hiding inside. The blueberry bushes got planted. That required digging holes... a trip to town to find the one store which actually had composted sheep manure already in stock - and it was on sale, and then planting, realizing they were going to get run over by a lawnmower because they are still very small, hunting for sticks to mark them with and then being forced to drink cool drinks in the shade because it was 24C and sunny. The only disappointing part of the blueberry planting was the number of white grubs I found and killed while digging the holes. I think we might need to get some nematodes and treat the lawn.. not because I really care about a perfect lawn, but because I hate the damage they do and even more, I hate the June Bugs they become... shudder...

We pruned the pear trees or tried to. Better late than never I hope. It doesn't look like the trees have been pruned much if at all. The one had two limbs which we removed which was easily within the 1/4 - 1/3 maximum of limb removal recommended when pruning pear trees. One branch was going to to die anyways in the next few years at the previous own had tied nylon string on it and the bark had grown around it and was cutting through. The other was a centre branch, which will now hopefully allow more sun to hit the rest of the tree. The second tree is older. We hadn't noticed before just how bad it is. It turns out there is almost no heartwood left and there are large openings in several places on the trunk. We're going to have to removed that tree and will hopefully replace it with something else. Not another pear tree though... maybe apricot or apple. The kids suggested a cherry tree, but I think you need two different varieties for germination and I've no idea where we could put a second one.

I got most of the seeds planted... 2/3 is most right? I still have a couple of herbs, the blue dye and yellow plants to start. All the flowers are started though. They will go in the perennial beds, to replace the volumes of oriental poppies and odd green, non-flowering filler plants. The onions and leeks have been started in milk cartons, mainly so that I can add a bit of soil to the leeks as they grow and start the blanching process while their seedlings. The onions were just victims of circumstance, since I had a milk carton handy when planting them. The flowers are in peat pots which can be divided in half when planting and the madder seeds are in peat pellets. Before they are planted properly I'll have to rip off the netting so the roots can grow unconfined. I forgot to do that on one plant before and it had the most weird, twisted root system, which was intertwined with the netting..

The chicks are ordered, the building of the coop room has begun. There's nothing like a deadline to speed up a progress of a project.
The new socks are coming along nicely. So pretty and my worry about the pattern being a tad too floofy was totally unjustified. It's beautiful and comfortable.