Garden work and surpises

We're changing up our garden this spring.   Right now it's a 20 x 20 foot regular bed plus 4 x8 foot low raised beds.   Because there has been a lot of growth in the surrounding trees, the 20 x 20 foot garden bed no longer gets enough light.  The last couple of years harvest was hardly worth the effort of working that large a space. We're letting it go back to grass and yard.   

The 4 x 8 foot low beds are being changed out to 3 higher raised beds.  Less actual garden space, but I've been adding large pots and containers so I'm getting more harvest from less space.  I used to plant the pots on and around the deck with flowers, but they're almost all veggies now, which are easy to care for and productive.

This is the first raised bed we're working on.   It's galvanized steel and was on sale for a crazy low price, which is why we've got it, instead of a third wood one.   We've layered the bottom with branches and bark.  Over that I've put a layer of composting straw which was last year's mulch covering the beds.  On top of the straw are fresh grass clippings.   The grass is so thick that hubby had to use the push mower, which has a bagger, so it was easy to collect them.  Hard to mow though, as the lawn is way too thick and long, due to all the cool weather and rain.   On top if it, once the whole lot settles a bit, and after the rain we're supposed to get for the next couple of days, we'll put the garden soil from the previous raised beds, and manure.   

 

Today I went out to lock up the chooks and saw these poking out of some of my deck pots.   My son had "planted" them to surprise me. They are very bright and definitely cheerful.  We won't have real plants with colour like that for weeks yet.

  They will be a fun addition  this summer.    I usually get a few solar lights to define the back deck steps because it gets very dark in our yard.  These are fun and pretty. 

We have one of those little gazebos on the deck.  Yesterday my son put up the canvas roof and netting.  As we were prepping for my hip replacement, a few things were moved to new spots, to make it easier for me to get around the house for those first couple of months.   One of those items was the box with the gazebo lights.  We had a couple of strings of bulbs which were nice to use at night.   All three of us hunted around, but none of us could figure out where they were moved.   Below is the photo of what I found when I popped out on the deck to take the picture of the sunflower lights at night. I was surprised by the flower lights, but was totally not expecting the gazebo lights.  For as small as they are, they put out quite a bit of light.  Not quite as much as the picture shows, that's the camera's doing.  Enough light though that the evenings out there would be enjoyable.