Garden Update

Yesterday, I decided I'd spent way too much time inside during the past couple of days.  I went outside and it was finally dry enough to start digging in the garden.  There were a few places where the Creeping Charlie was encroaching, so I started with that.   There are a lot of trees on our property and there seems to be no end to branches and limbs to collect after both the winter and a good wind storm.  I hunted about and found some fallen, long branches which were still fairly strong.   After gathering them up, I took 4 of a similar size and lashed them together, planted the wide end in the ground and then planted peas along the sides of my stick pyramid.  The peas should climb up the strings, giving them much better support than my two poles with netting that I used last year for the pole beans.

There were enough to make three of these "bean" towers.  Two will stay empty until it's warm enough to plant beans.  When the peas are done, I'll plant beans in that one.  Despite the rather rustic look, the  bean towers don't wobble at all.  They should be much sturdier than last years 2 x 2's and climbing plant netting, which were incredibly unstable and the plant netting sagged like anything.   

I found a few small patches of spring bulbs which survived the dismal flooding and freezing weather earlier.  Of all that bloomed last spring, only a few small patches have done so this year.  I may use that as an excuse to start digging up the flower beds.  With many of the bulbs not surviving this year and the realization last spring that there were few flowering plants at all as the person who started these preferred a more subtle approach - as in most of it is shades of green, it may just be time to get rid of the green and add colour in the way of brilliant flowering perennials and lots of spring bulbs.

Yesterday, my son decided that the old firepit was done for and needed to be rebuilt. The old firepit was the inside liner of a washing machine.  It was starting to fold in on itself and disintegrate after probably 20 or 30 years of use.  He dug it out,  then scoured the fence line for rocks and built a very pretty rock fire ring.  It's a bit larger and much prettier than the one before and will stave off having to replace the base for another year or two.