One of the things I wanted to get back to today, was to work on the garden beds again. It’s getting a bit drier out there, though mowing the lawn is still out of the question, but I want to get at least something done.
There were plenty of kitties coming out for breakfast, though I counted “only” twenty. Shop Towel came around, and his face is looking so beat up!! I did manage to let me get a big wood tick off the side of his head, and a few more around a wound on his side that looks like some fur was pulled out in a fight. No major injuries. His presence does make a few of the other cats very nervous, though.
I did get to visit Broccoli’s babies, straighten out their bedding, and leave food for her. They are getting much more active, which is a bit of a concern. There is a lot of stuff in there they can get into, and they’re getting mobile enough to climb out of their bedding. I’d like to set up some sort of box or bin for them to nest in, but I’m afraid if I do that, she’ll move them away completely.
The cherry tree near the house is in peak bloom now. It looks so pretty, nestled in between the lilacs and their purple flower buds.
Once the morning rounds were done, I came inside for breakfast, and was planning to head outside. Part of the problem is, I’m just not feeling well. I wasn’t able to get to sleep until past 3am – I can only partially blame cats for that! Butterscotch has finally stopped spending her days hiding under the chair, and is back to sleeping on the bed, though any time she sees Susan or Fenrir, she starts snarling. Mostly, though, she has decided that I am her bed! Which is fine, until she starts wriggling and squirming.
Meanwhile, the high humidity we’re having lately has been brutal on my osteo-arthritis. Usually, that’s not been an issue since we moved back to the prairies. When we were living on the West Coats, I could barely walk. Now, it’s all acting up again. The worst is an old elbow injury. Back in… 2010? 2011? I developed the equivalent of tennis elbow. I actually quit my job as a banquet server at the time, because I was afraid I might drop a plate of food or a pot of hot coffee on someone. It got so bad, I couldn’t even turn a door knob, and had to stop crocheting for a year. With physiotherapy, it did improve, but it’s never healed completely, and flares up every now and then, and has developed into OA. It’s my left elbow, and I’m left handed in a lot of things – like turning door knobs! It’s been flaring up a lot since we’ve had the rains, making some of the simplest actions, painful and difficult. At least it doesn’t really stop me from doing big things; it’s the small motions that are affected the most, but I should still be able to handle a garden fork.
But then I started getting messages and had to make phone calls, and then there were other unexpected tasks to get done. To top it off, my younger daughter is feeling even worse than I am right now. For other reasons, but she’s pretty much out of commission for most things.
We are quite the household of gimps!
I’m really fighting the urge to take more painkillers and take a nap right now.
Well. I can at least take the painkillers!
The frustrating thing is, if we don’t get things done today, it won’t get done tomorrow; tomorrow is our first stock up shopping trip in the city. The day after, we’re supposed to get more rain. Then we’re back in the city again, to meet up with a friend that’s back in Canada. Then another trip to the city to do the second stock up shopping trip… on the weekend? After the weekend? Somewhere in there, we’ll be getting contacted about the flat tire I dropped off at the garage, and if all goes well, we’ll be getting that put back on, and the spare stored again. By the time all that is done, we’ll probably be past our last frost date and need to start planting things!
So those beds have got to get done!
At least we do have some spaces ready to plant in.
The double lilac in the old kitchen garden are starting to really open up. With the recent deluge we had, with other areas getting snow, quite a few people on my gardening groups lamented the loss of everything they planted on the May long weekend. Quite a few others responded by saying to not put out any tender transplants or seeds until after the lilacs start to bloom.
We have 5 different kinds of lilacs, and they all bloom at different times. These double lilacs bloom first, and we’re still almost a week away from our last frost date! So that’s a rule of thumb I’m going to ignore! 😄
Speaking of thumbs, we’ve got more Red Thumb and Purple Caribe potatoes coming up. No sign of the German Butterball, but they were planted quite a while later. Of the sugar snap peas, the first ones we planted still have a whole three sprouts growing, but the second planting has quite a few breaking ground now! The carrots are still so tiny, it’s hard to tell how many have actually survived. We’ll need to plant more, anyhow. The spinach seems to be struggling, too. We’ve had both excellent results with spinach, and absolutely awful results. In this bed, though, I would have expected better results. We’ll see how they do as our weather clears.
I also spotted some tiny, distinctive leaves in the wattle weave bed. The chamomile successfully self sowed!
I headed out to go to my mother’s early, first to make sure the truck was prepped for her to be able to climb in, and to be able to get her folded up walker in, behind her seat. The little step stool I got was also handy. Of course, I checked the tires, because I always check the tires! The spare is holding up nicely, but that front driver’s side tire needed a top up again. It’ll be good when we can finally change out those valve stems, but my goodness, our budget has been hit hard these last few months.
Before going to my mother’s, I swung by the post office to get the mail. I’ll get to what was in there in just a little bit! As I was in the truck, updating the family before leaving, who should pull in, but our vandal. At first, he seemed to avoid looking at me, but as he got to the door of the store, he actually waved hello, pleasantly, before heading in. My hands were occupied, so I just smiled and nodded. I have heard that he’s been going to AA and such, as well as struggling with health issues, so maybe he’s improving. I’m not holding my breath, but there was a time when we were very close. One can hope things will get better.
Once at my mother’s, I was early enough that we could go over a few things first. She had two shopping lists; one for the pharmacy, and one for the grocery store. She also had a few little things she needed help with that I could do when we got back, plus some stuff she wanted me to take home with me. This included a church bulletin, which is basically just a newsletter. When we had a church to go to in the city, I really liked their bulletins, as they were basically what the service was for the day, with either responses right in the bulletin, or page numbers for them in service books/hymnals. This was especially appreciated when we first starting going there.
Gosh, I miss that church.
Along with the bulletin, she had a couple of women’s magazines for me. The social workers that visit her building give them to her, then she passes them on to me instead of putting them in recycling. I told her, we don’t read them, so go ahead and recycle them. This was about the only time my mother went on a bit of a rampage. Apparently, she wanted us to read the magazines because we (meaning my daughters) don’t go anywhere (she assumes), and don’t do anything (???), so we need to be exposed to stuff like magazines. I told her, these particular magazines are pretty much all about selling weight loss products. Oh, but they have good recipes! To which I said, Mom. We have the Internet. We have access to everything that’s in this magazine, and more. If fact, we can have access to these magazines, too! She finally stopped pushing after that. I must say, I am getting rather tired of her basically giving us her garbage to get rid of.
Speaking of which, she also had a container of something frozen… for the cats.
*sigh*
At least this time, it wasn’t something full of onions! I mentioned that onions are poisonous to cats, and I think she remembered.
We left fairly early for her appointment, so we had a bit of a wait. That gave me time to show her some photos and videos on my phone that my brother and his wife had sent me, as they are currently out of province. As time passed, I ended up showing her pictures on Pinterest to keep her occupied. I know what to look for, for her, and she seems to really enjoy it. She never got much chance to complain about how long it was taking, which she started to do a whole 3 minutes past her appointment time. 😄
The appointment itself went far more quickly than I expected. When we told the doctor we were there for a long term care assessment, she looked up the file and read the report from the woman that assessed my mother’s cognitive abilities a while back. The one area of note involved memory loss – more short term than long term. There is a medication that can help with that, but I already know my mother wouldn’t want to take another prescription. It turns out to be a moot point. One of the medications my mother is on is for a heart condition, and this medication is dangerous for people with heart conditions. Not that my mother actually has one. When she last saw the coronary specialist, it was shortly after we moved here, and I was there for it, along with my brother. My mother has a very healthy heart, and she was most unhappy to hear that, since she was convinced she was having heart problems and that he must be lying to her (we now know she was feeling really bad heartburn, but it took a few years to figure that out!). This heart medication she’s on is for something else. However, if there’s any sort of contraindication, my mother is not going to get this other prescription.
As for the long term care assessment, I was expecting my mother to get lots of questions, but the doctor basically accepted that, if my mother feels she needs to be in long term care, then she needs to be in long term care! There are just hoops to jump. The first ones, we could take care of right away. My mother got requisitions for lab work, chest X-ray and an EKG. All of that was available right across the waiting room. The only set back there was my mother had to get onto a bed for the EKG. She really struggled to get up there, and there wasn’t any way for us to help her. There was a stool available, but that was actually more difficult. Later on, as she was struggling to get into the truck, she told me it was easier to do that, then get onto that bed for her EKG!
The next things she needs will be done later. She’s got a referral for a home care panel, which will be done in her home, and she has a referral for a brain MRI. Once the doctor gets the last of the results, it all gets sent in for the long term care referral. I’m assuming there is some sort of approval process, then she gets put onto a waiting list.
I had been told we’d be asked to give the names of our top three preferred long term care centres, and I had that ready. However, when it came up, the doctor said there isn’t a choice. You get wherever there’s an opening. Which I found rather strange. Still, even if she doesn’t get in where she wants to be, my mother can be transferred later, when there is an opening. Transfers take precedence over the waiting list.
So the ball is now rolling. My mother is getting increasingly eager to move into a nursing home! I think part of that eagerness is because she feels that, if she ever did need help where she is now, like if she had a fall or something, the people around her couldn’t be relied on to come to her aid. She wants to be somewhere with a staff that has that ability to help, and I think she recognizes her own decline, to a certain extent. Talking about things like memory loss, during the drive back, we talked about things like forgetting the stove on – something she is already extremely cautious about, even if she hasn’t used the stove! When I commented that, if she were having such issues, she wouldn’t even know it, she immediately agreed. I think that was something else she was aware of, but didn’t have the vocabulary to express.
So that was done.
Before taking her home, we made the stops we needed for her shopping. She stayed in the truck! After everything was brought in and put away, I did the few things she needed help with in her apartment. By then, it was time for her to take her evening meds, and she was feeling really tired. So was I!
Once at home and I brought in the mail, I had a package I was told was coming – but the contents were a rather hilarious surprise!
The ingredients are pumpkin, flax seed, coconut, chicory root, turmeric, ginger and banana. The dose for under 25 pounds is 1/2 Tbsp per day. The container holds about 28 Tbsp. When we make our cat soup again (we are currently out of wet cat food), this can replace the ground pumpkin seeds we are using now. Until then, it can be dusted onto the kibble.
Not all the cats have … issues… but it certainly won’t hurt! Turmeric is anti-inflammatory, and I’m sure our elderly cats will appreciate that, too. It should be interesting to see how they respond to it! Apparently, cats like it enough that it comes with a warning that this is to be used as if it were a treat, not as a meal, and to start off slow.
So that is something we will start using tomorrow. The lysine we ordered came in early, along with some other cat meds, too.
Yes!!! I am so thrilled. Ashley, from Gardening in Canada, got her hacked channel back! I’m amazed it happened to so quickly, to be honest, and I think it had a lot to do with the GiC crew making a big stink about it with reporting the channel as hacked.
To mark the event, a very exhausted Ashley made an unedited May garden tour video to mark the occasion.
I am so happy for her! Finally, something went right. 😁😁
For us, I’m skipping a May garden tour video, mostly because there isn’t much of anything to show that isn’t being more effectively shared in the blog posts I’ve been doing. Hopefully, I’ll have a garden tour video with plenty to show, in the middle or June or so.
I was a bit later heading out this morning, so there were plenty of yard cats to greet me. I didn’t bother trying to do a head count, though. I spotted Broccoli, so as soon as the kibble was doled out, I went around the house to the old garden shed with some food to leave for her, and to check on her babies.
I was able to pick them up and cuddle them for a bit, then set them safe in the kibble bin while I straightened out their “nest”. Then it was another cuddle before putting them back and leaving food for their mama.
I did have a pleasant surprise while putting the food out earlier, too.
I saw Judgement! He hasn’t been around for weeks and, my goodness, he was a hungry boy! Wherever it is he wanders, he isn’t finding much food, and was looking quite skinny. Poor thing.
After I came back from tending Broccoli’s babies, I startled a skunk that was in the kibble house. The direction he wanted to run off was filled by a cat, so he ran in circles for a bit before squeezing under the cat house. It gave me a chance to see that one of his ears was just loaded with wood ticks! Poor thing.
Today has been nice and sunny, with just a few clouds. The rain has stopped, so I put the tray of transplants out. In general, the cats leave the transplants alone. The only time there is an issue is when they sometimes try to go through a tray to get to a window or something.
Usually, that just results in a knocked over pot, but the trays with cardboard and peat pots had been watered. When the pots are damp, they damage easily. It looks like a cat tried to step into one, and it broke. The seedling inside – one of the melons that was not part of the Summer of Melons mix – was undamaged, though. I found a small pot in the sun room and was able to transfer it over. The drainage holes in these pots are quite large, so I put the remains of the cardboard pot on the bottom to keep the soil from washing out. What I could no longer do, however, was read the label for which type of melon it was! Probably Sarah’s Choice, but it might have been a watermelon. Well, we’ll have another mystery melon is all. If it survives being moved to its new home. I had one Pixie melon on this tray and, for some reason, it just withered away. We have two more in the house, though. This morning, I transferred the last seedlings out of the aquarium greenhouse and into the mini greenhouse frame at the window. They’ll be moved to the sun room soon.
Things are still really wet out there, of course. It’ll probably be a few days before the lowest areas drain, but it does make weeding easier! Aside from that, though, we’re not going to try and get more progress on the big stuff. Tomorrow, I’m taking my mother to a medical appointment for long term care assessment, which will take up most of the day, so I won’t be doing any big stuff then, either. My daughter might be able to get some progress with the dead trees she’s processing for the raised beds, but the spruce grove has quite a few low spots that would be filled with water, too, so we’ll see.
This is usually when I say, “little by little, it’ll get done”, but right now, we’re not even getting a little done on these jobs! However, we are warming up and staying dry for the next while, so we’ll get there.
So the rain started early this morning, and has been pretty constant, so far. The rainfall warnings include possible flooding in places, including our region. Our region is huge, though, and contains quite a few rural municipalities. Where we are is unlikely to have much, if any, where we are. The newly graded roads, however, are probably going to be a real mess!
With the rain, I did short rounds this morning and skipped switching out the trail cams, since I won’t want water getting into the cameras. Short rounds was good, though, because…
… a lovely surprise!!!!
My husband actually came out with me!!!! He caned it rather than drag his walker into the rain, but he did it! I could see he was really struggling near the end, but he did it. I honestly can’t remember the last time he went outside and walked around. It’s probably been at least a year.
As we went around, I checked the beds and we had a lovely surprise in the bed of Purple Caribe potatoes.
The first plants have emerged! Just two, so far that we can see, but this rain is going to be so good for them.
When I was mowing yesterday, I’d put one of the raised bed covers over the German Butterball potatoes, then forgot to take it off, so my husband helped me lift it off to the side, so they could get some rain, too. I had also forgotten to put the extensions on the eavestrough downspouts back after mowing. I’ll have to check the new basement later, and see if that caused any problems. The one corner was already damp and has a fan on it. That was the corner a rain barrel had been left to overflow during a wet summer, and is why we now have weeping tile problems. This basement used to always stay dry, even when the old basement was wet, but not anymore. My brother had found that corner so wet, for so long, there was mold. He cleaned it up with bleach, and when we clear the basement, we also bleached that entire corner, but it still gets wet at times.
So forgetting the extension on the downspout above that corner is not a good thing!
When feeding the outside cats, I didn’t see Broccoli, but we still went around to the garden shed. If I think she might be in there with her babies, I knock on the door, first. Opening the door still startles her, but she doesn’t always run out completely. She gets in and out through the hole in the back wall, and there’s an old chair in that corner. Sometimes, I can just see her butt under the chair, as she waits while I put food out for her. Today, she did actually leave the shed, so I took advantage of that to pick up her kittens and straighten out the self warming mat for them. My husband got to see them, too. If it hadn’t been raining, I would have passed them to him to hold while I straightened out the bedding. More human interaction would be a good thing, but not if they get too chilled in the process!
Speaking of chilled, as I write this, we are at 5C/41F – with a wind chill of -4C/25F! Our expected high for today is supposed to be 8C/46F According to the weather radar, we are under the light rainfall area, with the moderate rainfall passing by to the west of us, with a few places in the south and west of us, getting occasional heavy rainfall. In total, we’re expected to get 50-60mm of rain, which is roughly 2 – 2.5 inches. The rain, with another high of 8C/46F, is expected to continue until about noon tomorrow. Starting Sunday, things are supposed to warm up and we’ll have dry weather for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be enough time for us to get those beds reworked and ready for planting! We should probably lay plastic down to help warm the soil up faster, too. Looking at the long range forecast, there are still going to be cooler nights in the second week of June. Not cool enough for frost, but cool enough that I’d want to find ways to protect our more heat loving transplants.
Which won’t even be in the ground for more than a week.
Pretty much everything we do, revolves around the weather.
If the really long range forecasts can be trusted (they can’t), we’ll have only one day of rain in June, and none in July. June is supposed to have a few highs reaching or surpassing 30C/86F, but right now, July is supposed to have highs of 25C/77F, every day. Literally, every day except the first four, which are supposed to have highs of 24C/75F. So you know that’s going to change a lot by the time we get there!
Well, that should be good for all the squash and melons we’re planting this year! Plus the eggplant and peppers. As long as we can keep up with the watering. One of our best gardening years was a drought year with heat waves. I’m still amazed by how many melons we got that year. It was so hard to get them properly watered on the squash tunnel, and the plants were so spindly, and they they produced so well! This year, they will be closer to the house for easier watering, and have better soil conditions. I am hopeful that we will have a much better gardening year, this year, and actually harvest enough to do some canning and preserving of things other than tomatoes and onions!
The cherries at the edge of the spruce grove are blooming like crazy right now. We might actually have berries from them this year. The one by the house – the one we plan to keep – is just starting to bloom. Usually, it blooms before the ones in the bushes.
The different types of lilacs are showing flower buds, but only the double lilac in the old kitchen garden is starting to show a few open blossoms. Most of the crab apple trees have buds, but the one big one that has tasty apples just sort of exploded in flowers this morning.
The grape hyacinths have their flower cones up. Little spots of purple, all over the area they’re in. Unfortunately, they are almost completely hidden by the purple bellflower that has taken over every open space among the trees. The area is too large to weed by hand, but I don’t want to use tools or the weed trimmer, and risk accidentally taking out the grape hyacinths.
I’m really looking forward to when the lilacs start opening. We’ve got five different kinds that my mother planted, and they all bloom at different types. Everything smells amazing for weeks!
I also made sure to check our little strawberry patch. Something – likely the cats – keeps digging into the mulch, but not the strawberries. I just need to put the mulch back in the morning, and everything else is okay.
It looks like 8 out of 9 are doing quite well right now. The 9th one does have leaf buds on it, so it will hopefully recover soon. Considering we ordered a package of 8, that one’s a bonus, anyhow!
Hopefully, these will do quite well where they are – as long as the bed doesn’t get invaded by those Chinese elm roots again!
The rhubarb in the south corner of the old kitchen garden is doing very well. I harvested a bunch, which should open things up and give the other stalks more room to grow. I have no idea what we will do with it. Maybe we have the ingredients for the rhubarb cake my daughter likes to make.
Today is turned out to be an off day. Since I did a dump run and a Walmart trip, it should have been a recovery day. Instead, I woke up stiff and sore in every joint. This, on top of a mostly sleepless night. I couldn’t get myself to bed until well past 1am; I knew trying to go to bed earlier would just be an exercise in frustration. Then, once I did finally get to bed, several cats suddenly got the zoomies, and were chasing each other around the house. That, of course, included running right over me in bed, as well as getting into placed they are not allowed.
Still, I should not have been waking up in so much pain, and just sooooo sleepy.
Then I checked the weather and realized why.
The rain we weren’t supposed to get until Friday arrived early. Just scattered showers, but still cloudy and dreary out there. Depending on which weather app I check, we’ll either get a bit of rain today, none tomorrow, then rain on Friday – or we will be getting scattered showers tomorrow as well.
This sort of weather has always made me feel sleepy. Even when I was a kid, it had that affect on me. Then I developed osteo-arthritis, and this sort of weather triggers it, badly. Everything hurts. Not severely, but enough to make moving around rather unpleasant, to say the least!
Things are supposed to clear up and warm up a bit, later, so I think I’ll take some painkillers and try lying down for a couple of hours – if I can squeeze in amongst the cats, that seem to be worn out from all their running around last night, and are now sprawled across my bed!
I can’t afford too many days like this. There is too much work to do outside!
Finding and fighting the bigger tree roots was bad enough. Once I was finally clear of those and working my way through new ground to the other end, I had another issue. At about the middle, I started hitting mats of Creeping Charlie. At that point, I didn’t even try to weed them, and was just digging out and tossing aside sod. Plus, I kept hitting rocks. Not particularly large rocks, but lots of them.
So now the new edges of the bed are clear, and the soil piled in the middle … mostly. The hole where I dug out the most roots got filled, but that’s it.
The next bed is probably going to be done differently. One side of it is so infested with Creeping Charlie, it’s not worth weeding or shifting the soil I’ll probably remove the infested soil completely. Which sucks, because we worked really hard to amend that soil for our vegetables, not for the Creeping Charlie!
I won’t be starting it today, though. Time to pain killer up again, and take a break.
I keep forgetting that I’m getting too old and broken for this.
I decided not to continue with prepping the garden bed I started working on yesterday. That area was in full sun, it was hot, and the mosquitoes were out in full force. So, other than helping my daughter drag out the first of the 18′ logs she prepped (she also cut two 4′ pieces for the ends, and they are now waiting to be debarked and have any branch bits cut flat), I stayed inside.
Instead, I went to be unusually early for me – at about 8pm – and actually fell asleep and everything! I was awake by 5am. Usually, I do my morning rounds, have breakfast, then head back out to do the more laborious stuff. This time, I made sure to eat first, then just stayed out after doing my rounds, so work on the garden bed.
I got distracted.
The first distraction was remembering to put netting over the chimney block planters at the chain link fence.
I had a roll of netting just long enough to cover the length of these blocks. It was actually longer than needed, but this piece has a tear near one end that was “sewn” together with twine. I made sure that end was the excess netting wrapped around the far end of the blocks
So that area is now protected from getting smothered by the elm seeds.
Of course, I checked the other beds, then gathered my tools to continue working on the low raised bed.
I had the loppers with me, to cut away the roots I knew I would find.
… I went into the edge of the spruce grove and started clearing things away from the Saskatoon bushes. There’s a lot of chokecherries crowding them – one bunch was so entwined, I accidentally cut away some Saskatoon branches along with the chokecherry! There were quite a lot of dead, broken branches to clear away. Those were broken by the deer standing up on their hind legs to reach the berries, and pulling the branches down. There was an elm growing right from the based of some Saskatoons. I cut most of it away, but will have to come back with a saw to get the rest of it.
That was just the big stuff. The next thing to do will be to clear away the false spirea.
Again.
I had this whole area cleared of the spirea, a few years ago! It’s all completely filled in again. That stuff is so hard to get rid of, and so invasive!
That will be for another time. Getting those chokecherries out was the main thing. The Saskatoons will no longer be competing with them for water and nutrients, and they will get more sunlight, too. These Saskatoons are the healthiest ones we’ve found. There are others, out by the garage, but every year, as the berries start to form, they start to get what looks like some sort of fungus. So we want to be keeping these ones by the house well cared for and healthy.
That done, it was time to finally get back to that bed!
The first part of the job went well enough. I cleared the weeds out of the second half of the bed, and started piling the soil up onto the half I cleared yesterday, shifting the edge of the bed in the process.
Trouble started at the end nearest the trees, where I was breaking new ground to the 18′ mark. I already knew there were roots under there, but I kept finding more! The finer roots are one thing, but those larger ones – even the smallest of them – are much more difficult to get out. After shoveling the soil away as best I could, I took a hose to them. Partly to make them easier to see, partly to wash the grit off the roots so I could more easily cut them with the loppers and not damage the cutting edge.
I didn’t get all of them out, but I did make sure to cut them at the tree side of the roots, pull them up and dig them out as far as was reasonable, then cut them out. Anything left should die off.
I hope.
Once those were out, I started putting some of the soil back into the hole and leveling off the side where a log will be placed. Then I started digging out past the existing bed, along the 18′ line to corner marking the new 4′ width of the bed, breaking new ground.
Where I found more roots, besides the one that I was hitting when putting the marker back up.
These ones continued through to what will be the path between beds, so I cut them away to that point.
At which point, it was time for a hydration break!
One of the things I remembered to do once inside was to turn the aquarium greenhouse lights back on. Since I was there anyhow, I decided to check on the pumpkin seeds I’d scarified and set to pre-germinate.
I’ve stopped for a hydration break and to get out of the sun and heat. As I write this, we’ve reached our predicted high of 19C/66F. The winds are still pretty high, which does help, but it was time to go in! I’m not sure if I’ll be heading back out again today, or not. It depends on how my pain levels are. I did remember to take painkillers before I started, at least!
I got a couple of “before” pictures before I started. The marker for what will be the path between the bed that got done yesterday is almost exactly at the middle of the next bed to work on. Which means half the bed will need to be shifted on top of the other half.
The first thing that needed to be done was to loosen the soil in the entire bed with the garden fork. Years of amending these beds has really made a difference! When we started growing here, we could barely get a spade or garden fork into the soil more than a couple of inches. Now, I can push the tines on the garden fork all the way into the ground! The rains have certainly helped to soften the soil, too. It is already just moist, though, and not at all soggy.
The drainage here is a bit too good!
Next was to start weeding along the side that will be the middle of the bed, once everything is shifted over. This bed had a lot more dandelion tap roots to get rid of, compared to the crab grass rhizomes. The rhizomes are more of an issue along the edges.
As expected, once I started getting closer to the trees, I was catching more and more elm roots. Plus more larger rocks. One of the marking posts kept falling down because it couldn’t go deep enough into the soil. I ended up getting a trowel and digging out the rock it was hitting, right at the 4′ measurement that needed to be marked.
Then I started hitting larger roots.
I extended the weeding up to the 18′ mark, beyond the existing bed, which is about 17′ long, counting the width of the logs that had framed it. In the last picture of the above Instagram slide show, you can see one of the tree roots partially pulled up and draped over the handle of the garden fork. There’s another, larger root that runs across and into what is currently the path. I’ll have to bring the loppers over cut that, and any other roots I find along the way.
I just had to get a picture of the tree branches against the sky. The maple trees are leafing out nicely, with all the rain we’ve been having, but the Chinese elms… They’re not getting their leaves yet. They get their seeds, first. All that green on those branches is seeds, seeds and more seeds.
Seeds that will mature, dry up, turn brown, and fall.
A whole storm of them, blowing and drifting and getting into everything.
So. Many. Seeds.
I’ve started to really, really dislike these trees! Not only do their roots invade up into our garden beds and grow bags, but they suffocate everything around them with their seeds – and once those little buggers start germinating, they have ridiculously long and strong tap roots that makes weeding them far more difficult than one would think, when pulling on a tiny little seedling to weed them out!
I wonder if I have enough plastic to cover these beds and solarize them before their log walls get added? I definitely have enough for at least a couple of beds. It might be worth sacrificing more of our clear garbage bags, if it’ll keep those god-awful seeds off the bare soil!
While working, I was thinking about what to do with the paths, since they are basically all crab grass, not lawn grass. It might be worth investing in some landscape cloth, weed whacking them as close to the ground as possible, covering them with the landscape cloth, then covering them with wood chips.
Something to think about, after these beds are done!
The Re-Farmer 