JCasa BLOG

starting over

[photos from May 2012]

we put in the garden last month.  and it was coming along quite well.  read:  was.

flashback to last year, which was so bad here weatherwise with all the rain - we harvested ONE tomato, a handful of sugar snaps, a few zucchini and lettuce.  otherwise nothing took.

but this year we were hopeful.  the weather has been glorious, things were sprouting and growing so very well.

until last night.

something - most likely bunnies - had a grand old feast in our garden.  gone are two rows of corn that had reached almost a foot in height, a row each of bush beans and edamame, sugar snaps that were just beginning to take to the trellis have been nibbled back to almost nothing, and the 15 or so tomatoes i saw yesterday (yesterday!) are gone.  gone.  (apparently they don't care for arugula or zuchhini - or maybe those rassafrassa wabbits were full.)

10 years we've had a garden here and never had need for a fence (my neighbor told us early on that the hawks "take care of" the small animal situation).  but i should have known something like this would happen, what with the many many bunnies we've been seeing.  they are sooo cute hiphopping about, awwww... until the garden has been dug up.

[insert expletive]

so... my oldest and i spent the better part of Tuesday morning putting in stakes + fencing around the garden.  we'll replant corn, beans + edamame, nurture the peas back onto the trellis and hope for the best.  if i am correct in my bunny assumption, and if the unpredictable Ohio weather continues to swing in our favor this summer, we may still have a shot at a fruitful garden after all.

but if it's deer... then it's off to the farmers' market for us.  xoxo

10 minutes a day

i think that's a phrase i've heard a bazillion times in my life.  whether it be situps, meditation, practicing piano, whatever - there's something so approachable about 10 minutes.  not too much a time commitment, completely doable.  we can all squeeze in 10 minutes of something a day, right?  well, that's where i am with the weeding.  a simple walk around the house with a pickle bucket to collect weedy nuisances.  i can do that.

monday morning bright and early, the mister joined me for 3 hours of schlepping + spreading the remainder of mulch mountain in our front tree beds.  he was not happy about it and did not enjoy it in the slightest, but he joined me when i went out there - and i really appreciate it.

i think in a few years i may move some plants around and create a nice hosta garden in the big bed, but this year it had become a weedy mess with poison ivy and those prickly behemoths that you can't pull out without risk of injury.  i pulled what i could, and then used this method of laying newspaper under the mulch to kill off the weeds (the paper breaks down over time and the weed seeds shouldn't be able to spread).  i'll let you know how that works out.

my fingers are crossed.  and the weeding is done for today.  xoxo

lush

i got a pedicure on wednesday.  then i stopped by the greenhouse and ordered 5 yards of mulch which was delivered that very afternoon.

something is wrong with my sequencing, yet so very right.

8 hours of gardening in less than 24 hours makes for an achy body, let me tell you.  that said, it was very zen.  the afternoon it was delivered, i weeded and pruned and mulched while the girls entertained themselves on mulch mountain.  who knew?  then thursday morning bright and early, as soon as they were on the bus, i grabbed my shovel and got back to work yet again.  it was so quiet outside and the weather was glorious, which made the exhausting work of schlepping and bending and reaching and planting and transplanting and lifting and stretching and slipping-but-not-falling all the more tolerable, dare i say enjoyable.  the reward for all my efforts?

this achy body will be enjoying a lovely memorial weekend filled with parties, parades, carnivals, cookouts, cocktails, and only a wee bit of yard work.  about half of mulch mountain remains, which will be enough to do the front tree beds.  but i am calling in reinforcements for those - somebody else (you know who you are) is going to be the mulch schlepper.  most surely these feet have earned some time in the hammock, as well.

wishing you + yours a lovely weekend!  xoxo

spring flowers

i spent a goodly part of a recent saturday extracting the Italian parsley beast that had spread itself throughout ALL the flower beds (from one tiny plant last year, oh my), and it's nice to see some pretties blooming once again.  there is still much work to be done, and we have not yet touched the vegetable beds, but we'll get there.

what are your garden plans for this year?  are you growing anything new?  i sprinkled a packet of wildflower seeds somewhere where i shouldn't have late last summer, and am now finding all matter of weeds where i don't want them.  my good intentions resulted in green behemoths towering over delicate forget-me-nots and the like, and that simply won't do.  i need to plan a bit better what is going on in the gardens, and actually keep a gardening journal of sorts.  do you keep a gardening journal?  has it helped with how you chronicle to evolution of your gardens?

but much to my surprise and delight, there is a new bed of statuesque daisies on the side of the house.  and apparently, somebody loves me.  xoxo