Gardening, it's good for your health
In a strange connection of circumstance my DH foxglovehp and I are about to take our second long-ish (distance more than duration) road trip this month, after not having done much of any overnight travel in far too many years. The trip next week is to see our daughter graduate BCT (what I still call Basic Training, aka Bootcamp for the Army). I am covering an extra shift today, partially to be able to go on the trip next week. DH was sprung early on Friday, so instead of just some late evening tv watching time together, we had almost a whole day.
I mentioned in my last post that time was not on my side last year, when it came to gardening, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone, that a considerable amount of the early spring gardening is set aside for weeding and general clean up. I managed to spend some time Thursday morning in the garden, cleaning one of the perennial beds, cutting last year's stalks on the zebragrass and planting the not quite dead yet quinces. I also bought a new shovel http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=288181-302-1538600&lpage=none on Thursday afternoon and 4 cherry laurels for the back fence line.
I am very impressed with the new shovel. The laurels were balled and burlapped, so I wanted to plant them right away, before our trip. The location I selected for them is relatively hard-packed Virginia clay, mixed with nice sized chunks of granite and tree roots. No problem. 4 holes dug before DH was home, after that we wrestled the shrubs in place and filled them half-way and watered them in. Transferred an azelea I had placed badly a few years back. All very satisfying, all looks good, but yesterday afternoon, I had no grip strength and today my bones creak in a spectacular fashion.
After the heavy lifting, we burned some of the stuff I had cleaned out of the perennial bed so far and cleared the veggie garden by burning it, too (no veggies were harmed in this process, only last year's weeds). We had left the veg garden lay fallow last year, since no on was going to be there to tend to it, or eat anything that might grow. This year, the plan is to plot out the future raised beds and start building them (to be completed in phases over several seasons). There is a clean slate now, but it took a bit of doing and I almost set my pant leg on fire twice (fire sneaks up on you so very quickly).
So overall, a very satisfactory day in the garden, even if I tried to roast myself and am getting a bad case of creaky carcass, lol
I mentioned in my last post that time was not on my side last year, when it came to gardening, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone, that a considerable amount of the early spring gardening is set aside for weeding and general clean up. I managed to spend some time Thursday morning in the garden, cleaning one of the perennial beds, cutting last year's stalks on the zebragrass and planting the not quite dead yet quinces. I also bought a new shovel http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=288181-302-1538600&lpage=none on Thursday afternoon and 4 cherry laurels for the back fence line.
I am very impressed with the new shovel. The laurels were balled and burlapped, so I wanted to plant them right away, before our trip. The location I selected for them is relatively hard-packed Virginia clay, mixed with nice sized chunks of granite and tree roots. No problem. 4 holes dug before DH was home, after that we wrestled the shrubs in place and filled them half-way and watered them in. Transferred an azelea I had placed badly a few years back. All very satisfying, all looks good, but yesterday afternoon, I had no grip strength and today my bones creak in a spectacular fashion.
After the heavy lifting, we burned some of the stuff I had cleaned out of the perennial bed so far and cleared the veggie garden by burning it, too (no veggies were harmed in this process, only last year's weeds). We had left the veg garden lay fallow last year, since no on was going to be there to tend to it, or eat anything that might grow. This year, the plan is to plot out the future raised beds and start building them (to be completed in phases over several seasons). There is a clean slate now, but it took a bit of doing and I almost set my pant leg on fire twice (fire sneaks up on you so very quickly).
So overall, a very satisfactory day in the garden, even if I tried to roast myself and am getting a bad case of creaky carcass, lol