Today was sleep in and then garden day. Yeah, I love getting to sleep in a bit, and we trade off so Rob gets to sleep in tomorrow.
So, today we went to Home Depot, and spent some goodly money getting the lumber and wire mesh to make our first raised bed garden box (wire mesh to cover the bottom so no little critters will come up). It will be 4'x8', and have a few vegies, so we can get used to the idea of taking care of our own garden bed. I figured it was better to start small, and slowly add in beds from there.
We also picked up 6 marigold seedlings 'Durango Mix' (full sun, medium water, 8-15" tall, 12-15" wide) to add some color in our front flower bed. Seems marigolds are the only thing that will survive that much direct sun (all day long), that much water from the regular sprinklers, and not die. And sometimes they do die, if one plant blocks the spray from the sprinkler head, so we are prepared to add in direct water lines if needed.
So once we got home, I watered the poor dry flowers, and let them sit a bit while I trimmed one of my day lillies, which really needs to be split up. We'll do that later. Then after a small snack, went back out and planted my new marigolds.
Rob spent that time hoeing the future garden bed outline, since the weed whacker kept dying on him (and we don't know why). Most of the grasses I will just cover over, and let them become part of the garden, since there will be lots of dirt over them. He then spent time cutting the wood 4"x4"s for the box supports. We will get the wood together tomorrow and start the infiling.
I tried to find some seedlings for the veggies while at the store, but they only had the last of the winter crops up, which I don't need right now. I tried looking at seeds, but the aisle was small, and Maurelle decided she wanted lots and lots of sunflower seeds, which she grabbed by the handful and tossing them into our cart. Uhm, no, I can wait on the seeds a bit. Besides, I really should write up a plan of which seeds to get, which I've yet to do. I've got a general idea, just don't really know what is available on varieties, other than a few specifics we must hunt down.
After all was done, the kids and I even took a short walk around the neighborhood, mainly so Rob could saw wood in peace.
So, now I am a bit bored. I want to work on the gardening stuff, but Maurelle is demanding to play with any of my gardening books, or even play on this computer. Right now she's distracted so I can write now. But back to the books, and figureing this whole thing out... I feel such a noob right now, as it has been a very long time since I did any sort of gardening stuff... and my usual word of wisdom was my Mom, who can't help us anymore; but man did she know how to grow tomatoes.
Hmmm... must find a good photo for my gardening entries. I did take some of my marigolds, before I clipped the flowers off, but that wasn't very special... and my roses right now are still rather bare, since I only trimmed them down a few weeks ago. I'll look around and see what I can find.