April Showers

I played hookey yesterday as it was supposed to be the nicest day all week and Jim had the day off as well. Jim spent the morning golfing with his boyfriend and I went to Home Depot and Linder's checking to see if anyone got more veggie starters in, which they didn't. So instead I picked up another cheap hanging basket for outside and put some annuals in there. I also picked up a couple of the long planters so that I could have a little more space for my thai basil. I planted the thai basil in the left (long) planter and then some hot peppers in the right planter - I don't know which hot peppers because it was a mixed bag of sorts. In the big round planters I put in a bunch of fun annuals that I got at Linder's last week. I'm excited for them to grow up and fill up their pots.


I was messing around and putting some broken pavers between the sidewalk and my garden to help prevent run-off when Jim suggested that we do the same thing along the sidewalk and his raised garden by the house. So we went down to Menards and picked up some grey patio blocks, 17 of them to be exact for a cool price of $0.59/ea, for our new retaining wall project. Menards also had a sale on veggie starters (2 for $3) so we picked up a few vegetables that we didn't have yet in our big garden - so now in there we have zucchini, sugar snap peas, basil, parsley, cilantro, kale, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and green peppers. There is still room for a couple more things and I was thinking summer squash would be good, it's always delicious on the grill and especially with zucchini.

Back to the retaining wall project. Here is what we started with:


In the back little raised garden, where those patio bricks are already laid out, there were some lilies in there already. There's also a vine growing along the wooden fence. That is also where Jim has had his hot peppers planted for the past couple of years. But that whole area in front of there before the sidewalk is slanted and only weeds grow there, so every time is rains dirt runs off and gets the sidewalk all muddy. Here it is after we got done:


I like this picture cuz you can see Jim in the middle of a yawn in the upper left quadrant. He had a long day of golfing and doing what his wife says. I am unhappy with how I laid them out because, as you can see, towards the middle I didn't get them down far enough. Also, going to the right the sidewalk actually was less wide and so I couldn't just follow that all that way down to stay straight...and so the blocks lean in towards the bed at the far end. Hopefully I can let it go and not let it bother me for the entire summer. We filled the bed with topsoil and compost so it would be a mess if I were to take out a couple of blocks to try and fix it now. But it still looks better than it did before, it looks more clean for sure. I put an eggplant starter in there on the right end and plan to fill that up with eggplants once I can find some Chinese eggplant starters - I don't want to plant from seed because I am not that patient. But, to contradict myself, I did plant some beet seeds in a couple of rows along the entire left side. The seeds are pretty old (2004) so I am not necessarily expecting them to germinate. We'll see.

I think I can safely say that Phase II of the gardening has been completed.