Friday Fun

Well, Mom has still not left the hospital. One of these days...

It's a lazy Friday morning. We've been busy this week, starting early each today. Today's busyness involves an afternoon trip to O'Hare, so I am starting slowly today.

This week's garden work involved triage. About a week after I started them, a certain puppy who shall remain nameless dumped my seedlings on the floor while chasing the cat through my grow-light shelving. I had foolishly labeled them very inefficiently, just placing the labels in the tray next to each row. About 5 seedlings were destroyed by the dumping, and the rest were jumbled and shuffled. I was counting on planting by appearance, rather than be variety; not very scientific, but, oh, well. This week, she found herself again next to my seedlings, which had been fertilized with fish emulsion. "Mmmmm...," she said, and ate about a third of them. So I now have a messed up jumble of cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli and lettuce seedlings. The lettuces will be fun; mixed salad greens right in the bed, ready to toss into a bowl. The rest, we'll just play, "Let's see what this blossoms into."

Yesterday onions were planted. I put floating row covers over them, trying to keep them a little warmer, and, more importantly, to keep the chickens out! The garlic is up, the asparagus is weeded and fertilized, the raspberries are pruned and some transplanted. It just gets more fun everyday!

This weekend, two more raised beds will be installed in the garden. I'll move a dwarf peach seedling out of the flower bed it lived in last summer. Stalls will be cleaned, compost will be moved. I'd like to get the chicken fencing repaired so the little darlings stay in their pen. We'll see!