Violas and Lilac, First Attempt

 Took a trip to a local nursery.

Loved it! I'll be going back...often.

They had a cat named Max that Becca loved.

Bought this whole flat of violas (Sorbet Mix), and a lilac bush (among other things).

Brought them home, did some pooper-scooping on the hill.

Then this came along.

 The third hailstorm of the day.

I decided to try again a different day.

Slope Dreams

Lately I've been dreaming up what I want to do with our back slope, in addition to the three garden-bed terraces for vegetables. It really needs some shrubs for wind-break for the terraces, and something other than that course grass to hold up the slope would be nice, too.

My current plan is to do at least one lilac bush to help with wind break, up between the aspens, maybe.  Some shrub roses would be nice, as well, to help filter the wind. Violas around the base of the apple trees (coming in seed order).  At the top of the slope I'm thinking about doing either a hedge of some sort to help with privacy (all we currently have is a chain-link fence), or possibly a planting of sunflowers all the way across.

I want to leave the small mountain ash that's to the side of the garden.

Starting next fall, I'm going to plant little pockets of daffodils, crocuses, and other spring bulbs scattered across the "wild" part of the slope. I think it would be so cheering to look out and see little patches of color here and there amidst the drab brown late-winter grass.  Before I do that, though, the whole slope needs some serious pooper-scooping. {sigh} At least it's not on the lawn as much, right?

I need to find a place for some grape vines and more raspberries, but haven't decided where the best placement of those would be. Blueberries would be a bonus too, but they might have to wait a year.

Seed Order: Thoughts

I finally got some seeds ordered today, from Territorial Seed Co.  I started off planning to order vegetables today, from a different source (Seeds of Change) and ended up ordering flowers from TSC. I made the switch after talking with a good friend here, who has started seeds lots of times and also purchased plants. 

The vegetables/fruits I would want to start early would be beans, cantaloupe, and possibly some others. But she pointed out that if I really only want 2-4 cantaloupe plants, for example, I might as well buy the starts. They would cost the same as the seed packet containing 100 seeds, but I wouldn't have all the work/worry of starting them myself only to have them possibly die off at some point, so all that effort wasted. Plus, if I didn't like the variety I wouldn't be stuck with 96 extra seeds.

Many of the seeds I was going to purchase can be direct-seeded here, though the growing season is shorter than Missouri, so things like the corn, cucumbers, etc., I will probably just do that way.

Things like beans, peas, beets, etc., she thought was worth it to buy the seed packets, because you plant multiples of those every year to get a good crop.  What scared me away from ordering those, though, was the flat-rate shipping fee of $8.00 for my measly 6 packet order. Not to mention that fact that I still have some half-packets left from previous years' gardening experiments. Also, a bunch of the ones I wanted most from Seeds of Change were out of stock--probably due to my late ordering.

TSC has about the same shipping fee, but I guess I ordered enough (8-10 packets) to feel okay about it. Plus, since I got all flowers, I can see myself using up the entire packet over several years, because again, you always tend to plant them in multiples.

Several of the catalogs I signed up for only ship live plants, which I decided against buying as well. For one, they are very expensive and shipping is even more. Plus there's always the chance that they get stressed or poorly handled or die en route then you're out all that money with nothing to show for it.  I would rather support my local nursery anyway, as they are likely to have the cultivars that do well in our area, and (lastly) I can wait to buy them until I'm ready to put them in the ground, rather than have a shipment come in the middle of a late snowstorm, or something.

So (phew!) $27 later, I've got a shipment of FLOWER seeds coming and a plan to go with my friend to a local nursery tomorrow to check out their selection of early spring veggies, lilac bushes, and  summer bulbs.

SNOW!

It has snowed almost non-stop this whole week. We probably got 8-10 inches. Pretty. And pretty effective at cooling down my spring fever. I'm still thinking about gardens, but I spent some time finishing up a quilt this last week, rather than ordering seeds.

 Apple tree last night. (on right)



 Apple tree this morning.

 Snowy backyard.

 Closeup of big pine tree out front.

 Pine tree out front.

The view out my kitchen window.

Spring Fever

I've got at least a month to go, and I'm filling my head with plans and ideas from several different seed catalogs. A whole lot of wishful thinking is all it amounts to so far. The only thing I've decided for sure is that I want to plant violas around the base of our apple trees. A friend told me that the university usually has a big plant sale beginning of April and another in May, which would be a good place to find all my warm weather veggies--tomatoes, peppers, herbs, etc. 

Now if it would just warm up enough to get the garden beds finished, I would have some hope of actually putting in a garden this year.

Hope for spring to come sometime soon:
--I saw a robin a few weeks ago, when all winter it's been magpies and quail.

--Something peeking up here:

Not sure what these are but they make me think spring may be really be coming after all!

SNOW!

When we left the weekend before Thanksgiving, there was about 2 inches of snow on the ground.  Apparently it has been snowing pretty steadily ever since.  When the kids and I returned home one week later, we had a foot of snow.  I heard it's supposed to snow again this week.

All outside projects are stopped until further notice!

Weather Talk

We're finding the weather here is quite different from Springfield. No real surprise there, right? But one thing in particular that we've noticed is the WIND.  Last night it was so windy we could hardly sleep.  It blew open our fence gates, tearing off the latch in the process.  At least one tree in town went down and through a roof. We had some shingles on our lawn this morning.

It seems to primarily come from the west, and blows straight across our hillside in back where we plan to put the garden.  Right now Jason is fixing the gates, and reinforcing them several different ways, as tonight apparently there are supposed to be gusts up to 50 mph. If it's like this in the summer at all, it will wreak havoc on any garden.  So I've started to think about interplanting shrubs on the slope, between the aspens, to act as a windbreak for my little veggies next year.

We're reconsidering the shed design as well. Perhaps we will go back to the plan where the roof line being just above the fence and sloping up.  We're wondering if that would handle the wind better than a typical A-line roof.
Also, when I went out just a minute ago, it was hailing. Pea size, and not enough to pile up anywhere.

It has been a very rainy fall.  In fact, today when I felt some warmth on my arm in the kitchen, I thought I had left a burner on.  Nope, it was just sunlight coming through the window.  Oh yeah, that's what that feels like!

According to the weather man, it should snow by the end of this week, if not next.