Never Give up! Never Surrender!

You beat Randy in the turd toss?!

It seems like forever since the last entry - I am going on 2 weeks - but it has been insanely busy. I had 2 nieces and a nephew graduate from high school and I went through my own first "end-of-the-school-year" at the same time. Who knew finishing up the school year was as busy as it is. I knew it was chaotic, but busy?! Who'd a thought.

Anyhoo, while I was down picking up seaweed, I also pick up some cow manure. One of the benefits of living in a small town is that your neighbor could very well be goats. Or in my sister's case, cows. Her backyard butts up against a cow pasture and they have a gate from their fence giving them access to the pasture. Why, you ask, would you want access to the cow pasture? There is a pond back there not to mention the probably the biggest private meadow any kid would want.

So while I was down there a couple of weeks back. I picked up cow manure and seaweed. As I was driving back home, I felt and empathetic...chagrin... to all motorcycles I passed. The smell coming from the back of the truck must have been unique to say the least.

But I got some top drawer fertilizer! Or let's hope so a least.

He took a GI Joe and packed him in a bunch of ...seaaa weeeed.

A friend loaned me his F150 for a couple of days so I made plans to go visit family. I was raised near Galveston and in my time on Google, I've discovered that seaweed makes for an EXCELLENT fertilizer/mulch/tea. The main benefit of seaweed is that it develops a strong root system and it is excellent for moisture retention within the soil. There is a seaweed season from mid-May to about early August where it washes up at least knee-high on the Galveston beaches. The kind that washes up is called sargassum. It's somewhat spongy and stinks to high heaven. It appears to be viewed as a bane in the seaweed community as it is highly invasive, grows quickly and appears to prosper from high waste output from factories, humans and animals. But then again milkweed is by it's very name viewed as a weed and it too is seen as invasive 'round these parts. But it is also the only source of food for Monarch butterflies. So I decided to take the approach that one man's trash is another man's treasure and decided to give it a try. I got just enough to put on my gardens, I didn't want to get too much because I still have to "process" it for lack of a better word once here. Because it stinks so much I'm definitely not going to use it as mulch but I think I'm going to use it more for my next crops because the main benefit seems to be early on. Before the next planting, I'll probably work it into the soil to really build up the soil. We are planning on going to the Annual Sand Castle Competition in Galveston so I'll probably pick up more then and just put it in plastic bags.

One thing about using seaweed. It's suggested that you rinse the seaweed before storing it for use because of the salt content. I've not found any real direction on how or how long to rinse the seaweed. Some opinions even say don't worry about rinsing because you don't want to put a lot on your gardens to begin with due to it's overall high nutrient value. With these variances of opinions from "OMG RINSE!RINSE! RINSE!" to "The amount of salt contained is determined by nature and thus good for your garden", I think I'm just going to wait until the next garden so that I can do some more research and see how my garden takes without the seaweed benefit. Then once I use it, I'll have something to compare it against.

Hello handsome! You're a good looking fellow do you know that?

This morning's walk of the garden revealed this


I also found a visitor


I half expected to see a little trail of smoke with a caterpillar and a hookah at the end.


I'm trying to stay away from the obvious Alice in Wonderland reference but it may be inevitable.

This is so much fun, it's freaky!

Remember here where I said that the green spray paint next to the shed was where wildflowers would be? Well, the wildflowers might be next year. That garden bed is 20 feet long and 2 feet wide and I had a bunch of pumpkin and cucumber plants that needed to be put in the ground quick. This was the perfect length for them

So for Mother's Day I spent the day finishing up that garden bed and planting the last of the seedlings. And in a completely honest way, it was complete satisfaction.

So to give another quote from the movie
Harry Stamper: Come on, God, just a little help. It's all I'm asking.
Max: I think we're close enough, He might have heard ya.

It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great

I know a lot of people garden but this just seems apropos. Lately, I've felt like I've reached this milestone. Like something, internal or maybe external, is throwing down some kind of gauntlet. I'm spending at least 8 hours a day easily on my backyard, its getting hotter and hotter (the last couple of days have been in the 90's!) and I catch myself thinking how easy it would be to stop.

Gardening isn't hard but it isn't easy. It isn't just a matter of getting some seeds, putting them in miracle-gro and watering them everyday. There's more to it. A lot more to it. Here are some notes I've made along the way:

1. Soil temperature affects growth. I point this out because mulching not only retains moisture, it retains heat. So while it is only necessary to mulch twice a year to retain moisture, it's also important to mulch in order to regulate or maintain ground temperature


2. Have a rainwater collection system in place.


3. Good plants for beginners are onion and garlic. With these plants, it literally is just drop the bulb in the ground and water. In addition these plants, garlic especially, repel a lot of insects go figure. Get these plants established in your garden first as their uses are immeasurable.

I think what I have to remind myself is that not only am I trying to start a vegetable garden but I'm also trying to clean up a backyard torn up by years of renovation. In addition, I'm trying to landscape the backyard so not only am I cleaning up, but I'm reconditioning and I'm trying to establish.

Hard hard work. But really satisfying and really great.

Can I tell you a story, Rick?

Time to catch up on the stories I mentioned here.

Corner update
The thermometer/hydrometer. I did look at the digital ones but I liked this one better. For one thing, it's a lot easier to read than the digital ones. In addition, it pivots. So if we're outside or don't like the angle it's at currently, we can always move it.

Garden bed by the grill
My next door neighbor had bought too many red cabbage plants so he gave me 4 plants. I did some research on companion planting for red cabbage and discovered that dill is perfect for it. And since we are growing cucumbers to make pickles... perfect! But dill seeds were to be planted in late March so I'm hoping that the plant will bloom and do Ok.

The other two gardens
I'm going to do sister planting in these gardens with Sunflowers, Cucumbers (the Sunflowers providing the post for the Cucumbers) and watermelons and pumpkins which provide shade for mulching and weed/insect control. But remember that I had lost a batch of Cucumbers because I planted to early? Well, hopefully this second batch will hold. So far so good. It turned out I didn't have as many watermelon plants as I thought I would so I'm going to plant a couple of pumpkins plants here. While I started the seeds to late, the plants should do fine. I just don't know if they'll produce a pumpkin and/or if the pumpkin will go to full ripe in time before the first frost.

My seedling shelves
As can be seen, I have a bunch of seedlings. And we have been trying to eat outside as much as possible so I had to free up my picnic table and this spot of the yard gets full sun all the time. The bottom shelf, well there was a bit of a mishap. I was watering the plants yesterday and the entire bottom shelf fell over. The logs holding the shelf up are not level width wise or depth wise. I had to reclaim the kid's table to put those plants on there. The shelf itself was very easy to make. I took a board we weren't using anymore drilled four holes, one at each corner, and bought some ropes. I cut two sections of rope long enough to loop twice for each side. Tied a knot at one end of the rope and put it through the first corner hole. Took the rope and put it through the chain link fence and then up over the top of the fence. Then down to the corner hole in front and back again to the back hole. Once the rope went through two times, I tied the rope off at the back through the fence. It's held up amazing well through wind and rain.

Seedling containers
When growing from seed and starting with a seed greenhouse, it's advised that once the seedling has grown big enough to be planted to plant directly into the ground. However as discovered with cucumbers, sometimes that isn't the best thing. So again armed with google, I discovered that seedlings can be placed in 3- or 4-inch containers as kind of a parking spot (which is why this is the size container plants are in when buying them). The best "parking spot" container are the ones that come commercially. The reason being that the best time to move the plant from the parking container to their final or next location is when the plant is too big for the container. This can be determined when the roots start to go out of the container. And commercial containers are very easy to get plants out of. Everyone however suggest to park the plants in Terra Cotta pots. Not so good. For one thing, it's not as easy for the roots to come out of the container. Most of the time, the roots start going up and eventually the entire container becomes one big root ball. For another thing, it's somewhat difficult to get the plants out of the container. My experience has been that after two plants grown in the same container (one after the other obviously), the terra cotta pots will break.

I soon began to use whatever container I could find. Recycling cans from soup/canned vegetables/etc. work great except talk about not seeing roots. The good thing is that metal cans hold water very well so while it's not easy to get the plant out, the plant will most likely succeed because of the water retention from the can. Just remember to put as much of the dirt from the can with the plant in the transplant.

Overall, I'd have to say that the take and toss cups such as this,
are the best. The roots can easily be seen and it is easy to remove the plants from the cups. But that gets expensive in my opinion. In a moment of "Augh, I ran out of containers and I still have seedlngs!" I grabbed the nearest unused thing which happend to be a zoo cup. That's when I found the best containers. Paper cups. They are reusable for at least the same amount of time as terra cotta pots if not more. I've used some cups 4 times now. They hold water exceptionally well. For this final batch of seedlings, the dirt has been amazingly wet where as terra cotta pots tend to pull water from the soil. True, you can't see the roots but it is easy to determine when a plant is ready to be transplanted. Biggest advice on that, it's better to wait and have the plant be too big for the container than to hurry and have it die due to shock. In addition, once the cups are no longer reusable, fill them with sawdust or tiny sticks or lint from your dryer and use it as a fire starter for your fire put or fireplace!

Plus if you use zoo cups, you get to do homemade Chia pets!

Aristotle was not Belgium.

Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.

Best line ever in my opinion. And a definite top 10 must see.

Excuse me while I wax rhapsodic for a moment. One thing about gardening that has really opened my eyes is how fretful it can be. I'm growing herbs and vegetables to see if I can. My backyard was a mess so I've had to do a lot of soil conditioning and spent more money than I care to admit so far on mostly dirt. My neighbor is also growing vegetables and when I look over the fence at his garden I see these HUGE leaves and tall plants and he tells me that he's got little tomatillos and the brussel sprouts are starting to flower and I fret because I wonder if my plants are growing at the right pace. My plants aren't small but they aren't HUGE either. But then I remind myself that what I'm growing has a different season than what he's growing and that yes, everything is right where they are suppose to be. I was telling hubby that with work, he's already thinking about July and August but I have to stay with day ahead. Harvest time won't begin until maybe June but definitely July. I can't put too much thought in how much corn I'll have in July, I have to make sure the stalks are where they are suppose to be now. Are they the right color? Are they the right height? Do I see any damage? It's definitely living in the here and now as oppose to planning for the future. But I'll say this, if I get even one produce I'll probably be on the verge of tears busting with pride because, "I.DID.THIS." as my kids are prone to say.

And then I think about farmers. Not commercial farmers but I guess you could say farmers who lived 100 years ago or even further back than that. I think about people who truly live(d) off the land and can empathize with them. If their crops don't grow, they don't eat, it's as simple as that. A common joke is to hear about the farmer who walks out on his porch and just stares out at the field. I often catch myself staring at my plants. Is there anything going wrong that I missed? Is there something else I need to do? There's always something that needs to be done, what is it?

This comes about because the leaves on my peanut plants started to fold towards each other like they are praying. When leaves do that, the cause might be because of magnesium deficiency. The thing is, I decided when I began this project to use Miracle-Gro soil. You don't have to feed the plants for at least 3 months and there are even warnings on the bags NOT to give your plants anything else because you might burn them. I also have not put any mulch on top of the beds because I read that you're really only suppose to mulch twice a year, once when it gets hot and once when it gets cold. You mulch to retain moisture. When I check my soil, it's at the exact moisture level that it's suppose to be: at a finger's touch it feels damp and some soil sticks to my finger.

So the leaves on my peanut plants have started to fold inward and I also noticed that the corn I planted the peanuts next to, the stalks look yellow-green as opposed to some other corn that look vibrant dark green. These are signs of magnesium deficiency. A google search later and I find that a simple fix is epson salt. 1 teaspoon of epson salt to a gallon of water. I take the plunge and mix up a gallon and pour some on the plants and spray some directly on the leaves hoping that I'm not killing them by giving them too much of one nutrient. This morning I wake up and yay! The peanuts leaves are wide open and the corn stalks don't look yellow green as much as they look almost neon green. I did it! I figured out what was wrong and I'm fixing it. And because I'm fixing it, I might have peanuts before I know it.

So it's good to be wrong about the fretting and it's nice to be able to look it up just to be sure. I can't imagine doing this without the internet at my fingertips.

Because I was afraid of worms, Roxanne. Worms!

In addition to gardening, I've also tried my hand at vermicomposting. It sounds easy. Get a bin, put a bunch of worms in it, throw some dirt and shredded paper and start piling in your kitchen scraps and voila! In no time you'll have some of the best compost around for your landscape.

So I head to a local feed store, Buck Moore Feed & Supply and pick up some red wrigglers. And they came with directions. Worms. Came with directions. Feed them anything you want! except oranges and go light on the onions. Shred in any paper! except not glossy. If the environment is good the worms will start reproducing like crazy! and they don't like to be crowded. Oh yea, and worms don't like to stay in their own "castings" also known as worm poop so remember to change their environment.

...huh?

Now I start thinking to myself, "These are worms. How hard is it to keep worms? They don't like to eat certain foods? How picky of an eater are worms?! I understand the paper, glossy paper is harder to decompose but I have to watch the worm population? I can't even begin to wrap my head around that. And I understand not wanting to be in their own poop but how do I determine when it's time to change the .... worm litter? I mean my cats have developed pretty good signals as to when THEY think their box needs to be changed... they start throwing the cat litter outside the box but what exactly do worms do? Are they going to start leaving the box and doing who knows what on the kitchen floor?

After much research in the library of Google, I've found out that it's for one thing called vermicomposting and vermiculture. There are many, MANY philosophies about vermicomposting and I finally found the wikiversity about it here and it really provides comprehensive information on the entire process.

Some points I'd like to make:

The most important thing is that your bin does not have a smell to it or that fruit flies do not appear. If this happens, the worms are not processing the food for some reason and are thus not happy. Check for the following:

Bedding is to dry

Too much food (worms can't process it quickly enough)

No movement or activity when worms are prodded

No sign of worms

Check your bin once a week

Aerate your bin by moving everything around at least once a week

Worms are not a big fan of "animal" products such as eggshells

As far as the worm poop goes, everything so far has told me that once it becomes too much, the worms will begin to try to migrate out of the poop. This can be seen by the worms beginning to crawl along the wall of the bin. For starters, it seems the best bin setup is a continuous flow setup. I've decided to go from a single bin to a continuous vertical flow setup. That's just another fancy way of saying I'm stacking the bins. I went to Wallyworld and bought a 3-drawer plastic storage cart (sans wheels) and drilled holes in the bottom of each drawer. I like this setup best because I can see in the drawers without having to open them.

Overall though my worms have been happy which makes me happy. What can I say, it's the simple things in life.

That's Follett. He's an idiot. Probably no film in the camera. But that's another story

Picture Post! Because there is so much I want to document but I've got a sick kid and I'm on a roll with cleaning up the backyard and I don't want to stop. It only looks terrible now instead of horrible.

Corner update

Those blotches of green seen between the tree and the window are Asian Jasmine. That brown disk in front of the window is a thermometer/hydrometer that we can see from our bed. I know we could have gone with a digital one but this one was cheaper and I don't know... funnier. But that's another story.

This is the garden by the grill (with our rat terrier Bruce making a cameo)

In this is red cabbage, red and white onion, rosemary and (hopefully dill) but that's another story.


This is the other two gardens and my homemade seedling shelves.

These (will) have sunflowers, cucumbers and watermelon but that's another story.

My homemade seedling shelves, I LOVE them!


We're prone to calling it the seedling condo

but that's another story.

Of course we're using popsicles sticks as seed sticks


And I'm being creative in my seedling containers


which I have an opinion on containers


But that's another story.

By George, she's got it!

Remember here where I decided this landscaping thing would be done in phases. Well chuck it, that's not how my brain works and I've found that the quickest way to get from point A to point B is to go with that flow not against it. It turns out the best path for me is the one I create while I walk and with google as my compass, I seemed to have figured out the layout of my backyard! Much happiness for me. =)

So here is a hardly to scale picture of my layout.


GB is Garden Beds. The one next to the patio butts up against our grill which I love. Our patio is brick and was laid by hubby which there's a story in there but that's for another time. Once the patio was laid we had enough extra bricks that he could actually build a grill. At first he did it more because he really wanted to grill and our gas grill had just broke. Once he built it, we fell in love with it. There isn't any mortar so hubby can change it as he sees fit. He's made it taller and thinner, shorter and fatter. Needs a shelf? Simply rearrange a wall. I could go on and about the virtues of this grill. Maybe for another post. To get back to the picture, just to the right of the grill is a tree and around that tree I'm going to plant basil and garlic. Originally I was thinking of putting an herb garden specific to those herbs that hubby uses to grill. After a mini-brain storm session, we realized the only herbs he really uses are basil and pepper. Armed with google, I did a quick research on growing black pepper, piper nigrum. Near impossible to do apparently. It's easy to get the seeds but from my 10 minutes of study it's very hard to germinate the seeds and suggestion are to just get a plant. I found two places that will mail the piper nigrum plant, one in Australia and I already forgot where the other one was. Alas, it does not look like we'll be growing our own black pepper soon. How cool would that be though.

So back to the picture. to the right of the house, where the beige is will be river rock. To the right of the shed, there will be a compost bin and the 4 bins to the back right of the shed will be a rainwater collection system. I should mention here that my timing of coming up with this idea is impeccable. It's AFTER we've had literally 6 months of almost non-stop rain. Naturally, now that we're actually coming out of the rainy season, I have a V-8 moment and realize the perfect place to put a multiple 55-gallon drum rain harvesting system. Go figure.

The red rectangle in the back will be where the wood is stored. Not only do we like to grill, but we also have a fire pit AND a wood-burning fireplace which we like to use on the 3 or 4 super cold days we get in the winter.

The green spray paint on the left of the shed will be where native wildflowers will be planted. The light beige is a ground cover if I remember correctly called Alyssum. The dark purple will be Asian Jasmine hopefully taking off from where the light purple indicating where Asian Jasmine has already been planted. The two black circles are pecan trees that aren't going anywhere and the three red circles will be where the Italian Cypress trees will go. The black box by the cypress trees is some kind of telephone box thing and the gray circle is a telephone pole located in our yard.

The Garden Beds by the way are doing wonderful! The ones in the back of the yard have sunflowers and will have cucumbers and watermelon and pumpkin (hopefully). The one by the grill has red cabbage, red onion, white onion and rosemary and hopefully soon I'll be adding dill.

I told ya. It's all about defying the odds.

So much to say I really need to update this more frequently. But I want to take pictures along the way and that's what slows down the updating.

The seeds are doing fantastic. My original plan was to put all the seeds in containers and this is where my brain synapses don't quite connect. Guess what happens when you 15 sunflower seeds. You can end up with 15 sunflower seedlings. So the seeds sprouted wonderfully and I ended up with a bunch of sunflower seedlings which each require at least a 5 gallon container. Yikes. True, you can plant 2 or 3 to a container and then weed out the ones that don't become dominant. But in my lack of confidence in my skills, I was afraid the ones I didn't pull out wouldn't make it either. So I basically kept ALL my sunflower seedlings. I have some in pots big enough for them now but after pricing containers for the rest, I decided to just jump in the deep end and go with raised garden beds. I bought enough wood for Hubby to build 3 and have set up 2 gardens. I also did some research and discovered 3-Sisters Gardening. After more google-fu, I discovered that there's more to 3-sister gardening, there's a whole concept of companion planting and have embraced this concept completely.

I also had some, what does the corporate world call them, "learning opportunities", along the way. I lost an entire batch of cucumbers because I transplanted them into the ground to early. Basically, when transplanting container plants, you should wait until the plant has essentially outgrown it's current container. If you transplant them to early, especially when going from container to ground, it is very easy to "shock" the plants. The easiest way to determine a plant is ready to be transplanted is when you see the roots coming out of the drainage hole but I've discovered that another good safe way is to just judge the size of the plant compared to the container. See, this would be a good place to put a picture of one watermelon plant that was ready to be transplanted and one that isn't.

Another learning opportunity has been the seedling greenhouse. When I first got the seedling greenhouse, it was late February/Early March. The days were still high 60's (F) and the nights were still cool. I put my seeds in their little peat moss thingy and place them on the front porch where they got maybe 2 hours of direct sunlight in very cool weather (my front porch faces northeasterly). With my second batch of seeds that included all my pumpkin seeds, the days were warmer. I left my little seedling greenhouse in my backyard where the seeds got up to 7 hours of sun a day in mostly warm weather. I essentially baked my seeds and subsequently, none of the pumpkin seeds germinated. I couldn't figure out why so I re-read the direction on the greenhouse package and did a big, "Oooh, that figures" when reading the part that the greenhouse is to be kept out of direct sunlight. My third batch of seeds, I left inside by a westwardly facing window that received maybe 2 hours of direct sunlight on cloudless days and within a week, the little seedlings were literally pushing the lid of the greenhouse up/off. I never knew how excited seeing seeds germinate would make me.

I also bought some marigolds to plant in my garden beds. Marigold is a great companion plant for all vegetable and herb gardens. Marigold gives off a pungent scent that will deter most insect pests. French Marigold, which is the ones I planted do require routine hosing to deter mites and whiteflies, but when looking at this in my garden, it's worth the extra work



Oh, I almost forgot another "learning opportunity". Did you know Painted Lady Butterflies only live for about a month after changing into butterflies? If you want to release them after watching them come out of their cocoons, it's best to not get them until after the last frost as you can not release them until the low is above 60 (f).

Our little Heimlichs were able to enjoy a little bit of freedom before their time here passed.

It's on my to do list!

I didn't update throughout all of February because there pretty much wasn't anything to update. It rained quite a bit in February and while we had some absolutely gorgeous days, memory served me that we would get one more hard freeze before the end of Spring Break. And sure enough, One March 20, the Vernal Equinox or First Day of Spring, the high for the day of 63 (F) was attained at precisely midnight. By noon on the First Day of Spring, the temperature was 32 (F) and was beginning to make it's slow climb up. By Monday, the temperature was back hovering around 70 and it looks like the weather is predicted to be in the high 70s through Easter.

So for February, I didn't really do a lot to the yard. I got some ideas which I think I may have mentioned but I'll state again here. I'm going to put Cypress Trees in the corner where the electricity pole is. That corner is pretty much due west and in the summer time the setting sun is brutal so I hope by putting trees there they'll block it from our eyes when sitting on the porch. I'm still planning on pulling up all the grass and putting in a ground cover and have settled on Asian Jasmine. The nearest Lowe's carries it in individual seedling pots so I bought 2 to see how they would do in my little corner. I put them in around the first of March and so far so good!

And what else is on my to do list? Well.....

Seeds!

It's amazing how easy it is to run away with a task. Originally, my plan was to start very small, maybe 3 different types of plants. While at Hobby Lobby in January, I found peanuts in one of those science education kits for kids. I decided to also try sunflowers and watermelon. Our rosemary from last year didn't make it through the hard winter so I had to buy another one of those and we decided we also wanted to grow our own basil. My next door neighbor is also embracing sustainable living so he gave me some red cabbages because he bought to many for himself. And.... I also wanted to grow some moonflowers because I have always wanted a moon garden which will be in my little corner that I've been working on.
so I ended up with


So now we have Peanuts, Sunflowers, Watermelon, Basil, Moonflower, Corn, Cucumber and Pumpkin. Did I mention we're trying to grow Corn, Cucumber and Pumpkin? They were only 20 cents each at Wallyworld so I decided, why the heck not? The only thing is now that I've got all these seedlings, I need to figure out if I'm going to put them all in containers or am I just going to jump in the deep end and put in a raised garden.

I did meet a neighbor who it turns out has the blog, The Urban Owl. Michael has converted his entire backyard into a garden and is selling his produce! In my ultimate fantasy, I would like to attain something like this. He is very knowledgeable and I completely intend to pick his brain as I get further along!

We also got some red wiggly worms and are trying our hands at making our own compost from worm castings (aka worm poop). I'm from the coastal area and further down on my to do list is to go back home and stop by the beach and pick up some seaweed which it turns out is awesomesauce for plants.

Oh, in addition, we grew some butterflies! Our first batch of Heimlichs are doing quite well but we're just waiting for the weather to get warm enough to let them go.


And with that, I leave you with

Oh Sweet Mystery of Life At Last I Found You....

*knocks dust off blog*
The Christmas Holiday season is over, the weather has started to warm up, we've actually has a couple of days of no rain and everyone in the house is well. With the time to sit and think, I decided to look for a local nursery that might be able to assist me. I really like the ease of Lowe's but I swear, I have never experienced a knowledgeable sales clerk in their landscaping/gardening area. I found Shoal Creek Nursery so I decided to go by and pick someone's brain. I explained that I know nothing about gardening and that our backyard is a wreck because we've done some renovations over the years. We/I am trying to completely redesign our backyard but I'm doing it a little bit at a time because we can't afford to do it all at once and I don't want to pay a professional to do it. I want hands on in planning the backyard because guess who is going to take care of it. I described to the guy whose name I completely forgot to get the little corner of the yard that I'm starting on and told him that I'm looking for some ground cover. He gave me this nifty little free booklet they have called Native and Adapted Landscape Plants and suggested some of groundcover. Specifically, Leadwort Plumbago, Asian Jasmine and Silver Ponyfoot. He said that they don't carry groundcover until Mid-March (after the last frost) so take my time and do my research and see which one I like.

I did stop by Lowe's early today and dang is that a dangerous place. They have all these herbs and vegetables and fruit trees that just look really good. I could feel my eyes glazing over and my hand seemed to reach for my pocketbook all on it's own. I shook myself out of the self-induced glaze and have been putting up roadblocks to keep me from going back. I do want to buy some herbs, the hard freezes we did get killed my little basil plant and I want to get some bay leaves as well. But dang, it looked so tempting to buy some onion bulbs and some garlic bulbs and those lettuce and spinach seedling starters looked so enticing! Some day my love, some day!