Can't do it all

Wren's arrival complicated my gardening. Ironically, it was only after her February arrival was inevitable that I began to take a greater interest in gardening. Cris and I had always been interested in doing something with the yard but we hadn't had a chance to get to it, what with raising Lucas and buying (and refurbishing) the house. In the fall I realized I should start doing some prep-work and I did research throughout the winter. Then I started to get ideas and didn't want to see a whole year pass without prettying things up a bit.

I have to walk a delicate balance. I get bummed that I don't get more done on the yard, but I don't want to abandon the family to do it (besides, Cris gets grumpy if I don't help with the kids). So this past month I could either do stuff in the yard with my limited time, or I could blog about it. Your loss, I guess...

Progress has been made, though. Let me catch you up a bit. I managed to re-pot some seedlings into 3-inch pots. I really like the seedling trays and pots I bought from Charley's Greenhouse. The 10x20 inch trays hold 8 square seedling trays with 4, 6, or 9 seedlings per square. The seedling squares are interchangeable, so I don't have to commit to a full flat of the same-sized blocks. See this post for more details. 18 of the 3-inch square pots fit in the same 10x20 flat. Below you can see marigold, gazania, and felicia seedlings in the flat on the left and nasturtiums on the right. The nasturtiums got a bit leggy because I left them on the heating mat too long. I have two other kinds of nasturtiums anyway, so I gave them to Mary and planted phlox seeds ( Phlox drummondii 'Phlox of Sheep') in their stead.

In the fall I enlarged the garden borders into the yard by turning the sod over and covering it with several layers of newspaper and a bit of compost to hold down the paper. I completed the job this past month, putting down new newspaper and adding a cubic yard of topsoil and another of mulch. Thanks to the neighbors for the use of their pickup! Here's a pretty recent picture of the back yard. There's a tray of seedlings to be planted in the front...

Compare that to this image from last summer:

There's the tree we planted last fall and the new beds on the eastern side of the yard. Looks a lot better now.

In addition to the flat of seedlings, I've also planted a few bulbs that were probably out of date and a bunch of seeds. Most of these should have been planted a month ago, so I hope they work out.

There are more details, of course. I'm not doing a very good job of conveying certain information in a timely manner. This is a bummer, because a major purpose for this blog was to help me keep track of when certain things were happening in the garden (e.g. blooming) so I would know for next year.

Here's Lucas helping Dada with the chipper-shredder.

Family is rewarding--sometimes the garden can wait.

More coming...