My neighbor, Mrs. Brown Snake

Was excited to find this Brown Snake under a paving stone in the yard. I hear they eat slugs. Yesterday was fabulous. I planed 3 Nanking Cherry trees and 3 American Plums. I have raspberry, elderberry, and dwarf blueberries on the way. I wanted to plant some apple trees but now I don't think I'll have the space. I moved a small mulberry tree from the north side of the house near the AC unit to the back yard, where it should get at least a little southern light, even though it will be shaded at least part of the day.

Seedlings are coming up in both raised beds. They need to be thinned out badly, but I'll do that tomorrow. Fortunately I've changed jobs recently and my new schedule should allow for better use of daylight.

No groundhog sightings yet.

I gave up on covering the back yard with mulch. I finally found somebody who could borrow a truck, and we went out to the landfill to get a $20 load. Since she helped me rake and shovel the load off the back of her mom's truck, I gave my friend $20, and paid for an automatic car wash. It seemed like it took forever to move the mulch from the truck bed to the ground. Then I had to shovel it into a wheelbarrow and distribute it over the areas of yard I'd already covered with boxes, most of which had been waiting for mulch since December. It's been looking pretty trashy in our backyard. Once I'd spread it all, I realized that a truckload of mulch is not very much.

A couple of weeks later I realized pine straw is cheaper and easier to transport. I felt like a total dumbass. I'd have made so much more progress by now if I'd had that brainwave a lot sooner.

My most excellent husband bought me two rainbarrels for my birthday, and he installed them while I was at work Saturday. I think they were originally used to ship pickles from India. Gherkins are pickles, aren't they? One of the other barrels said "GHERKINS - PRODUCT OF INDIA" on the side. So that's cool.

I hope in a couple of months we're in good enough shape to have people over.

Setbacks

Today I spent all afternoon making a new cage to cover raised beds. After much profanity, fit throwing, deep breathing episodes to regain calm, two trips to the hardware store, and glue (a lot of which I got on myself), I went out a few minutes ago to carry my new project off the deck and into the yard. I bumped the railing on my way out and the whole thing sprang apart.

This latest version of the cage was to be shaped like an upside down u, unlike the design featured in my last post, which was a box. I thought the u would be easier to make and easier to get chiken wire onto. It involved bending lengths of PVC pipe to make an arch. But tension and PVC don't go together too well, apparantly.

I spend between $40 and $50 on supplies for this project. Though I glued all the joints, all of those came apart at one point or another, but I had to use a hammer to get one apart that I hadn't glued. I might be able to salvage these parts and make a new box cage. But I am sick of this shit really.

I guess I shouldn't be discouraged. At least I'm walking the walk at last. This morning I harvested some spring weedflowers from my yard and added them to scrambled eggs. (The Purple Dead Nettle and Henbit featured in the photo). For dinner I put them in a peanut/sesame sauce on noodles. While they didn't have outstanding flavor, they didn't have an offensive flavor, and hey, they are fresh, free greens. With vitamins and all that.

I have a few blackcurrant shrub seeds sprouting, and my edible weed bed is covered with seedlings. Now I just have to get two more beds up and running so I can grow non-weed greens in them. And make cages for those to keep the squirrels, groundhogs, and cats out. Sigh. And cover the raised bed area with mulch, which I haven't found a cheap enough source of yet. Sigh again.

This permaculture stuff is expensive.

A thankful shout out to that helpful Ace Hardware guy at the Pisgah Church Road store. Wish now I'd looked at his name tag.

Groundhog Protection

This is the cage we built to keep groundhogs out of our raised bed. I call it Botsford's Incarcitorium For Wayward Produce. It's made of PVC and chicken wire, and was both more expensive and more complicated to make than I anticipated. I don't remember exactly but I think it might have been around $50, and it took all day Sunday pretty much to put it together. I had planned to do it myself but wound up involving the husband because it was so tedious and time consuming. Thanks Wyatt! I consider your help and patience a fine Valentine's Day present.

When we were thinking about moving here we drove by frequently to see what was going on, and one thing we always saw was groundhogs hauling ass out of the backyard when we pulled up. Our neighbor on the lot behind us said he's trapped and released all but one, but when that one wakes up this spring it's going to be looking to reproduce. In my experience, battling groundhogs is like playing Whack-A-Mole. As soon as you beat one down another one arrives to take its place.

They're cute though. I'm hoping this cage will take the contention out of my future relationships with the neighborhood groundhogs. And squirrels. And cats. Our yard is full of cat shit. The neighborhood's also got a robust population of roaming, fertile cats. I wonder how much good fencing in the entire yard would do to reduce the catshit problem. And it is a problem. Gets all intimate with the treads in your shoes. Or just lies there hidden, but putrid, in the grass making you paranoid that you've picked up a shoefull of it.

Community Gardens

I was glad to see this story about community gardens in the paper today. The whole reason I'm obsessed with moving out of this condo is because I want a yard to garden in. At the same time, this is one of the best places in town to live and I'd hate to give it up. There's a big empty lot a few blocks away that would make a sweet community garden, though right now it's full of dog shit. That's a big problem with growing things in the city that I've written about before.

A couple of years ago my neighbor helped me build a planter I put on my balcony, and Wyatt and I grew salad greens and herbs in it. It was a pain in the ass to keep watered - we had to lug watering cans from the kitchen and drip all the way through the house to get to it, and in the peak summer it needs water twice a day. But it was nice being able to just step out with some scissors and clip a salad for dinner. However the following season some exterior work was done on the building, pressure washing and whatnot, and the planter got inundated with bleach and chips of old paint. I'm not sure about the concentration of bleach but I saw several empty gallon jugs of it out in the yard near the pressure washer, and decided maybe we shouldn't eat greens out of the planter anymore.

My friend Sr. Bedford has an allotment in that community garden in Glenwood, and he grows Kale that's probably genetically modified with DNA from Godzilla. I swear one year it's going to uproot itself and start knocking over buildings downtown.

This is my favorite place to buy seeds from, though with my limited gardening options I haven't done much shopping from them. I'm going to try elderberry in the planter this year.