May 22nd, 2007 - The garden is green!
I was originally thinking about posting this Saturday, but I didn’t spend much time online and forgot about it. At that point, the relevance of the subject is that we mulched the entire garden! It’s green with grass clippings! Friday, our mower was finally finished and Eric mowed the front and collected the clippings for me. That covered most of the beds except the areas that hadn’t yet been planted (pole beans, peppers, and tomatoes, or two total beds). Then he decided to go ahead and do the whole back, since it was supposed to rain Saturday. He didn’t collect that, but I ended up raking most of it Saturday morning. That was enough to cover the remaining beds, a little bit out front around the rhubarb and pansies (which aren’t growing yet), and fill in areas mulched before just with weeds.
Now, the title also refers to the number of things growing! Just a few things were popping up when I mulched, but Saturday evening’s rain helped immensely. I have coming up: all the beans (except those just planted), zuchini, corn (not much, but a couple), walking stick cabbage, rutabagas, sunflowers (again, not many), nasturtiums, peas, greens, potato, cucumbers, and zinnias. Not yet growing are all the herbs, gourds, other flowers, Yugoslavian finger fruit, and ground cherries.
On Saturday, Maggie and I went to the Paine plant sale with Ruth and her Little Sister. Maggie bought my Mother’s Day gift, a Lead Plant!!!! When I saw that common name, I HAD to have that as my gift from her this year, since the last of the lead abatement work finished Friday. LOL I got a nepeta, or cat mint, for Shmi’s memorial plant. And I bought one lavendar, as I am not holding out hope of the seeds germinating anymore. The next day, Ruth gave me a cutting of the chocolate mint plant she bought, as well as some regular mint from her garden. I planted all but the lead plant, which will go in the new wildflower garden.
Speaking of which, the rocks are all picked!!!! I finished yesterday. I took the day off as Eric had a mid day doctor’s appointment. I’m so glad I had a beautiful day to work outside. It would have been mulched and planted, except we chose to put in the bean teepee, instead. So now the entire veggie garden is planted. We’ll mulch the new bed tonight instead. Bought wildflower seeds yesterday for it (on sale!) and I’ll have the lead plant and a daisy to put in as well.
One cool thing about all the garden work is the great exercise. For instance, in picking rocks, I did weight lifting when carrying the bucket around front to dump the rocks under the porch. It was especially nice because on Thursday I finally saw my doctor about my knee and leg pain. She said that it probably was injured back at the beginning of the semester when I was raring to go with the new personal traininer and overdid it. Then, since I kept excercising, albeit at a reduced level, I didn’t give the muscles time to heal. So she said I could do any exercising over in Albee (except Pilates, and skip anything on my knees) until a physical therapist gave the okay. I was so disappointed as I’ve been so proud of keeping up the schedule. :( I have a PT appointment tomorrow. I’m hoping they will give me some exercises I can do there in the weight and conditioning center so that I keep up the habit. Plus, it means less driving if I don’t have to go to them 1-2x per week (it’s 5 miles away, I think, and I can’t bike it and the bus is a long trip).
I’m almost disappointed that the garden work is almost done. I’ll have to start going to walks and bike rides after work/in the evening for excercise again. Which will actually be nice because I can go for walks with Maggie again. I’ve been too busy with the yard work to want to bother with walks.