Very dry. We haven't had appreciable rainfall in weeks; we have had showers move through from time to time, so we are not YET seeing any adverse effects. Everything is still greening up and growing, although it's a good 4-6 weeks ahead of "normal." My flowering crabs are already past their peak and usually they are only just getting started by May 1.
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Turned on the outside faucet and *yay* the veg hose system is good! No leaks. I am very pleased because i thought it would be a long afternoon of replacing washers, wrenching connections, etc. I gave the greenhouse and the onions a good watering, plus watered some potted stuff in the cold frames. Today I'm going to give the peas a thorough soaking because they are germinating nicely. I should probably run a band of chicken wire around the outside perimeter of the cages over the peas. I usually forget to do this every year and baby bunnies get in and nibble the peas. Also, I have to find that netting I bought and put it over the onions to keep off the allium leaf miner flies.
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I'm steadily getting my tougher tenders in the ground or in outside pots. I've got a lot of cannas already planted in the new Jungle Garden. Today I put my orange cannas into pots in the Pot Corral and I set 4 big colocasias into one of the two huge "pots" (in reality black plastic garbage cans) in the Stumpery. I think I'll get more colocasias into the other Stumpery pot later today.
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The big project today is the steps between the Folly Wall raised beds. As I said, deer coming to drink from the pond knocked the flagstones out. I got the first step reset with mortar this time (I had the flags simply set down in fine gravel) last week. I was concerned that the mortar might have been "old" but it seems to have set up OK and is holding. I bought a fresh bag though, just to be safe. Today I got the second and third steps mortared in place using this fresh mortar and they look pretty good. I think that I've discovered a way to test if mortar is still good to use. I noticed that when I added water to this new bag, it actually "fizzed". That did not happen with the old bag. It may be that the fizzing shows that there's strong chemical activity between the water and the cement, hence a better bond. At any rate, the work went a lot quicker than I thought it would, despite the fact that I had to make 3 trips up the hill, carrying about 20 pounds of dry mortar each time. There's no way, no how I can get a full 80-pound bag up that hill.
It's too hot to work outside right now (82F), but temps are supposed to go down pretty drastically this weekend and I'm thinking I may just "camp out" up there by the Folly Wall and really try to get things cleaned up and some progress made. I need to buy 3 more bags of gravel to finish off the top landing. Once that's done, I need to get to work grading the area and laying out where the next stage will be. I also would like to pour a concrete pad at the base of the steps, but I'd like that to be decorative so I need to give some thought about what i'm going to do there.
Ultimately, I'd love to have another raised bed across the top of the landing, maybe a stepped design so that I can incorporate a small water feature in the lower portion. This is all still in the "hoping and dreaming" stages though.
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Another big project that I'd like to tackle is a good spring cleanup of the very long South Border. I've decided that I'd like to duplicate the planting of the Pond Circle garden in the section of the South Border under the limbed up old apple tree. The Pond Circle is probably my favorite garden area; it really reflects my tastes best: pink and white bleeding hearts, pale blue forget me nots, pink tulips, ferns, hostas, lily of the valley, purple alliums, creamy miniature comfrey. I'd love to be able to see that when i look out my kitchen window at the South Border. And it would tie in nicely with my "Almost White Border" that is coming along just a bit farther up the hill in the South Border.
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