Back Forty update

I tried to shift my morning blogging to the deck now that we’re having some nice weather on the weekend, but it’s not going to work. Not only has my wireless connection gotten really iffy, I can’t seem to sit so that I don’t get a glare. So I’m back in the Happy Room after an hour of sipping coffee on the deck and strolling about with my camera in the Back Forty, writing in Notepad to shift over to the blog so that I hopefully don’t lose another long post.

Yesterday I did manage to finish mulching the paths as far as I had cardboard to cover them. I guess that I’ll have to troll for cardboard this week. Sandy got all gung-ho and wants to buy 40 bags of mulch and do all the paths at one time. I tried to tell him that is how I hurt my elbow, but he says that he’ll do all the heavy lifting. I still think that it’s a task best broken up into several days, but if he wants to buy 40 bags of mulch, I’ll take it.

Uh oh, I think that I just scratched a tick off my shoulder. I can’t tell you how much ticks freak me out. If that’s what it was, it was a tiny one, which is even more scary. Remember this if I suddenly stop blogging and you find out later that I’m in the hospital with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Lyme Disease. Send me a funny card.

Anyway, I did some of the outside work in the rain, and that was fun. About half of the asparagus came back, and I consider that pretty good considering the drought. I didn’t need all that asparagus for the itty bitty space I have anyway. I was really thrilled to see all these figs on the tree that we rooted from a cutting from my mother’s fig tree. There is lots of lettuce and pretty flowers and weeds galore. The kale and brussels sprouts are flowering and I hope that they will develop seeds before I need to pull them out. I may plant my “green” beans this afternoon, since we might get a few showers over the next few days. The chives are blossoming and I think that alliums might be my favorite flowers now.

I am bringing my seedlings back inside at night because a #$%@^% critter dug several of them up in the trays. I keep a collection of large soda bottles with the bottoms cut out to protect seedlings in the beds from critters until they get established, but I still need to nurture the babies inside a little longer since it is supposed to get down into the thirties tonight and the next couple of nights.

Here are a few photos from the Back Forty.