They said it was going to rain today, but when I woke up this morning it was quiet outside. I had just decided to get up and head out when the rain began. There was a lull earlier this morning so I put on my gardening clothes and the minute I stepped out of my bathroom, the rain began again. Some things just aren't meant to be...
Asparagus Anyone?I should have plenty to share in three years! Ready or not, the kitchen garden now has 3 asparagus beds! Yes, we do really like asparagus, but I ordered way too many plants and then started to worry that the soil wasn't rich enough or that the deer would eat half the plants and then I wouldn't have enough. I did some research and you can move asparagus plants, as long as you don't try to harvest from them right away, so I decided to go ahead and plant in as much of the Kitchen Garden space I felt I could spare for a year or two. This way, if my fears come true, I can fill in the one bed I had hoped to have with some of the plants from the extra beds. Hopefully, I'll just have extra plants
to share with friends next year!
A colleague of mine once described some bamboo creeping into her yard from her neighbor's as penile. It seems an appropriate description of the newly planted asparagus too.
The Pond
Okay, so I redid the waterfall yet again, but this time through necessity! The first picture is before, the 2nd after. We had major problems with the pond this winter. Even though it wasn't that
cold temperature wise, the pond froze over with thick ice, all three of our koi died, some of the concrete cracked, ice slugs blocked up the tubing and twice, the tubing broke due to freezing. My Dad, in Stafford, has had a pond for probably twenty years and never had problems like this; it has to be our proximity to the river! Next year we'll have to get a heater.
After the fish died, we didn't rush to fix the waterfall for the 2nd time so we just did it last weekend. We raised it several inches so that we could also fill the pond higher, I adjusted one side where the concrete had cracked so that it too was higher and, using some leftover fieldstone, finally built up the back so that the filter was completely covered, but by moving a rock or two we still had easy access. I like the way the back looks so much that I can't help but wonder how great it would be if the front looked the same way...
It turns out Shoeless Joe was right, if you build it they will come. You know last year we were inundated with frog and toad tadpoles, but what I never got around to blogging was our bullfrog tadpoles! These take two years to come to maturity and luckily they survived the winter! We've also seen some kind of mollusk, have a variety of water bugs and are also currently home to a
young water snake! We think it's a Blotched Water Snake, you can see my picture here, he's
hiding in the iris leaves, and a picture where you can actually see what one looks like from th
e
Herp Journal on the Internet. He will have to be moved before he gets large enough to eat our bullfrog tadpoles or brand new koi. We're not sure how we'll do that, but we figured we'd start him out in the creek below our house and then take him to the river if he finds his way back.
The Woods 
A few weekends ago, I used the brushcutter to thin out the smaller stuff in the woods on one side of the back of the house. This week, my Dad cut down some of the smaller trees that I couldn't get with a brushcutter. Now more light can come in and the beautiful hollies and dogwoods can come into their own. I also have space to plant some native trees, shrubs and plants.
Compost
My son was assigned the hateful duty of removing the pachysandra from the driveway bed last summer. Unfortunately, once the compost bin was full much of what he pulled up was dumped outside, partly on the path. It is now, like most of the stuff in the bin, mostly ready to use, but still had some pockets of pachysandra here and there. I bought some stiff, mesh netting, stapled it to some stakes and crea
ted a compost sieve. Once I was done, the mesh wasn't wide enough to span the wheelbarrow or garden gate so I needed another piece. Then the gap between the two pieces was a problem and meant that un-sifted compost was falling through. One morning I spent about an hour weaving a piece of wire to sew the two pieces of mesh together. It now works like a charm and the compost is beautiful!
The trickiest part to using it now is to watch for skinks and earthworms scooped up with the compost. I have to shake the compost so that the usable stuff falls into the wheelbarrow and that requires an action similar to using a cheese grater. Not a pleasant way to go, but by going slowly and watching carefully, I think I'm saving everyone. There's still more to get, but so far the finished compost has been added to the cutting and vegetable gardens.
