I’ve been working quite a bit outside the past week. First, I got my tomatoes and pumpkins in the ground. I still have to plant the cukes, zucchini, and peppers. Those are slated for whenever the rain stops. I also got all of the herbs in except the basil.
This weekend, Brian built me this nifty compost bin. It’s my birthday present! He reworked some plans I found in the Organic Gardening magazine. So now I have plenty of space to put all of my compostable items.
We made a trip to Westwood Garden Haven and bought flowers. This evening Brian helped me plant them in the shed window boxes, the top of my water cistern, and in my new patio planters. We rearranged the furniture slightly on the patio to accommodate the planters. I think it looks pretty good back there. Too bad we’re too busy to do much entertaining this year.
We also bought a couple more fish and plants for the pond. They had tadpoles for sale, too, so we threw two of them in for good measure. My pond is currently full of algae, so we can’t actually see anything in the pond, but it should clear up in a week or so. The pond was doing great, but the water level dropped a little due to the lack of rain, so I topped it up with the water from the cistern. I happened to open up the cistern today only to find out that the remaining water in it was full of algae, so I think that I might have introduced the algae to the pond. But we have a UV light running in the pond system, and it kills algae, so nothing to worry about there.
I’m kind of glad it’s supposed to rain the next few days–there are a lot of plants outside that need to be watered! Plus, I should really get some stuff done in the house, too. But, I have been enjoying all of the time I’ve been spending outside this year so far.