It’s spring break here, and for me that means that my children and my husband are both home for an entire week.  That’s a really good thing for my garden, but first, unfinished business!  Last summer we received from a Freecycler, a porch swing.  The fabric was the worse for wear, but the frame was in good shape.  After trying a few different techniques for putting a seat on the thing,  I think I have finally found a solution that works.  (My first try, which is the same used to attach the back, you can see in later pictures.  It popped the second time we sat on it.) This one, made with jute webbing sewn on with hemp thread, feels really solid, and comfy, if not pretty.

 

With that done, I could move on to other garden projects.  Some good friends of ours let us come to their house and cut some bamboo for garden trellises.  (I tried to grow tomatoes last year with only our chain-link fence as a trellis.  My neighbor was very patient, and even tied up a few loose creepers.)  This year I am better prepared!  Lots of tomato plants again, and this year, hopefully a few beans as well.

You can see the new apple tree in the foreground.  Sadly, the almond didn’t make it.  🙁   And in the background is the bat-house that we put up this fall.  No tenants yet, but I am hoping that we will have some by the end of the summer to help keep the insect population down.

And here you can see the garden path that I have started.  We cant afford the pavers yet, but I had trouble mowing the grass path last year, so this year, I’ve just gone ahead and put down the barrier cloth that our neighbor handed down to us as extra off of his roll.  (Isn’t it nice to have good neighbors.  They are close to our parents’ age and have been very kind and as I mentioned before, patient)  You can see where I’ve started putting down sand down by the gate.  It’s going to take a lot of trips to the hardware store, but I plan on adding 2-3 bags each time I go this summer.  Maybe by the end of the summer it will be finished.

You can see that the onions are growing well.  These I planted in the fall, and they should be ready to harvest soon, and on the other side of the path… Strawberries!  I hope the squirrels don’t get them all.  The pets aren’t as spry as they once were, but hopefully they will be enough of a deterrent.

My garden is the size it is, because my husband insisted that I leave some of the yard for the children to play in (Really?  Yards are for kids?  Who knew?)  After two years in the house, and seeing how much of the yard our kids actually use, (the sandbox on the porch and a minimal amount for other purposes) he decided that he would like part of the yard left “wild.”  I’m not entirely sure what that means to him, but I try to accommodate him when he makes these kind of decisions, so at about the point in the lawn where I am done with mowing anyway, I cut a curvy kind of line and have just been letting it grow.  Today the kids and I cast about some shade tolerant wildflower seeds.  I think it’s going to look nice, and now I don’t have to mow the back third of the lawn!

 

 

And finally, since my husband was taking some of the bamboo, our friends said “Why not take it all? Julie will surely be able to figure something to do with it” So anyone have ideas for fun stuff to do with bamboo?