Spring Gardening

When I was growing up, my mom would take our family skiing to Bend, Oregon often during the winter. (Bless her soul . . . she didn't even ski! She'd just sit in the lodge while we had our fun.) Over the years, I discovered I preferred to be a "fair-weather skier" - meaning, I preferred skiing in sunny weather versus a snowstorm.

My skis and boots now retired, I guess now I've transferred that same attitude to my gardening. A little gray sky? Ok, I can handle that. But drizzling? Uh uh. That's a sure way to send me scuttling back inside to wait for drier weather.

Having recently had two sons move back home, I'm taking advantage of one son's desire to help us garden and landscape this summer. (Yay! I have my own personal gardener!) I took my "gardener" to a local nursery to scope out some flowers, herbs and tomatoes. We managed to fill up maybe half the pickup truck bed with some new plants.

That night Harvey and I stopped by a local grocery store and noticed they were setting up for their annual May plant sale, starting at 6 am the next morning. I made it to the sale by 6:30, thinking it probably wouldn't be too crowded, but there were plenty of "crazies" like me out there looking for a good deal. After two hours of shopping and dragging two grocery carts through the line to pay, I drove away with a FULL pickup bed of perennials and annuals.

Here's what I bought on Saturday morning. Notice the

beautiful purple allysum in the front. It smells so sweet!

While I got ready to start planting, hubby was cleaning out the

drain  in front of the garage. It yielded some great compost!

My tomato patch was my first project. Inspired by my daughter and son-in-law's tomato and pepper patch last year, and subsequent salsa canning, I planted ten tomatoes and five peppers. That's the most I've ever planted . . . hope it doesn't overwhelm me! Harvey followed right behind me, putting tomato cages on all.

                                                                            

I had to make a run to the garden store to pick up some extra compost and fertilizer, and while I was there I found the most beautiful starts . . . red romaine lettuce, and I couldn't resist! (Plus, I'd had a row of regular romaine lettuce that didn't come up.) Can't wait to taste it!

Here's Ryan, planting ferns in my north, shady beds. I'm glad he was doing the

planting there . . . LOTS of gray clay and rocks to dig up and add soil amendment.

Still have much planting to do, and guess what? The sun is shining! Fair weather, here I come!