Looking back at our blog, my last post was July 2019. Wow, how time flies. Before I retired a lot of people at work would ask me what I was going to do with all my extra time.  I listed off things like spending more time with the granddaughters, more horseback riding , taking better care of my gardens, etc.  I did want to do a better job of posting blog updates and I decided that a blog post about my gardens would be a good place to start. We’ll see how long I keep this up?

 

While I have more free time now, I didn’t want to spend all of it trying to maintain the gardens so I looked around the yard and decided that the berm would have to go. I dug, separated and moved some of the plants (purple coneflowers and lilies) to the round flag pole garden. The rest of the lilies, and there were a lot of them, I advertised them for free on the local Norris Area Buy/Sell list on Facebook. Surprisingly they were all gone by noon.

 

With Ken’s help and his little John Deere tractor, we leveled the berm pretty well. I left the River Birch that I had planted a couple of years ago and I pulled as much dirt as I could from there so that there wouldn’t be a big mound.

 

We bought a couple of those grass seed blankets and rolled it out over the dirt.  I tried to keep it watered and soon some grass did appear. Unfortunately, one day we decided that it would be safe to let the chickens out to free-range.  Bad idea!! Later in the day I was looking out the kitchen window while doing dishes and the chickens were scratching the seed blanket up.  We worked to get them back in the coop and then I spent some time trying to lay the shredded pieces back down.  Needless to say it was a while before the chickens were allowed out again. The berm will eventually look like the rest of the yard, a mixture of grasses, clover, dandelions and weeds, right.

Ken got me another barrel for Mother’s Day/Birthday. I planted petunias in there since they are one of his favorite flowers. I cleaned up some of the other small gardens and planted the extra 4th of July tomato plant in a pot and put it on the deck.

I had gotten an old chair without a seat on one of our Junk Jaunt trips and I use it for a planter on the front porch. Ken started putting new flooring on the front porch back in October or November. Unfortunately we are still waiting for the last two pieces to be delivered so that he had finish the floor and get the rail back up.

 

Now I’m working on digging up all of the iris. They didn’t bloom nearly as well as in year’s past and the grass had grown up around them so much I knew it was time to start digging. I really enjoy them since they bloom around Memorial Day. Dad always liked real flowers so I try to put the iris and peonies on his grave each year.