"Till" We Meet Again . . .

This tree peony surprised us!

It's been quite the weekend here, even without the Easter holiday!
 Both of my children came home for the weekend and that meant, of course, great food.  The Resident Dragon continued his adventures in venison cuisine, which I'll outline over at Savory La Bouffe later in the week.

Although cold at night (low 40s--cool for April), the days were the stuff of song:  low humidity, highs in the 70s, and abundant sunshine.  Perfect hole-digging weather.  So, dig we did.  Rather, the RD dug and I "supervised."  In a jiffy, two clumps of dwarf pampas grass flanked the driveway near the street.  Seemingly, at least for me, moments later, two standard-size apple trees (gala and fuji) extended the orchard which is south of our house.

I really like my new cart!

Celebrating our hole-digging success, we decided to tackle the long-put-off, thankless task of cleaning off the porch.  Until this year, the porch has been my plant nursery, covered over with cups, pots, bags of soil and manure, you name it.  Since I have now created a nursery in the garage (see Well Begun Is Half Done), those items can move to the new nursery (which will suffice until my future hoop house becomes a reality).  There were pots everywhere, so we gathered them and dumped the old soil into a flower bed I'm trying to raise.  That's also where we dumped the remnants of an old bag of potting soil, the last of a cheap bag of manure, and, ugh, a soured half-bag of cottonseed meal.  The good news is, my flower bed is much higher now, and I found all those pots that had gone missing!

The addition of three trailer loads of leaves
should help make this buckshot lighter.

On Saturday, the RD cooked on the grill, which we all enjoyed (alert:  a new venison recipe is coming soon!), but left little time for the garden.  I did manage to do the "weed till" on my garden patches.  I just tilled one pass so that the weed roots are turned up into the sunshine and, hopefully, will die.  I plan to do final tilling this weekend, weather permitting.

Sunday was taken with church and airport transport.  We'd fixed some of the leftovers from Saturday and had a "car picnic" as we zoomed the three hours to the airport.  There's nothing quite like flying down the road with the wheel in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.  (No, I do not recommend it.  Keep both hands on the wheel.  At all times.)

Buttercups in bloom

Deep buttercups

Monday was warmer, but still quite pleasant, so I happily jumped on the tractor for some much-needed tractor-therapy, er, bushhogging.  The back half of our yard was covered in buttercup with a little chicory thrown in for color, but, sadly, it was time for it to be cut.  It was quite deep and thick and made for a peaceful morning whose only excitement came when I flushed a rabbit.

Look, Mom, real leaves!

The nursery buggy!

The seedling "nursery" has been moving outside on warm, sunny days and most of the tiny plants are putting on real leaves!  The peppers, usually slow to start, are about 1.5" tall.  The currant tomatoes have germinated well, as have the Italian Tree Tomatoes.  Basil is also sprouting well, but other herbs are taking their sweet time.

Since my target plant date is mid-May, I still have a little time to "encourage" them with organic fish emulsion.  I fed them with a diluted solution, only  reading the label after the watering.  It said the product was not suitable for commercial vegetable production.  Since I'm planning to sell my excess produce at the farmer's market, I had visions of my entire crop being ruined.  I Googled the company website and fired off a desperate inquiry to the manufacturer.  In the meantime, I found the product was listed as organic on the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) website.

Sweet basil and Genovese basil are thriving!

Soon after came the official reply from the company:  a change in formulation required that the product be recertified and the labels had been printed in the interim.  Whew, what a relief.  Thank you, kind folks at Alaska 5-1-1!  The crop is safe, for now.

So, that's our week.  What's happening in your end of the world?

"Till" we meet again . . .

Nancy