Happy Spring!

As I write this, there are only a couple hours or so left until the cosmic event spring equinox. All around the world at this time there are 12 hours between sunrise and sunset. For us in the Northern hemisphere from now on the days will become longer and nights shorter. Welcome spring!

Another nice day today in Arlington and again I worked for quite some time in the garden:

• seeded spinach, dill and cilantro
• planted eight broccoli, four kohlrabi and four asparagus seedlings (we all like broccoli, kohlrabi is an experiment and asparagus harvest might happen next spring, but most likely in two years)
• planted six forget-me-not plants in the side yard
• in between prepped the soil, i.e. dug in some compost in the veggie patch
• mulched a little bit more

• planted a bulb of this calla lily on a big terra cotta container. The bulb is kind of weird looking, I presumed this is the top...

• and finally, I seeded some yellow bell pepper as well as yellow and orange tomatoes in two smaller terra cotta pots. These pots will stay inside. The tomato seeds I saved last year from store-bought tomatoes. Later I read that saving tomato seeds involves fermenting process. Oh well, if they do not come up, no big loss.

Productive Day

I started working in the garden about 10 am this morning planning to tidy up the vegetable patch and sow carrot and lettuce seeds.

The veggie patch has been taken over with growing plants. This is how it looked in May, just about two months ago:

Here's the same view taken the other day. Some plants have been harvested already: radishes, garlic, shallots and onions. Some plants have been added: squashes, sunflowers, peppers and tomatoes. Everything has grown very well (unless eaten by rabbits, like beans and sweet potato vines). It's one big green mess.
To get some order in there, I started with pulling out the overgrown broccoli and radishes, then came out a wheel barrel load of weeds.

I moved on to flower beds and decided that today will be the day when I cut down the small Japanese maple in our backyard. This small tree would often be in my way and the flower bed around it was hard to keep up because of maple's roots. I guess I still did some damage to them anyway as the maple would never look good during summer.

Well, cutting down the maple started a wave of pruning. My husband pruned another, larger Japanese maple we have. Some overgrown bushes in the front were up next. We cut out two of them and trimmed the third one. Dogwood in the side yard also got trimmed. After all the cutting we have this huge pile of brush on the curb.Then, to fill in the empty spot in the front, I transferred black-eyed susans, ornamental grass, Siberian iris, and lamb's ears from other parts of the garden. We are happy with how it looks now.
And yes, after all that, I went on to do what I initially planned. Carrot and lettuce seeds are in the ground as well as three nastrium seeds that I picked up in Sausalito, CA last summer. They'll germinate and start growing during August and should do really well during the cooler days of September.

It was 3 pm when I finally got inside. Tired and achy, yet it was never an issue until today's planned and unplanned things were finished.