Here we go again, slow progress

This picture is the daffodils in full glory on April 24. The primroses in between are a bit disappointing. I thought they'd spread faster. The band of periwinkle on the other side of this small bed, with the lovage in the corner, looks really nice, but the colour just doesn't photograph well.

Can it really be more than 2 weeks since the last  garden blog?

Blame  working outside, two seasons of MadMen on DVD, and an ailing internet connection. Our cable company is installing a better cable. While the work is in progress the connection has been coming and going in mysterious ways at unpredictable moments.

Anyway......the bad news is that every day I get less done than I was hoping to do. The good news is that almost every day something gets accomplished. Most days I am out there even in the most disgusting weather for at least 4 hours.

The picture above shows the tidied-up part of the flower beds so far. I am slowly learning a few basic tricks for the design-challenged, but that is another post.

Didn't I promise the food garden first dibs on time this year? I lied. The market starts on May 22, a bare 21/2 weeks from today, and I must make a good show the first few weeks. So much time is spent in the plant corner potting up little guys.

It would be nice to have a beautiful well-organized shed for this, but we just have an old sink filled with potting mix and surrounded by soil mix, pails, plant pots, etc.  Ping! Idea! We'll make the lack of greenhouse a selling point! Tough, greenhouse-free plants! Heehee.

Then there is the But First! factor. 

Last fall bed #2 was left  ready to go, manured and all, destined for miscellaneous cool small stuff. Greens, carrots, beets, leeks, that sort of thing.
Some of the best leftover market plants got to overwinter in it. So before I can use the bed for vegs  they must be moved.
Below, bed #2 with market plants, catch a glimpse of peas to the right, they're up.

Some of them will just get potted up again, but some are destined for  flower beds inside the deer fence. I love lillies, they sell well, and this is the only place where I get to see them bloom. Deer wait till the buds are fat and sweet and then devour them.

But that means cleaning out old abandoned flowerbeds. Sigh.
These date from the time we lived in the old house and saw them from the window. Back in the golden age when deer were fewer and we gardened without fences. Did that really happen?

Here is the start of one born-again flower bed. It was covered in quack grass. Anyway, you get the picture. Every job calls for another job to be done first. That ugly cardboard will get covered with woodchips, I promise....

Lots of vegetables have been be pre-started in containers, so one of these days there will be an instant garden.

 

After the balmy late winter and early spring the weather turned cold again. Above Box Mountain with fresh snow on top. The perennials slowed down a bit which gives me a chance to catch up with the transplanting. We finally got some meaningful rain, hallelujah! It was getting scary out there, the dead grass and bracken crunching underfoot like midsummer. Just before the big rain barter-partner Rick sharpened the lawn mower and husband Chris mowed the lawn. What a difference that makes! And now, out with me, the plants are waiting.....