LibrariAnne

Today has been, in the words of Lady Miss Kier, de-gorgeous! I started out this morning by freeing the tulip leaves in the driveway-side bed from the leaf mulch that was strangling them.

There are also iris coming up along the fence, and some daylilies sprouting. K also got out the Sawzall and cut down the stumps of the weed tree that we’ve been trying to kill behind the garage:

What an ugly mess! After doing that, we went to the Despot and picked up some lumber to create raised beds in the veg garden. We also bought some stump killer which we applied to this stump when we got home. I’m usually loathe to use chemicals of any kind on our property, but this tree is tenacious and I want it dead. It’s also in the best possible place to need to use chemicals – behind the garage and a distance from anything growing, and totally out of bounds for the dogs.

The raised beds were SO easy to build! I’d measured out how much space I wanted to cover, so we had the store cut the boards to length for us. The hinges I got for my bday last fall worked quite well! (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

K kindly pitchforked the compost piles and transported a whole bunch of lovely, delicious-smelling compost from the bottom of the piles to these beds. I need to figure out how much soil it’ll take to fill these in and arrange to have that delivered.

I also cleared out some more thick leaf piles from the garage-side bed where tons of daylilies and other things are coming up:

As you can see I didn’t clear away nearly all the leaves, but I had mulched it so thickly that I needed to take some out to let these guys grow.

After that, we finally finished scooping poop and raking the back yard and K did the first mowing while I pruned back some perennials. The yard is definitely showing some signs of dogs living here:

We seeded a bunch of white clover in the far back right corner last summer and it took really nicely back there, so I’ll probably order some more seed this year. There are also a lot of weird bumpy patches and big areas of crab grass throughout the yard, so we might end up fencing off sections, digging up the turf and re-seeding with clover. Did you know that white dutch clover does not turn yellow when dogs pee on it? You can also mow it like grass.

The dogs, of course, were delighted with all the lovely smells that we stirred up by mowing and spent some quality time snuffling around.

Logan looks so regal basking in the sun, doesn’t she?

When I was pruning, I noticed that I have asparagus coming up!

This is the third year for the asparagus (since I planted it from seed) and it looks like it will finally be big enough to eat this year. These shoots are about half the width of my pinky finger and only about four inches tall, so they’ve got some room to grow.