Weekly update

I probably should have started this series of the ever changing garden earlier since I have already done some work in the garden, but better late than never! I am usually pretty careful about keeping track of how long certain plants take to sprout, when I put plants in the ground, what kind of pest problems I deal with, what and when I feed the plants, etc. But this year I intend to include pictures in that collection. Somehow I have gone 3 years and can only find a handful of pictures from those previous gardens. So now I intend each Sunday morning to take a picture of the garden's progress. This week I will also include a picture from an earlier year, and some from earlier this year. Let's watch the garden grow!2007
This is the second summer. Notice the grass... that didn't last long. It seems we enjoy parties too much, parties that involve 10 or 15 people sitting around the chimnea, and it seems that parties always happen a week after a rain storm that leaves a large quantity of mud behind. I'm working to remedy this. Zoisa grass sod is one possibility. It is sturdy, very thick, and has an incredibly hardy root system. Also, notice the color of the dirt. It is kind of pale! We won't even discuss the fence...

Late February
On to this year. The garden in February is always so sad looking. This is before I started anything for the season. My flower boxes were chilling on top of my tomato beds, the birdbath is still flipped to prevent water from freezing in it and cracking, and the border is looking a little mushad. The fence is fixed though!

March
This is also earlier this year. I appoligize for the screen, I didn't want to go outside and step in the 6" of snow that we got in the beginning of MARCH!! ah, that season known as ALMOST spring! One day it is 60 and beautiful, the next there are 6" of snow.

April 12.
Now for the current yard. I think I have found my vantage point for these pictures, the back bedroom, precariously balancing the screen open so I can take a good picture. You will notice the two row garden and the cold frame (which doesn't have much in it because we will have to fix the retaining wall behind it in a few weeks and I didn't want to have to be stepping over plants, and it doesn't fit in the other bed) The white are row covers. You can buy half-hoops to hold them off the baby plants, I'm cheap so used my triangular tomato cages laying on their sides, my baby lettuce and pea plants (which finally sprouted) are hiding under them right now, it is Easter Sunday, and supposed to get to 31 degrees tonight. I have also finally really organized the mass of pots in the corner. In previous years I have stacked bricks, boards, rocks, crates and buckets underneath of pots to make all of them accessible, this often resulted in a strange balancing act that always looked a little thrown together. Most of those things are still in use this year, I was just much more careful about how I stacked them and connected the piles of bricks with leftover boards so they created a true set of tiers. In successive years this may morph into a built in flower bed made from stone and concrete with a water fall and pond (yes, a pond even in my postage stamp!). If I keep this up, the whole garden may change into a series of tiered gardens, making it a severly divided form of square foot gardening. Tiers are great because you don't have to rely on the height of plants in order to be able to see and access all plants.

Maybe next week we'll be able to see all the baby lettuce and peas!