but right now using the sunroom at our rental, while i finish up back porch repairs at home.
also need to be able to set up an incubator, as we are hoping for some easter egger chicks. we figure if we are to be sustainable, we need to be able to raise our own chickens. so...

we are planning to have a plant sale at the ark, and think that we need to work on a seed bank for the farm. i am keeping all my seed packets in a little photo album. i am looking for a larger page sized album for my beans. we are trying every bean we can find. we have a couple dozen. our hugelbeds will be slurping down nitrogen for a while. so, we are taking advantage of the situation to see what we want to grow and keep. have a local organic farm following our results.

why my hubby is coming home tomorrow. He has been at our home in Harnett County, NC since early Feb. He usually stays until early May, but the weather has been so grim he is ready to come home.

He did mention the pear trees are budding out, and a few azaleas are starting to bloom. It is too bad he won't be able to enjoy them this year. We don't have azaleas here in northern Utah. I have tried them, but they can't survive the winters.

Good luck with your plantings. Your tomato harvest from last year was amazing, based on the pictures you posted.

We also have gray and windy and rainy here, but it is cold as it was all winter (if made it to 32 degrees high today, woohoo). So I am not even thinking of spring and planting yet. My crocuses that had come up and opened now have dead flowers. Sigh. I am SO ready to see flowers!

Other than the front beds I never really got them properly planted after we finished the house. We have terraced beds on the east and south sides and the idiots that put them in didn't make them flat - they slope a lot. So when my knees were bad, there was no way I could climb around on them.

I transplanted the paperwhites and African irises I have been digging and dividing for thirty plus years, put in some day lilies and gladiolus, and some years stuck in a few annuals, but otherwise those beds have looked really bad for the last five years.

Last year with the knee replacements, no one did anything to the beds. By the time I was up to paying attention, the beggarweed was six feet tall. A friend came over and weed whacked everything down, just so I could see out the windows.

So far this year I've dug some of the ajuga that spread into the lawn and transplanted it into the bed that needed a ground cover, dug paperwhites out of the south bed and interplanted them in the ajuga. The paperwhites will die back soon and come up next winter for blooms in February.

The last two days I've been digging the Mexican petunias some idiot thought were a good idea and trying to weed the bed next to the bedroom. It's mostly got paperwhites that survived the petunias and beggarweed - I plan to transplant the daylilies the deer won't let thrive to see if they can make it there. I'm also digging my Louisiana iris from under the oak where the blackberries are taking over and adding to the same bed.

Once the daylilies are out of the south bed, I'm getting rid of the weeds there and planting hybrid lantana for blooms that will attract birds, bees and butterflies. Hopefully they will thrive and fill the bed enough to block the weeds.

Under the oak I may have to use chemicals to kill the blackberries and other weeds before I can plant anything. It's solid red clay and oak roots under the blackberries so if we can kill off the blackberries, I'll have to get a load of topsoil to bring the ground level back up. I'm hoping to get azaleas established under the tree for some spring color and evergreen foliage. Maybe some creeping lorepetalum for ground cover and kaleidescope abelia for contrast.

It's great to be able to dig again, though I am not quite ready to kneel down for planting - not sure if I can get back up. I've been managing an hour or two a day and I've getting a lot done. If I can keep this up, the beds around the house should look good in a few years.

After over a decade of bone on bone pain that kept me from using a shovel, I don't mind the hard work. It feels good!

Enjoyable post, csziggy. I always love to hear where other gardeners are in the growing season.

Would something like this help? I have three of them and love them. I even use them around the house to help get up after I've cleaned under the armoires and other "on the floor" tasks.



Turn it upside down and you can sit there and weed! Of course, I won't be doing that this year since i have my new stirrup hoe, but I will use it as a bench to take around and groom my container gardens.


Cher

Before my knee replacements, it was simply too painful to attempt to kneel.

The other problem is the terraced beds - the idiots who put them in did not make the beds flat and did not add enough levels. So I have a bed about six feet wide on a 20 degree slope, a bed about four feet wide on a 25 degree slope, then an area of grass on about a 45 degree slope. At least now I can work on those slopes some - before the knee replacements just walking on flat ground was a challenge.

I need to hire someone with a front end loader, tear out all the existing terraced beds and have them redone properly with wider, level beds going down to nearly ground level and put good quality soil in - but I simply don't have the money. With insurance my out of pocket for two knee replacements and carpal tunnel surgery was a lot. My husband needs foot surgery this year and I need to get carpal tunnel surgery on the other hand.

My strategy now is to try to put in plantings that will crowd out the weeds and take over the beds, maybe growing down the slope eventually so that doesn't have to be weed whacked. I've got three flats of hybrid lantana to plant this weekend - that's supposed to be really good at out competing the weeds. And it attracts all kinds of nectar drinkers - birds, butterflies & bees, oh boy!

I'm going to see what I can do myself and hire a couple of young men I know to help with the heavy labor for an afternoon or two. I priced hiring a landscape company and it's just not in the budget. Besides, I enjoy gardening and the work is good exercise, which I need.

It just snowed here yesterday! So no hope of getting outside to start getting the ground ready, cleaning up, for another week or more at least. So I'm concentrating my efforts indoors (starting seeds) and buying fertilizer, containers, etc., for this spring.

Today, sunny AND snowing-- but only that weird floats-thru-the-air-but-never-lands kind of flakes.

Dire predictions and hand-wringing all around for Sunday's coming storm.

The mini daffodils are up at last and blooming.

But true Spring still feels a long way off.

Dang last night was harsh. Went outside this morning at about 7 and it was still 28 degrees out. Sun has started to hit the seedlings I transplanted and they look like they are going to recover. Come on Real spring temps!!!!!