garden news

Spring is here. Late, but here. It probably won't last for long, as winter was intermidable, but I'll take what I can get. Last weekend we checked Craig's List and found someone giving away fill dirt right near where we live--when we got there, we found some of the finest fill we'd ever seen. Appartently, the "owner" of the dirt had hauled in a ton of amendments when he first moved into his house and then discovered that he's OVERamended the soil. He'd used compost, sheep manure, shredded pine tree stump...eventually he decided that he just wanted to lay sod so he took all the good topsoil out of the yard. His loss, our gain. The soil was dark, loamy, chock full of worms and didn't seem to have much clay left in it at all. Jackpot!

These are some pictures of plants from our various garden beds. I love the way the pink lamium contrasts with the tiny star flowers of sweet woodruff. The broom I planted (big yellow flowers with single tulip in foreground) is so beautiful I want to freeze it in its current state. Last night I noticed that my salvia was getting choked by the ever-expanding bed of chocolate mint, so I pulled out huge ropes of mint in hopes that the salvia can breathe easier. The allium are almost all up and blooming, and I love their full pink heads. At their base, the black eyed susans are preparing for another hot summer, and the french lavender that I hacked the shit out of a month or so ago is booming. I'm dismantling The Wall and putting it back together again in different parts of the garden: the unruly hyssop will now be reined in a bit by stacks of old fireclay brick, and the iris that Giles planted when we first moved in is now a huge thriving bed that I bordered with chunks of old, rock-laden concrete. I love found objects. I love giving them new life and purpose. No surprises there.

Most of the fill dirt will become the base of the raised beds we're building this weekend. We have a plan--we just have to go buy the cedar. This year we'll have a bumper crop of beets and carrotts, butter lettuce, snap peas, green onions, tomatoes...the list goes on and on. It's amazing how much you can plant in a 4 x 10 bed. Just amazing.

And good for the body AND the soul.