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| February 26, 2011 A belated Happy New Year to everyone. It's snowing on my high desert garden at the moment, which is all to the good as we can use the moisture. The rain year started off wet but we had a long period in January and the beginning of February with no rain at all. Normally there is a false spring in February right around now but I believe it came a few weeks early this time. Daffodils are beginning to bloom, there are a few crocus in bloom, and my white-flowered currant is covered with bees. So I'm pretty sure spring is here despite the snow. Last weekend I dug out the huge compost pile and toted wheelbarrows full of compost into the various beds in the vegetable garden. I rototilled it all in, checked the irrigation and made lists of the irrigation equipment I'll need to get the vegetable garden ready for planting. I planted the snow peas already and covered them up with row cover (a free plug here for Peaceful Valley Garden Supply, they have excellent prices on row cover). Last summer I gave up trying to keep the weeds under control in my front yard. I am spending too much time on horseback to garden the way I used to, so we hired a gardener. They are slowly but surely weeding out all the grass and other nasties in my perennials and roses and keeping the lawn mowed. Now I can work on the vegetable garden and the xeriscape garden without too much guilt. We also got rid of our little pond, which was in a stock tank in the back yard. The tank eventually rusted through - not unexpected actually - and while I enjoyed the water sounds it was just one more thing to take care of, so out it went. I still have some water iris in a container in the greenhouse. As always I am hoping to do better on keeping the website updated, I just got a new little program that is saving me some keystrokes, and with a little research I think I can do better than that later. |
| August 22, 2010 I made some changes to the layout for the Everyone Online list. When I started it, back in ancient days, having a website was interesting and rare. Those days are gone for sure! It's way too long and unwieldy now, and it hardly seems worthwhile keeping a separate list just for companies with websites, but I can see it gets a lot of visitors. Until I get a search function up and running I'll keep it up. Happy gardening - hope it's cooler where you are than where I am. |
| July 18, 2010: It's 108 degrees Farenheit today in my backyard, which is why I'm in here updating the catalog site instead of gardening, riding, or canning. The thought of doing anything more strenuous than sitting still underneath my ceiling fan is just too much. We use our "swamp cooler" instead of the refrigerated air conditioner because it's so much cheaper to run, but that's only keeping the house at about 85 to 90. I heard a saying once that you can tell the temperature by the length of a sleeping cat...well, mine are stretched to their limits. I have had a great vegetable season so far. I put up over 90 pints of green beans, mostly in jars but a bunch in the freezer. We have zucchini every night, the onions are huge, the tomatoes are just starting to come in. My ornamental garden, well, no change there except the weeds are bigger. I think I'm going to have to hire someone to at least mow once a week. Hope you are staying cooler than we are. Happy gardening! |
| June 13, 2010: Summer is really coming on. The strong winds of spring are dying down and the garden is just out of that first massive bloom of spring. In my vegetable garden, the peas are finished and pulled out, I've picked the first zucchini and even one tomato (there's no more even close to ready). I still have so much weeding to do in the ornamental garden that I hate to even look at it, but..."it is what it is". I picked the fruit off the early apricot and made some jam - my skills are rusty and I tried a new recipe so I hope I don't end up with pancake syrup. I went to the u-pick for cherries so wish me luck on that one too; I know the cherry-raspberry jam came out okay but the plain ol' cherry preserves still look alarmingly liquid. Happy gardening to you! |
| March 21, 2010: Happy Spring to everyone! It's that time of year where I spend more time outside than inside working on the catalog site, I hope all of you are soon able to start your own gardens. I have peas and onions looking good in the vegetable garden, lots of seedlings in the greenhouse, and the daffodils out front are almost gone. I love it when they are blooming but I have to say that deadheading a thousand daffodils is actually pretty dull. Happy gardening! |
| March 5, 2010: I haven't had much time to write up any comments, but I've been doing better at updating the site, at least so far this year. We've been fortunate to have a wet winter here in the high desert. It doesn't allow for much winter gardening but it means the wildflowers will be nice this spring. I am already seeing California poppies strong and lush in the cultivated areas of my garden; they are much smaller out in the "unimproved" areas but there are quite a few. I got inspired last month during a nice day and rototilled my entire vegetable garden area, and hacked down two big bushes in there that were providing a hiding place for rabbits and ground squirrels. I planted onions, snow peas, spinach, swiss chard, cilantro and dill. This is probably the earliest I have ever started planting and I can't think why I have waited so long before. I guess it was so there wouldn't be frost, but I have season extenders and I'm sure all will be well. In my greenhouse are seedlings for tomatoes, peppers, basil, and some ornamental flowers. In the rest of the garden, the apricot trees are blooming but the peach trees will be a bit behind. I have a couple thousand daffodils cheering me up out front. Hope you are seeing signs of spring too. Happy gardening, Cyndi |
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