If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Friday, May 10, 2013

A to Z reflections and more gardening

Oh sheesh!
Apparently I'm supposed to do a reflections post on my A to Z chronicles!

I had fun!

There that's out of the way.....oh you mean be serious?

OK fine.  I'll admit I didn't try to read 11,000 blogs in a month.  I didn't leave many comments.  I did read quite a bit.  A lot of crap I wasn't the slightest bit interested in.  I only call it crap because it doesn't make me tick.  Stuff needs to make me tick or I just don't have a use for it.  It's not really crap because someone else loves it, it's just the way I categorize things.  (selfish prick)

I have my favorites.  Al, Jenny, Dani on whom I never missed a post.  I would call them blog family.
Ornery's wife was a frequent new visitor!  Love the name!

I didn't join the A to Z challenge to make new friends or acquire new followers.  I did it because I knew it would make me write.  As you can tell from the posts I am waaaay out of practice.  If you want to be a good writer you have to write.  Doesn't have to be good just do it.  In time things work out.

I'll probably join next year as well.  I'm a sucker for last minute commitments.

So with that said lets move on to some new crap (as seen from someone who doesn't like this sort of thing, works both ways ya know).

After 14 or 15 weeks of overtime I finally have a Friday off work.  It's raining!  Go figure.

I have made some significant strides in the garden since the last post.  In between work, soccer and mosquitoes I have managed to finish planting the tomatoes, sowed the sweet corn, bush beans and planted the onion sets.  Also set up the cucumber table and the squash and zucchini box.

I still have a lot of irrigation work to do as well as mulching and finally planting the grass but it's getting there. 

I planted my onions in the 3 section box.  Yellows and reds.  I plant them close and when they are a few inches tall I'll pull every other one for yummy table onions!  That leaves the others room to grow into bulbs.




You can see the sweet corn rows in the middle. (black lines)

I'm still waiting on the peppers to get big enough to transfer to the garden.  Probably a good thing they are not ready.  Expecting a freeze on Sunday.

The cucumber table is something new I'm trying this year.  I raised a big box high off the ground and will let the cucumber vines dangle over the edge and make their way to the ground.  Something new and different.  Might work, might not.



I still need to plant the sugar snap peas on the fence/trellis in the background and I also picked up a huge shopping bag full of asparagus roots.  Need to plant them.
I had downsized the garden by this much.



Now I need to take some space back for all this asparagus.  The leftover area I was going to plant grass back in it but just for S&G I am going to fill it with watermelons and pumpkins and then scatter sunflower seeds throughout it.  Should be pretty interesting.  If I plant them close enough, the leaves from the watermelon and pumpkins should crowd out any weed growth and the sunflowers will have already grown through the large leaf canopy of the growing and spreading vines.

I got Archer propped back up and he is ever vigilant in his observations of the garden.  He has a new hat for now.  (dollar store trip in order).  We hung out last night and had a beer together.



I did a small burn off in anticipation of some more back property line landscaping this summer.  Still working on getting that under control.





Eventually I'll have it cleared out.  This is the view behind all the scrub brush.  I'd like to see it from my side that's why I'm clearing it.  It is a small alfalfa field and its always full of deer and turkeys.



I located a few nice piles of rocks off the edges of farm fields that I have been collecting and bringing home to help landscape around the trees that are to be left when I'm done clearing the brush.


One at a time.  Pick em up, load em in the truck, haul em home and unload em.
My misery knows no bounds. (if its free I'll work my arse off)



If you open this pic up you can see how I put rocks around the groups of trees and then filled them with wood chips.  This is how the rest of the line will look.  Eventually!


Well it's off to work I go.  Need to do some up-potting of pepper plants and clean my garage.  What  a mess.
Have a great weekend!

-Bushman

4 comments:

  1. I am SO envious of your garden!!! Gosh! I am embarrassed to post photos of mine this year. All the rent house renovations have eaten up my energy and motivation, but wow, I would love to have your space and soil!

    Thanks for the mention. I like your crap, so I'll keep coming back. :D
    tm

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  2. Congtrats, Bushman, for starting and finishing the Challenge - your involvement was a highlight for me.

    I’m like you with the follower bit - I do this A-Z to challenge my writing. And yours was excellent - so ease up on the beatings… hahaha

    I read this post literally after you posted it but truth is I’ve been hogtied to my Reflections post - drinking while writing really slows me down. (thank god for the backspace button is all I can say)

    Unlike you and that one beer that’s made its second appearance - I hope it was a different bottle. (you do know I studied both pics doing one of those “spot the 5 differences” things… nope, it’s the same bottle)

    So… you need to bust loose and have a second because that’s way too much gardening to do on one bottle!

    I’m in to all this gardening of yours… well, vicariously anyway… you work and I’ll drink - how’s that!

    Cheers, Jenny :)

    PS - thanks for the shout out, and I agree with you Ornery's Wife has a great handle! It made me smile the first time I read it!

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  3. The garden looks great! Although, in addition to vegetables, those little boxes could probably hold mob hits, as well.
    We were supposed to write a reflections post? Well, oh crap and damn.
    Okay, I had fun, too.

    ReplyDelete

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