Not Quite Spring Enough

 

   It's been chilly here in the wilds of urban Pittsburgh, so nothing has been planted in my new raised beds.

Tomorrow I plan to sprinkle some seeds on the soil on the north/alley side of the new fence, just to keep the weeds down.  When the overnight temps have warmed up a bit more I'll plant some heuchera and some small variety hostas back there interspersed with vinca and some impatiens for color.  I have lily of the valley and some snowdrops to go in there, too.  People walk their dogs along that alleyway, and I don't really want to plant much that takes a lot of work to maintain, but I want it to look nice.  

There has been progress made in the sewing rooms!  Hubby carried my unused desk down to my "
office" for me and cleared up about 10 square feet of floor space.  I spent a few hours vacuuming and  putting various bits of clutter away in their proper places.  The room still looks like the remains of a tornado strike, but the basic idea of what it's supposed to look like is emerging.  (We shall not speak of what the other room looks like,  I literally can't get in to it because I shoved a couple of things into the doorway so Hubby could get through with the desk.)

  My smocking chapter is gearing up for a little midweek retreat and I've been spending time pulling threads in linen to make nicely edged fabric blanks for our project.  I'd bought a yard from one of the big-name fabric and craft stores that took me nearly 4 hours to pull 3 threads! Four HOURS!  The linen threads were not tightly spun and kept fraying and breaking, so I had to dig around to find the loose end about every two inches.  The other yardage I had came from linen-store.com and it took me less than 45 minutes to do the first two thread pulls.  I ordered more so I can replace the Bad Linen.  I did come up with one handy thing: using a fine crochet hook to grab broken threads is a lot easier than trying to pry the thread up with a needle.  

Garden Day

 

The past two days were sunny and mild, so the ground is thawed out enough to be workable.  This afternoon I'll be attempting to de-root some new crown vetch growth in the front-side bed that took me days to weed last fall.  If that doesn't wear me out I'll do a bit of rototilling in the back yard.  Phil put together one of the new galvanized steel raised beds I've bought to replace the breaking and rotting wooden ones.  The new beds are a foot deep as compared to the 6" of the previous ones: I may have to buy some new soil to fill them up as the existing soil has compacted a bit.  Tilling will fluff it up some, but not enough.  

The trees here are greening up nicely.  My forsythia have tiny buds ready to bloom, and the lilac has also started to produce some buds.  I'm looking forward to seeing that lilac bloom this year.  (I do wish we had a window or two on the east side of the house!) I pretty much missed it last year as I forgot I had it! 

Once the rest of the weeds have been cleared from that bed I'll be adding some tulip and crocs bulbs, sprinkling alyssum  and wildflower seed in an attempt to crowd out the weeds, and planting a few leeks, scallions and basil just to make things interesting. 

The mint bed, which is supposed to have several varieties of herb, is a mess.  I've been contemplating moving the blue hydrangea from a shady corner of the yard into the center area.  It will get more sun and be more visible there.  It certainly isn't too happy where it's currently planted! 

A New Fence

 

We've been having a landscapey week.

   After several years of dithering, we've gotten around to having a fence put up along the back property line.  Someone has been yanking out the little ornamental fence we'd installed and cutting through the yard, so it was time to get something more robust.

   I chose a shadow box style as it will still let light and the breeze through but provide a good deal of privacy.  I asked for a full-slat spacing; once about half the boards were up I realized that was far too wide.

   The next day the guys had to remove all the slats and respace them before they finished the rest of the fence. 

  One of our contractors (M) was a landscaper for years and suggested we level the soil in the yard rather than vary the fence slat length. That would, of course, be the more long-term solution to the problem of our crooked yard, but I thought it would be too time-consuming and expensive.  

   I ordered two tons of soil.  (For reference, one ton is about 20 cubic feet; the new garden beds  -that silver thing in the image above- are 18cf each.)  On Thursday, The Hubby did a lot of wheelbarrowing and dumped about a ton of the pile along the fence line and raked it out a bit, then used most of the rest to fill one of my new garden beds after I rototilled the existing soil.  On Friday, M spread the fence line smooth and graded it nicely while J built the gate, then the two of them installed the gate.  I think it looks quite nice, but as you can see by the space between the ground and the fence, I'm going to need to order another couple tons of soil! 

I've been wanting to level out the area between the garage and the higher portion of the yard since we moved here. I guess it is now That Time. It means learning how to install a French Drain, and of course,YouTube makes that look really simple.  I do not believe it. 

 

   I'm pondering whether to make a sort of rustic corduroy pathway from railroad ties or 4x4s to run over the drain from the gate to the back porch, or whether to use large stepping stones with a gravel fill and densely planted Roman Chamomile. 

   Today, we're getting a nice soaking rain that should help to settle and sprout the grass seed

First sign of Spring?

 

I was sitting at my dining room table reading when suddenly I heard a "chip!  Chip!!" outside the window. 

"That sounds like a robin", I thought, so I got up to look.

Sure enough, there was a robin in the flower bed.  He currently seems to be having a territory war with a mockingbird. I feel like doing a Sybil Ludington and racing around the neighborhood yelling "the redbreasts are coming, the redbreasts are coming", but Covid precautions make that a little irresponsible.  Instead, I shall sit here enjoying the continuing "chip"s of the harbinger in my garden.