the weekend

Saturday - boring, cloudy, raining on and off. Hence, very little gardening. So, I made beads instead. Glass beads - gas torch, melting glass. You get the drift. Neil gave me the glass and setup for Christmas this past year, and it was the great occupier during January and February. I made dozens of wonderful beads and then when spring started arriving, I got busy or sick and just started letting it fall by the way-side.

So it was very good to pick up the glass for a few hours again. But I think I've lost whatever talent I briefly had. I need to get back into it more often, to keep my hand practised. I made six beads this saturday, and only one of them is reasonably pretty.

Sunday - mix of overcast and sunny. Reasonable temperatures. So... back to the garden.

We are almost done. Almost. Well, at least this year's major plans. And not including the ever-ongoing weeding.

We need another 4 or 5 yards of mulch to finish the new garden area. But it goes quickly when we do it. Neil did the part I was dreading - pulling out the creeping charlie where it's broken through the earlier batch of newspaper/mulch barrier and reinforcing it.

I planted a few more annuals and some new tomato plants that I hope will take this time. I took a page from Mark Cullen's book on Ontario Gardening, and planted them directly in sheep manure. Maybe this bunch won't die like the others.

But I still didn't get the lawn done. The ground was too wet to mow most of the day. Actually, it might have been fine in the evening, but I was too zonked by then.

After we cleaned up last night, Neil and I took a walk around and discussed next year's plans. :) There's another whole bunch of fence line garden in the shady area that I don't venture in very often because the mosquitos are so prolific there. But it needs some major weeding, mostly of creeping charlie, some new plants, some mulching, some gravelling, and some delineation between it and the grass.

And the lawn desperately needs professionals to aerate, weed, restore the sparse areas, even out the bumpiness and kill monster ant hills. My puny amateur efforts just aren't suceeding.

There's more flowers in bloom so expect more pictures later in the week. Maybe my ugly beads will find themselves on film as well. Or maybe not. One never can tell.

Karen