gardening goodness

hooray for long weekends filled with sunshine! we made tremendous progress on our garden, with the help of grandma and grandpa, who were up for a visit.

i'm not sure how much detail i've provided about our garden bed. probably not much, other than that it was filled with hostas. anyhoo, we have a fairly sizable garden, flanked on all sides by a low stone wall. i'd guestimate that it is about...15 x 20? and has two beds, divided by another stone wall: one large rectangle (about 12 x 20 ft), and one skinny rectangle (about 3 x 20 ft).

when we started the weekend out, it was filled with weeds and mystery perennials. a few weekends ago i dug out two massive hosta plants, divided them up, and transplanted them to a few shady spots on the property, including my new "mother's day perennial garden," which i promise to take pictures of and post. there are several large clumps of mystery perennial flowers on the shadier, southern end of the garden, and i dug a few up and moved them to the empty spaces where the hostas once were. so approximately 1/3 of the garden is occupied by mystery flowers at the moment, and we're going to wait and see what comes up and then either transplant them in the early fall or, more likely, transplant them next spring when we figure out where they should go.

we spent a considerable amount of time weeding, spreading compost, and turning over the garden bed. we still have a little more soil preparation to do, but most of it is finished, and we were able to plant 10 tomato plants (thanks to grandpa, who brought them up from nj) and two mounds of zucchini. pete found materials (in our barn) to build a trellis for our cucumbers, so this week we will get the cukes in the ground, and probably also the broccoli. and i'll plant some lettuce directly into the ground. basil plants are just about ready to go into the ground. we have a few small pepper plants and chard plants inside in peat pots, but i'm gonna wait another week or so before putting them outside.

i am pretty durned whooped today. and a little sunburned.