Last Weekend of April Recap

It's the start of another week.  How did that happen?  

I have been battling with Walmart for two weeks trying to get these ultra cheap pots I need for the clematis and I'll be danged if they don't sell out in minutes before they can even get to my order.  I can't go paying top dollar for these things and I have an "oops" coupon for them coming to a close that I need to use.  If not, I'll have to poke around the two other stores we have freebies for but I don't think they're as cheap so I can't get as many.  Apparently ALL of the gardeners are chompin' at the bit to get stuff planted this year.  May I please get my 4 pots and y'all can have the rest?  😝

We have blown through season after season of Alone for like a week and a half.  I know we're late to the party but has anyone else watched that?  I have to say my brain feels like I could do it to some degree.  The things I say they should be doing or thinking about in the beginning (that has never been discussed) are things they either regret not doing or the little side notes pop up saying how they could survive that moment.  It blows my mind how many people lose their shelters to fires because they don't scrape off the creosote every few days or at minimum flip the wood around before cutting new wood to put up for the chimneys.  Or who use moss.  Hello flammable and that's just common sense to me.  I loved seeing the chick who used clay soil before the ground froze.  It's like HELLO!  Now I'm sure if you were to drop me off in the arctic, I would absolutely be one of those people who taps within the first week but I feel like I would have a mental checklist of things to at least attempt to bring me the most success.  I would love to do it on some levels especially since I have my own fat storage on board to last me longer on that front.  You always wonder how you'd fare on something like that.  We need to get through the seasons though because it's also been a big distraction we didn't need.  

I got the lettuce and radishes through their initial hardening off.  Now I've got the itch to get everything into the ground but I still have to wait two weeks.  I have had ZERO luck with doing the strawberry seeds from a strawberry whether it's using thin slices or drying the seeds.  I've tried 3x and I'm done so I'm going to have to break down and buy a few plugs if we want any chance at strawberries.  It's been hard keeping these seedlings alive over the past 6 weeks and I think the biggest thing I learned was despite what others said, I feel like I started them about 3 weeks too early.  It's hard keeping the algae and mold build up off of them.  You try all of the tricks and you learn stuff too late.  I learned a month in about bottom watering and that has seemed to do better and so has keeping an oscillating fan on them to strengthen their stems.  Lots of legginess on some stuff and I know I can plant them deeper when it's time to compensate for that.  It's all been such a learning process up to this point and I haven't even really gardened yet.  We're going to need to prepare the side bed with cardboard after we scrape off the pithy amount of mulch the HOA blessed us with.  The Preen we bought just isn't cutting it with weeds and we're going to need to amend the soil a little bit because the clay is ridiculous.  I am hoping to make our own compost from a video I saw about drilling holes in a food grade bucket and burying it and adding kitchen scraps, cardboard, coffee grounds/tea leaves to it so that we can have our own 5 gallon supply of it going forward.  I've always hated the amount of kitchen scraps we throw away so it would be much better served putting nutrients into our soil.  

I'll get as many scraps together as I can this week.  I've got some eggshells and asparagus stems.  The Mr eats strawberries and kiwis and I eat apples and we both have nanas so we'll get that in a bag to dump in there.  I'm super excited to have found that video and hope it gets us our own 'black gold.'  I've been saving non inked cardboard, TP rolls, sticks, etc.  Come Fall, I'll be asking folks to let us know when they have leaves that we can take instead of the trashman.  

I found some tin tiles I bought like 15 years ago when I was selling on Etsy that I painted and was going to sell.  I never did so I spray painted them again and will see how the garden shakes out when everything is planted and will have some "freeish" art.  I think I paid $5 for 3 back in the day.  

Oh, I don't think I shared the finished steps with you guys.  This was taken when we still had to keep the rails covered because we knew they'd have to come back.

Let me tell you something right off the bat.  I HATE chevron.  I have an astigmatism and it usually screws with my eyes.  I knew we were going to have to get Berber for a high traffic area and I hated all of the patterns.  I basically ordered a few samples of the chevron as a joke in several colors and we ended up loving it.  It's actually slightly lighter in person and it resembles a cozy winter cardigan.

Saturday I had a chat with the Mr about some Mom stuff and he was very understanding and listened to me prattle on for a bit.  We had lunch and thankfully both wanted a burger so there was no "what do you want/I don't know what do you want" game being played.  Win!  After that, we got out in the garage and got some final projects finished up and I got the dirt into the big planter so those monster bags of potting soil are finally gone.  Of course those monster bags weighed 40 lbs a piece which wouldn't be bad if we were regularly exercising and doing strength training but since we're not, the pain kicked in pretty quickly.  About an hour later I could already feel it from the lower back down.  I went out and slapped a layer of leftover stain on our out front planter trim which will have to go out when the zinnias are a little stronger.  They will definitely need hardware cloth to protect them because the squirrels out front are flaming a-holes.

Sunday the Mr had a headache from digging that hole in the backyard.  He tried a shower then brought up some breakfast and coffee and we zoned out for a few hours.  It, or me digging into his shoulder, unfortunately didn't help his headache and he said he needed real food over toast and banana.  I made some chicken sausage, egg and red potato trash heap while he rehung pictures on the wall and got some stuff cleaned up.  I was able to get 6 eggshells for the compost pile and the two banana peels  At some point I want to get one of those cute little compost bins for the counter or beside the trashcan.  Sunday was a bust on the productivity front for me but it was nice keeping the back door open and let the cooler air keep the house cool.  I know those days are going to be few and far between sooner than later.

What did you get into this weekend?

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