It has been absolutely gorgeous out the past few days! I am afraid to write about it frankly, Maine is not known to be kind in the weather department :-) Yesterday it was 65 out. We were able to get a good portion of the front flower gardens cleaned out, and I was able to rake a bunch of crap out of my garden from last year. It was just wonderful. Although, I think we would have gotten more accomplished if one of us didn't have to keep dropping what we were doing to run after the wee one...man is she quick. My mom lives just down the street, and she just starts running yelling "NANA NANNY!!!!!" Which would be fine...except it is a road, and there is a big drop off into a gully right next to our road.
I started about as many seeds as I could possibly think to start on Monday...just to read yesterday that half the stuff shouldn't be started inside - such as green beans. Well, we'll see how they do. I still need to start my tomatoes, which I am not all that confident about since the lady at the greenhouse spent 30 minutes trying to talk me OUT of starting tomatoes at home...hmmmm. Well, the seeds and dirt were not that expensive, and if they suck, well I will just buy seedlings from the nursery anyways.
We are going to attempt to add 4 4x4 raised beds, plus a little pumpkin patch this year. The raised beds were Matt's idea, so I am just going with it :-) I'm hoping that will help considering I will be in my 3rd trimester most of the summer - hence not wanting to bend over and weed a lot. I am really really concerned about animals this year though. We have lived here for 4 years and never had any animal issues (they all stay at my mom's mostly), but in the past 2 weeks something has gotten into our garbage twice, and then the neighbors told us there were 10 deer in our yard/next to our cars the other night...hmmmm...I was thinking racoons, but maybe the deer knocked our garbage over? But what can deter deer from eating my vegetables! We live in town, so no shooting allowed...although I have to say if I wake up to no plants one day, I might be sitting on my porch with a gun overnight. I'm hoping my garden fence will be enough. Any ideas?
In completely unrelated news, we found out we are expecting a BOY! Yay! We are really excited to have a boy and a girl. Although, to be honest, I am freaking out a little bit as to what to do with a little boy. Matt of course is ecstatic. This will be the first grandson on both sides, so it is pretty exciting for us! Not much longer now! I unfortunately will have to schedule a c-section due to some issues related to a car accident when I was younger, but at least I can safely carry the baby! Yay!
Sorry it has been so quiet around here these past few weeks. I have been in a crazy spring cleaning/reorganizing/throw away as much as possible phase :-) I hope to start updating more frequently, but let's be honest...I'm not very good at that! At least I still have my faithful readership (thanks barefoot by the sea!)
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5 comments:
I love it when you post and you're good at the updates so keep them coming! Yay for the boy - we are thrilled for you (and us), need some testosterone around here. Yay for the seeds and try to keep positive about Bambi...
hey...i'm still reading too, you know! it just comes through my google reader, so i sometimes don't get to commenting :) yay for my little nephew-to-be...and his adorably cute big sister. and yes...keep her away from that gully :)
Congratulations on the boy!! That's so exciting. you'll do great at parenting a boy.
Are there any 'gardening in new england' resources you could point me towards? I grew up growing things in CA and am not quite sure when I should be starting things here in the northeast, but I really want to get a real garden going this spring/summer now that we're somewaht settled in our house. Last year I did some, but since we didn't move in until around June it was a late start.
Hi Sarah!
I'm not really sure of a "new england" resource for gardening. I kind of wing it. However, I will mention that mofga.org has some good articles about gardening, although you have to weed through what they have. Also, I like to look at the Fedco seed catalog which has a lot of info for people in new england, and then Johnny's Selected Seeds has good info as well. As far as what I can tell you, I typically don't put anything out before Memorial Day up here, but being down in MA you could probably get away with the beginning to middle of May - you may still want to wait until Memorial Day for things like peppers and tomatoes though. This is the first year I have started seeds inside. Usually I buy seedlings from the farmers' market or the nursery. The only things I have planted directly in the ground are green beans and spaghetti squash (both did well). You could also try the square foot gardening method, because then you don't have to worry about what type of soil you actually have, since you bring in all new soil, although that is kind of expensive. I would say just plant a bunch of things and you will learn as you go. Oh, and you could also contact your local cooperative extension office http://www.umassextension.org/ Hope this helps some!
Congrats on the baby boy! Definitely fun and a totally different ball game than a girl! The raised beds sound wonderful. If you just have a fence around the exterior of the garden, the deer will be able to jump it. If you maybe put high fences around each of the 4x4 w/o many veggies poking out---while it might not look pretty, you should have veggies. Although if whatever is getting into your garbage can climb, then..... ;)
Glad you're getting your starts. I do the same--always try to plant seeds, and then I end up just buying mini plants because my seeds never start outside. But at least I have some flowers coming up. And we'd totally take your grass-we've attempted to reseed the lawn twice now as the winter & dogs have created a mud pit--unfortunately it doesn't want to start on our clay base. That means we might end up having to buy sod or pay the fines to the housing company when we move out. Sigh!
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