Lawn and Garden

I think the house looks much nicer when it looks like some one lives here.

This is normally not hard to achieve but this spring its been raining. A Lot, and it turns out weeds love rain . I'm not sure how the actual grass feels about it because I don't have any but the weeds are thrilled. So thrilled in fact that they are growing like steroidal baseball players.

My push mower is not able to compete in the big leagues. Mr. Mower is great when yard only grows a quarter of an inch a month, Mr. Push Mower is in his element, he gets  all excited over this non-growth and he is large and in charge. Sadly, this year he is small and in the shed.

This year it is not draught and the yard grows a quarter of an inch an hour. It was getting so out of hand I was worried the city was going to leave some sort of curt  "Dear Home Owner"note on the door reminding me about  statutes and making a point about fines.

Instead of paying the city, I paid the little lawn mower man to do it. Again. Normally over the summer I pay him maybe once or twice the whole span of the summer and when I go on vacation. I've never had to pay him this early or this often. The  environmentally conscience push mower seemed like such a good idea when there wasn't much to mow and when it didn't rain every day.  I have mowed in March but a dry March wasn't that big a deal to the push mower. If I had tried with the mower this year I would have had a stroke and I think it would have died from over exertion.

Moving on to the back yard, clearly I didn't let the lawn mower many back there. He's very old and I fear it might kill him. The winter rye is really excited about the spring and the heat isn't killing it like advertised.

I finally got my irrigation issues solved and the hoses down. I also learned how to perform gender reassignment surgery on a hose end - while the surgery was a success the hose herself lost the battle. I had been hoping that all I needed to do was have water pumping through both ends and that would solve the issue of low pressure... The hose was shot, high pressure, low pressure, those cheap soaker hoses have two seasons tops to live and this was season three. I bought a new hose and now the irrigation issue is solved.

I learned that while you need a plan, you also have to know when the plan has to change. In reality, its better to get the job done then waste a lot of time worrying about  how it gets done. A plan is a road map not a commandment. I'll get the weed barrier done this week and I'll be good to go when the plants finally arrive in two weeks.

Speaking of plants

The quality of this sucks but there is a window of time to take successful pictures in the early evening and the window had slammed shut. It does show that the potatoes are getting bigger and almost everyone is perking along. Pots 4,5,6 are sending up shoots. The spuds I planted in the front  by the porch are doing well too but I'm going to have to watch them to make sure I keep enough dirt around them so they can do their thing. I am hoping they are more productive there then the pumpkins were.