This weekend was full of yard work. Our front yard is a little bit the worse for wear after the winter, and so we decided that rather than paying for a lawn service we would do the work ourselves. A little manual labor never hurt anyone.
At the hardware store (Curry Hardware has a bunny in the basement), we were told that we should vigorously rake the yard to remove the dead and matted material and loosen up the top layer of soil. Vigorously rake we did. The front yard was the first weekend and this past weekend was the back yard, which is much less pretty than the front and much, much larger. We have something like 37 yard waste bags and barrels to go out with the trash pickup this Friday of dead leaves and grass.
We added lime to the soil using the spreader and now we are watering our lime-y ground once a day. This upcoming weekend we get to add grass seed to the ground and continue the daily watering.
In the meantime, I am working on this year's garden. I haven't sown anything yet, because I still need to move the compost pile. My dead leaf pile from last year was too big to fit into the composter we got (with a discount, because we bought the display model), so I am using a pitchfork and tossing it into a smaller pile next to the fence and leaving a small amount of decayed matter to till in the ground. I'm hoping to get a number of plants in the ground this week: onions, shallots and swiss chard mostly. I also have a number of plants started in cowpots, which will probably go out later on in the month once I know I have seedlings in them there pots.
I also ordered blueberry plants, which should be arriving the week of the 19th. They are going in the front yard where there are currently about 3 bushes which looked pretty straggly last year and so far have failed to produce any leaves or buds this year. No more whatever bushes and instead fruit! And ideally fruit that costs up to $4 a pint (depending on time of season). I am looking forward to no longer paying for berries year round. Huzzah!
