Longest Day of the year!

With the Summer solstice being today, I am grateful and so happy to let you know that our strawberry and vegetable gardens are done and IN! Phew!

With all the rain we had, most of our outside work was put on hold. Knowing that we needed to have dirt delivered by a small tandem dump truck for the raised bed and the strawberry garden, we had to wait for the earth to dry out a bit for the delivery so the truck wouldn't sink out of sight. When that happened we purchased 4 cubic yards of dirt, built the beds and then started filling them in. Check it out.


I remember when we were younger and in better health, these chores would have been done lickity split! But between DH's heart condition and my back and asthma, it takes us much longer. Oh well, the golden years.



I still think that the cross bar on the poles halfway up (they are for the irrigation-drip watering system we installed which I'll show more later) is off but DH put a level on it and says it's spot on. Must be the raised bed that is really off, but DH with the help of our son put that up. DH and I haukled in soil to fill it, something I surely shouldn't have done since with my back issues, I was laid up 2 days after doing it. We still need to trim the ends of that cross piece as well but I figure that can wait till all the living chores are planted and done and then we can come back and finish those little details.


The Strawberry garden is coming along nicely.


Check out this photo with how many berries are on just one plant and this was made within this past month amidst all the rain.


Of Course there are many other areas of the yard that we have been working at and more work is still needed. To the right of the new swingset acquired for the youngest grandchildren we had an "island" garden in the midst of part of our back yard. Since our property line goes back to the island in the River, we still have much more property behind this photo including the wooded area.



The brown in the photo's foreground is where we had to reseed the grass after the septic repairs.
The ground that is all brown in the distance is where we are having a weed problem with mugwort. Uuurgh! that is so invasive! We actually cut down everything and even used a "wooded stock" herbicide that is used for poison ivy and such. Yet the weed persists. I may go back with a pair of scissors, snip eahc weed individually and give it an IV injection of the poison to see if that will work. (This was a last ditch suggestion from our local Coop. Extension.)


This next photo shows a picture showing the backside of our pool area. You can see the new garden structures on the right of the above ground pool and to the left is the flower garden that surrounds the garage.

I still have the flower gardens to weed, a bit more plants to bed, use the weed cloth barrier besides a heavy layer of newsprint underneath that and lastly mulch over the top.

Notice all that green, TIZ WEEDZ!


With My Mom here, she and I have started working on the flower bed in between all the other happenings. DH's Doctors appointments, rehab, graduations, trips, BBQ, etc, you get the drift, way to busy around here.



See all those bags of mulch I was able to purchase at 50% off. Hopefully, I'll be able to report that those chores will be done and soon. Now that the days are becoming shorter, I guess I'll have to work faster. LOL

Jane

PS: I did check out the Kiwi vines on the arbor and I think we are going to have 2 kiwis this year! Check out these blossoms.



There also is another section of the island garden that needs attention, but I'll show more another day. I have saturated you with enough photos for one day. Hopefully my blogging will come back to a steadier flow after this seasonal rush is done. I hope to start getting to some stitching too. I really am having withdrawals from my quilting and stitching stuff. J.